Welcome

Welcome

For more than twenty years I have worked at the intersection of political science, civic education, and academic leadership — teaching students how democracy works, building programs that put democratic practice into their hands, and leading departments and institutions through the kind of change that makes a lasting difference.

This portfolio is an attempt to make that work visible in one place. The CV tells you what I have done. The pages of this site try to show you how and why — the thinking behind the programs, the evidence behind the outcomes, and the values that have guided the decisions. I hope it gives you a genuine sense of who I am as a scholar, a leader, and a colleague.

My scholarly work centers on American political parties, state legislative campaigns, and political communication — the machinery of democratic participation at the levels closest to citizens' daily lives. That work has produced books, articles, and a textbook now in its ninth edition, but its deeper contribution has been shaping how I understand the institutions I lead. Departments, like parties, are organizations that recruit people, build coalitions, manage scarce resources, and try to sustain themselves across leadership transitions. The analytical habits of a political scientist turn out to be useful ones for an academic administrator.

My administrative work has spanned four institutions over two decades — department chair, graduate dean, director of liberal education, director of civic engagement — and has been defined by a consistent set of priorities: growing programs that serve students well, developing faculty who can build careers they are proud of, managing resources with discipline and transparency, and connecting the institution to the communities it exists to serve. At Radford University, I grew the Political Science department from 81 declared majors to 409 while improving retention to 87 percent. Those numbers matter, but what they represent matters more — students who found a program worth committing to, and a department that gave them reasons to stay.

The civic engagement work — Highlanders Vote, the Virginia Government Simulation, the American Democracy Project, the Civic Incomes Assessment project — reflects a conviction I have held since graduate school: that regional public universities have a distinctive and irreplaceable role in the health of American democracy, and that fulfilling that role requires deliberate institutional investment, not just good intentions. Building that infrastructure, sustaining it across years, assessing it honestly, and contributing its lessons back to a national network of practice is work I find genuinely meaningful, and work I intend to keep doing at whatever scale I am privileged to lead.

I seek opportunities where I can bring this full range of experience — scholarly, administrative, and civic — to a college or university ready to invest in its own next chapter. If you are a search committee member, a colleague, or simply someone curious about this work, I hope you find what you are looking for here.

Chapman Rackaway, Ph.D. Professor and Chair of Political Science | Acting Chair of Sociology Radford University

Contacting Me:

• Postal Address: Hemphill Hall 5304  PO Box 6945 Radford University  Radford, VA 24142

• Telephone: +1.540.831.6602

• Email: crackaway@radford.edu or cbr@chapmanrackaway.com

Contacting References:

• To protect the privacy of my references, I do not publish their names or contact information but will gladly provide them upon request.

Header Photo Credit: Dan Merlo, AASCU