“You kind of just have a path, right? And I've pursued both an administrative and scholarly path,” says Dr. Dan Bromberg, reflecting on a career that has taken him up and down the east coast, from middle school classrooms to university governance. Dr. Bromberg is currently an associate professor and the Director of Academic Programs at Carsey. “I’ve enjoyed both [paths,] but it's nice to step with two feet into this administrative world so that I can focus on it for the time being.”
With the recent departure of Director Michael Ettlinger, Dr. Bromberg is taking on an expanded role this February as the Carsey School’s Interim Director. The new position means that he will have a hand shaping not only his own path, but Carsey’s too. Dr. Bromberg speaks of the opportunity with a mix of enthusiasm and reverence. And while the position itself will be new to him, the responsibilities fit neatly in his scholarship. ?
“My academic expertise is in running public organizations. So the opportunity to run a public organization… that’s exciting.”
“My academic expertise is in running public organizations. So the opportunity to run a public organization… that’s exciting.”
Dr. Bromberg didn’t begin his career with an eye toward public administration. After growing up in New Jersey, he studied English at SUNY Albany and jumped straight into teaching. His first year out of college, he lived and taught English in Spain, before returning stateside to Maryland. Dr. Bromberg won a Baltimore City Teaching Fellowship, which allowed him to both study education at Johns Hopkins and gain valuable classroom experience in the city’s public schools. It was there, as both a middle school teacher and student himself, that Dr. Bromberg began to understand the limits of individual actions within far-greater organizations.?
“It became pretty apparent to me that I wasn't going to have the same impact that I would want to have just within a classroom. The issues that I was seeing with my students, they were systems issues; they weren't student issues.”
From Baltimore, Dr. Bromberg and his future spouse moved up to New England, where they settled in Burlington, Vermont. Dr. Bromberg continued his work in secondary education, this time at the high school level, teaching students dealing with emotional disabilities. While many of the circumstances had changed—location, student disability status, age ranges, and more— he found that there was still a disconnect between the issues that affected his students’ lives and his reach as an individual teacher.?
The desire to affect positive change more widely and effectively led Dr. Bromberg to graduate school at the University of Vermont. His first thought was to study public policy, but as it happens, UVM did not offer a master’s in public policy. They did, however, have a program for public administration. Dr. Bromberg dove in and found the water suited him perfectly.?
“At UVM I really fell in love with the idea of these theoretical and research challenges,” he says of the unexpected path that led to his MPA. “I worked with someone who was a systems thinker there… That's how I learned to think.”
“At UVM I really fell in love with the idea of these theoretical and research challenges,” he says of the unexpected path that led to his MPA. “I worked with someone who was a systems thinker there… That's how I learned to think.”
Dr. Bromberg already knew that the issues most students were facing were not individual issues. What he came to appreciate first at UVM and later at Rutgers University, where he earned his PhD in public administration, was that they also were not individual policy issues either. The solution was to take a broader approach. To address present concerns and ensure that future ones could be properly managed, the structure of the systems themselves must be studied and improved.?
“You start to develop an understanding and an empirical kind of picture of how organizations actually work as opposed to how we just picture them working on an org chart. And then the question is: how do you implement public policy through that system?”
This was the perspective that Dr. Bromberg brought to UNH’s political science department when he made the move to Durham in 2012. Three years later, he became director of the Master’s in Public Administration program. One of his projects was helping to oversee the MPA’s move to the newly-christened Carsey School of Public Policy, which felt like a “natural home” for the program. For the past eight years, he has split his time as an administrator and as a professor of both graduates and undergraduates.
“You know, there is nothing more fulfilling than getting a room of undergraduate students engaged in a class,” he says behind a knowing smile. “Graduate students are easy, right? Undergraduates: you have to perform, you have to engage them.”
A common theme in many of Dr. Bromberg’s classes and published research is the role of accountability in institutional success. Whether it be between employees and managers or public servants and constituents, being accountable necessitates a level of communication and behavioral expectations that lead to positive outcomes. While it can be tempting to imagine large systems abstractly, Dr. Bromberg stresses that accountability is a social relationship. And just like any social relationship, varying levels of trust dictate how those individuals interact.?
In the present political and media environment, trust can be hard to come by. This is perhaps most evident in the field of policing, where Dr. Bromberg has focused much of his scholarship in the past five years. Especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, increasing numbers of citizens report feeling that American police lack accountability for their actions. One common policy solution has been increasing the use of body cameras. Through a nationwide survey, Dr. Bromberg and Canadian Prof. ?tienne Charbonneau found a significant discrepancy between when police chiefs wanted to release video footage after police officers kill civilians and what the public wanted. Together, Bromberg and Charbonneau explain that addressing and closing gaps in expectations like these are key to institutional accountability, which you can read more about in their article in The Conversation.
Dr. Bromberg believes that making legible connections like these between policy, professionals, and the public is one of Carsey’s greatest strengths: “What we've been able to do is to take that research out of those academic journals and translate it to a more general audience, ideally having influence on policy and practitioner communities.”
In his new role as Interim Director, Dr. Bromberg hopes to build on this strength and forge even deeper connections with the rest of the university community. In his decade at the school, he has continually been struck by the breadth and power of the research across UNH.
In his new role as Interim Director, Dr. Bromberg hopes to build on this strength and forge even deeper connections with the rest of the university community. In his decade at the school, he has continually been struck by the breadth and power of the research across UNH. Dr. Bromberg is confident that Carsey can find new ways to engage with and promote that incredible scholarship.
“I'd like to elevate the work of our researchers with a number of different audiences,” he says, suggesting potential ideas like expanding the number of faculty fellows or encouraging new UNH professors to publish through Carsey’s brief series.
Shaping the school’s path forward will be a collaborative process, and Dr. Bromberg is grateful to be a part of it. After a career of studying public administration, what better next step than to guide the institution he calls home? Serving the needs of students, scholars, policy professionals, and the public good will be a challenge, but Dr. Bromberg is excited to get to work.
“We're realistic but we'll still be aspirational… I truly believe in our mission. And I truly believe in the people we have.”?
Reported by Benjamin Scott Savard ‘23G
