The Amazing Miss Burchfield

Abstract

What goes around, comes around: the woman who once solicited others to produce manuscripts for PAR is now the subject of a manuscript. Laverne Burchfield was managing editor of this journal for 15 volumes, from 1943 to 1958, and in ASPA's early days before it had an executive director, she served as secretary/treasurer for the association and she wrote the proposal that funded the first executive director. This is her biography—a woman passionately committed to the world of public service, the world of ideas, and, simply, the world in its natural splendor.

Introduction to the Handbook on Gender and Public Administration

“…In 1939, when ASPA was founded, the works of Mary Parker Follett represented the lone, recognized contribution by a woman to the scholarly discourse of PA. Lavern Burchfield worked behind the scenes shaping ASPA, the Public Administration Review (PAR) and PA practice. Mary Guy's (2000) PAR article "The Amazing Miss Burchfield" shed light on her early, often invisible, impact on the field. Burchfield received her doctorate in political Source: Rubin (1990Rubin ( , 2000; Guy (1993); Shields (1988); U.S.…”

Changing the Narrative

“…Certain studies illuminate the difference individual women have made to the field of public administration. Guy (2000) pieced together a biography of Laverne Burchfield—a former managing editor of Public Administration Review and prominent public administrator—from archives, Internet searches, emails, letters, and interviews with family and colleagues; it provides insight into her contributions to and passion for public service, which have remained largely unrecognized and are absent from textbooks in the field. Schachter’s (2008) case study of Lillian Borrone, developed by interviewing her colleagues, provides a story of the women leaders who worked in a male-dominated organization and played a lead role in the revitalization of Port Authority.…”

Understanding Leadership in Public Administration: The Biographical Approach

“…For example, the editors include an essay on Laverne Burchfield, who served as managing editor of Public Administration Review from 1943 to 1958, and was secretary/treasurer of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) before there was a director. The author of the Burchfield essay indicates that had Ms. Burchfield been a man, she might have become ASPA’s first executive director (Guy 2004, 23). Another subject was a crusading public administration writer, Josephine Goldmark.…”