Professional
Eva M. Witesman is a Professor and Stewart Grow Research Fellow in the Romney Institute of Public Management.
She is also the Director of the Ballard Center for Social Impact.
She has personally worked with more than a hundred nonprofit, business, and government organizations through teaching consultancies with students and hundreds more through her public speaking and professional training efforts.
Her research explores corporate social strategy, public values, and perspectives on the nonprofit sector.
She is affiliated as a research fellow at the Center for Organization Research and Design at Arizona State University.
Teaching
Dr. Witesman teaches social impact principles, social impact measurement, and corporate social strategy.
She is known for her hands-on, community-engaged teaching style, and has won the honor of MPA professor of the year three times.
In addition to various electives, Eva teaches two required core courses in the Master of Public Administration program: statistical analysis and public program evaluation. She teaches these courses using community-engaged consultancies with government and nonprofit agencies.
Under her guidance, her students have produced hundreds of statistical reports and program evaluation designs for organizations ranging from development organizations like UN Habitat and the Heal Foundation to government entities such as the Utah Office of the State Auditor and the US Department of Agriculture, as well as nonprofits including American Red Cross International and the Fredette Foundation. Eva typically runs at least two dozen student consultancies per year.
In the BYU Master of Public Administration program, Dr. Witesman has taught courses in quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods (including statistics, public program evaluation, and cost-benefit analysis) as well as courses in nonprofit management (including resource development, nonprofit management, and volunteer management). She is known for her rigorous, hands-on, community-engaged experiential learning teaching methodology.
Education
Eva received her Master of Public Affiars and PhD in Public Affairs with emphases in policy analysis and public management, from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.
Eva received her undergraduate degree from the University of Utah, where she created a university studies degree entitled the “Philosophy of Discovery,” comparing human advances in the arts and the sciences.
Research
Her research examines the institutional differences between the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Her research has appeared in top public and nonprofit administration journals including Public Administration, Public Administration Review, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Her work examining sector choice and her recent paper outlining an institutional theory of the nonprofit are required reading in nonprofit graduate programs across the United States.
Eva’s research centers primarily on the differences between the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. She also examines topics of more general interest across sectors, including public program evaluation and institutional analysis. She serves on the editorial boards of Public Administration Review and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. She is the past division chair for the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management.
Along with her coauthor Curtis Child, Eva is pleased to announce the recent publication of their book, Reimagining Nonprofits, through Cambridge University Press. Collecting the writing of some of the most creative minds in the field of nonprofit studies, this book challenges our traditional understanding of the role and purpose of the nonprofit sector.
Religious
Her BYU devotional address on women and education went viral and has been one of the most viewed BYU devotionals of all time.
She has traveled nationally and internationally as a guest speaker and has been featured in various articles, in podcasts, and on television.
By helping organizations to be more strategic about the good they do in the world, she hopes to bring the world a little closer to Zion.
Eva is fascinated by the gifts of the Spirit and loves to explore the ways they are experienced by different people around the world.
She contributes regularly to LDS Living magazine and other church publications. In these ways, she shares her rich spiritual life and invites others to explore their own.
Personal
Eva and her husband Owen are the parents of four children. They live in Springville where they care for 32 fruit trees, two dogs, a cat, several chickens, and about a hundred thousand bees.
Her undergraduate research at the University of Utah focused on the venom of deadly cone snails and the philosophy of science. She played on the university women’s rugby team (club).