Residing in the Periphery while Teaching in the Center of Nonprofit Management Education: Perspectives from a Strategic Communication Professor

Abstract

This essay describes my experiences as a nonprofit management education professor whose academic and professional backgrounds come from strategic communication. I highlight the teaching, service, and research stresses that I’ve experienced as a professor who doesn’t share the same theoretical perspectives as program directors and department chairs who come from public administration, business, and social work backgrounds. I write about these tensions not to vent or air dirty laundry but to encourage nonprofit management education programs to recruit tenured, tenure-track, and adjunct professors who have different backgrounds and actively bring them into key roles within the program in regards to strategic planning, evaluation, and administration.