Section for Women in Public Administration National Awards Breakfast

Monday, March 20, 2017 | 7:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. | Capitol South

Michelle Deardorff is the Adolph S. Ochs professor of government and department head of political science and public service at the University of Tennessee—Chattanooga. Since earning her Ph.D. from Miami University in 1993, Deardorff’s teaching and research have focused on the constitutional and statutory protections surrounding gender and race, as well as exploring political theory insights. She enjoys teaching classes and engaging with the public in ways that allow people to apply their understandings of law, politics and political theory to current events, believing that an important role of a university is to foster thoughtful citizens who are prepared to participate in governing communities and the nation.

Prior to coming to UTC, Deardorff spent 10 years teaching at Jackson State, a historic black university in Mississippi, and another 12 years at Millikin University, a small private college in Illinois. She has served on the governing council of the American Political Science Association and is a founding faculty member of the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy, a coalition of academics who promote civic engagement and popular sovereignty through the study of the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Her 20-year engagement with these colleagues has resulted in providing workshops, tours and two museums all designed for educators, students and community members to understand the promise of civic engagement.

Deardorff’s most recent book, Pregnancy and the American Worker, examines the lower federal courts’ interpretation of two competing statutory interpretations of equality (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) in relationship to pregnancy protections in employment. The book was coauthored with James Dahl of the University of Illinois—Champaign-Urbana. In 2009, the American Political Science Association published Assessment in Political Science, the first primer on programmatic and classroom assessment within the discipline, co-edited by Deardorff, Kerstin Hamann and John Ishiyama. In 2011, Oxford University Press published the two-volume set, Constitutional Law in Contemporary America, written by David Schultz, John R. Vile and Deardorff; it is now under contract with West Academic Press for a revised edition. Most recently, she joined Brigid Harrison and Jean Harris as author of the McGraw-Hill text, American Democracy Now. Its fifth edition was released in January.