I teach, do research and work with various communities. My organizational home is in the University of Delaware. I study technology and nonprofit organizations, particularly those using the Internet for social change. This was an opportunity to combine my passion for technology with my commitment to social justice.
I was involved in social causes and politics in college, but shortly after graduating I served as a VISTA Volunteer in Birmingham, Alabama. I worked with indigent defendants in a county jail as part of a pre-trial release program, sponsored by Miles College, a Historically Minority Serving Institution. This was an eye opening experience. My clients came from a different place. They were poor, many used drugs and many came from neighborhoods that lacked hope. I was horrified by what I saw and I knew then that I wanted to change some of those situations. I decided to go to graduate school and work on this. While in graduate school, I worked for a National Center for Volunteers in Criminal Justice. I learned about the importance of citizenship and citizen action.
In my early career, I was a practitioner. I worked mostly in child welfare and criminal justice. Much of my work was in Appalachia. I have had the opportunity to make a difference. I continue to work with communities and organizations. My experience working with many committed people has informed my teaching and research in important ways.
I started teaching at one of The University of Virginia branch campuses in 1980. For nearly 40 years I have had the privilege of working with a number of America's future leaders. My teaching posts have included Indiana University, Boston College, the University of South Carolina and the University of Delaware. I teach about nonprofit organizations and technology in public and nonprofit organizations.
For the past almost three decades, I have been an active contributor to research about technology and social change. When I first began my research in the mid 1990s, it was a rarely explored territory. Everyone was a pioneer and everything was new. It was exciting. I spent a lot of time defending myself from people who felt that this wasn't a serious topic for research. Then came Jessie Ventura, Howard Dean and Move On. This is now the mainstream and advocates who don't use these techniques are rapidly being considered dinosaurs. I am currently looking at the role of data and data science in social change. This is an exciting new area and I can see data science adding substantially to the future of practice. While I think scholarship is important in itself, I strive to create scholarship that is useful for those whose efforts directly contribute to social change.
