Andrew Young School alumna Elizabeth Searing (Ph.D. in Public Policy ’15) was recently awarded the Best Dissertation Award from the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management at its annual meeting in Anaheim, California, for her work in nonprofit administration and strategy.
The Academy of Management, a national professional organization for management academics, honored Searing for “Beyond Liabilities: Survival Skills for the Young, Small, and Not-for-Profit.”
Searing’s research focuses on the economics of nonprofits and the process of helping nonprofit organizations recover from financial vulnerability and identify future sources of funding. She is also interested in the intersection of nonprofits and social enterprise in terms of nontraditional funding sources. The committee was particularly impressed with Searing’s commitment to previously ignored areas of nonprofit study.
At the Andrew Young School, Searing was the student representative for the Student Tech Fee Subcommittee of the Faculty Senate Committee and served as the president of the Graduate Student Association for the Department of Economics. She is a member of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organization and Voluntary Action and the Executive Committee of the Nonprofit Section of the American Society for Public Administration.
Searing is an associate professor in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the State University of New York at Albany where she teaches nonprofit management and public and nonprofit financial management. In addition to her Ph.D., she holds a master’s degree in economics from Georgia State and a bachelor’s in economics from Texas A&M University.