Political Science Faculty and Staff
Karen Hult
Professor
Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1984
Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1984
Her research and teaching interests include organization theory, the U.S. presidency and executive branch bureaucracy, the U.S. judiciary, and research methodologies. She has received research grants from: the American Association of University Women, the Haynes Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Political Science Association, and the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, among others. She currently is on the editorial board of Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and she has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Political Science, the Presidential Studies Quarterly, and on the Executive Council of the Southern Political Science Association. She was a member of the 2007 APSA Presidency Research Group's Neustadt Award Committee and currently is a member of the SPSA Pi Sigma Alpha Award committee. She also served as a member of the Journal of Politics search committee in 2003-04, as chair of the 2002 Pi Sigma Alpha Award committee of the Southern Political Science Association, and as a member of the APSA's 2002 E.E. Schattschneider Award committee. She is a recipient of the 2004-05 Creighton University College of Arts and Science's Alumni/ae Award and the 1995 University of Minnesota Political Science Department's Distinguished Ph.D. Award; she is a co-recipient of the 1996 Richard E. Neustadt Award for the best book on the U.S. Presidency published in 1995 and the 2003-04 Excellence in Research and Creative Scholarship Award, College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences, Virginia Tech. She was president of the Presidency Research Group from 1999-2001 and was a member of the Advisory Board for the White House Transition Project. Currently, she serves as Book Review Editor for the Presidential Studies Quarterly. She has chaired the Presidency Research Group's committee to nominate candidates for the National Portrait Gallery's Paul Peck Presidential Awards. She has reviewed grant applications for the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the American Association of University Women.
She has written four books: Agency Merger and Bureaucratic Redesign (Pittsburgh, 1987); Governing Public Organizations , co-authored with Charles Walcott (Brooks/Cole, 1990); Governing the White House: From Hoover through LBJ, co-authored with Charles Walcott (Kansas, 1995), a 1996 Choice "Outstanding Academic Book"; and Empowering the White House: Governance under Nixon, Ford, and Carter, co-authored with Charles Walcott (Kansas, 2004), a 2005 Choice "Outstanding Academic Title."
Most recently, she has written "Local Community Groups and the Internet" (with B. Joon Kim and Andrea Kavanaugh), International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, & Society 2 (2007); "Women as Executive Branch Leaders," in Lori Cox Han and Caroline Heldman, editors, Rethinking Madam President: Are We Ready for a Woman in the White House?, Lynne Rienner, 2007; "White House Structure and Decision Making: Elaborating the Standard Model" (with Charles E. Walcott), Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35 (June 2005) and "Right Turn? Political Ideology in the Higher Civil Service, 1987-1994" (with Robert Maranto), American Review of Public Administration, 34 (June 2004), and she authored chapters in two edited volumes on the presidency of George W. Bush. Other publications have appeared in such journals as: Administration and Society, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, American Review of Public Administration, Congress and the Presidency, Journal of Politics, Policy Studies Journal, Polity, Presidency Research, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Public Administration Review, Public Productivity and Management Review, and Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Currently, she and Charles Walcott are writing an invited essay, "Presidential Decision-Making: The Impact of Organization and Style," for the Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency, edited by George C. Edwards III, Oxford University Press; and revising "The Carter White House: Learning to Be Like Nixon," a paper presented at "The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the 21 st Century," University of Georgia, January 2007.
In addition, Hult is working on a project examining the effects of varying structures on decision quality, doing a study of rhetorical presentation of White House staffs from Truman through George W. Bush (with MaryAnne Borrelli), planning a second edition of Governing Public Organizations, and examining presidential papers at the Reagan Library as part of continued work on the evolution of presidential speechwriting processes, As one of the scholars working on the White House Transition Project, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, she co-authored essays on the White House Counsel's Office (with MaryAnne Borrelli and Nancy Kassop) and the Office of Staff Secretary (with Kathryn Dunn Tenpas) that were made available in print and electronic form to incoming staffers of President George W. Bush; the materials produced for the Project appeared in The White House World edited by Martha Joynt Kumar and Terry Sullivan (Texas A&M University Press, 2003). With Dunn Tenpas , she wrote the U.S. presidency materials for the Governance Institute's Workways of Governance project, which also was funded by Pew; their work appears in Roger H. Davidson, editor, Workways of Governance: Monitoring Our Government's Health (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003). Hult also moderated a panel on "The Evolving Role of the White House Counsel," at the Lloyd N. Cutler Conference on White House Counsels, Miller Center of Public Affairs and University of Virginia Law School, on November 10, 2006, and she participated on the Plenary Roundtable, "The Institutional Presidency: White House Organization and Interactions with Congress, Interest Groups, and the Media," at "The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the 21 st Century," University of Georgia, January 19, 2007.
E-mail: Karen Hult