On Wednesday, March 19th, 17 faculty, staff, and graduate students attended an Inklings gathering. Dr. Patricia Shields, Regents’ Professor in the Department of Political Science, gave a presentation entitled “A Scholar’s Journey: How Students, Colleagues, Philosophy, and Surprise Shaped Invisible Ties of Discovery Over 30 Years.”
In her presentation, Dr. Shields discussed research methodology, stressing how she connected research purposes to conceptual frameworks and the importance of “micro-conceptual frameworks” that remain close to the data. She also highlighted several influential faculty, staff, and students that helped her with her research and writing.
Dr. Shields has been with the Department of Political Science for 47 years and will be retiring at the end of the Spring 2025 semester. She received a PhD in Public Administration in 1977 from Ohio State University. At Ohio State, she worked with the National Longitudinal Survey data at the Center for Human Resource Research. She began teaching as part of the Master of Public Administration (MPA) Program faculty in the Texas State Political Science Department in 1978. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. She was awarded the rank of University Distinguished Professor in 2020 and Regents’ Professor in 2021.
Dr. Shields served as the Director of the Master of Public Administration Program for 18 years and in that time shepherded the program through three re-accreditation cycles. While MPA Director, she served on the accrediting body for public administration programs and on the council of the National Association of Public Affairs and Administration.
She has been published widely in areas such as civil-military relations, peace studies, military recruitment, pragmatism and public administration, women in public policy, research methods and public finance. She won the Presidential Seminar Award for research (the top scholar award at Texas State) in 1984. Since 2001, she has edited Armed Forces & Society, a leading journal in military studies. She received a career achievement award from the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society in 2017.
The original Inklings consisted of a small group of intellectuals (whose ranks included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) who met weekly at Oxford University to read aloud and discuss their works in a spirit of fellowship and civil conversation. In the spirit of these Inklings, the Department of Political Science at Texas State University has held similar gatherings for more than two decades. Meeting monthly, TXST Inklings participants discuss research, exchange ideas, and address a wide variety of issues reflecting diverse interests.
For more information on the series, please contact Dr. Arnold Leder at al04@txstate.edu.
