About Me    

 

Hello and welcome .  I teach, do research and work with various communities.   My organizational home is in the  University of Delaware.  I study technology and nonprofit organizations, particularly those using the Internet for social change. This was an opportunity to combine my passion for technology with my commitment to social justice.

I was involved in social causes and politics in college, but shortly after graduating I served as a VISTA Volunteer in Birmingham, Alabama. I worked with indigent defendants in a county jail as part of a pre-trial release program, sponsored by Miles College, a Historically Minority Serving Institution.  This was an eye opening experience.  My clients came from a different place.  They were poor, many used drugs and many came from neighborhoods that lacked hope. I was horrified by what I saw and I knew then that I wanted to change some of those situations.  I decided to go to graduate school and work on this.   While in graduate school, I worked for a National Center for Volunteers in Criminal Justice.   I learned about the importance of citizenship and citizen action.

In my early career, I was  a practitioner.  I worked mostly in child welfare and criminal justice.  Much of my work was in Appalachia.  I have had the opportunity to make a difference. I continue to work with communities and organizations.   My experience working with many committed people has informed my teaching and research in important ways.

 I started teaching at one of The University of Virginia branch campuses in 1980.  For nearly 40 years I have had the privilege of working with a number of America's future leaders.  My teaching posts have included Indiana University, Boston College,  the University of South Carolina and the University of Delaware.  I teach about nonprofit organizations and technology in public and nonprofit organizations.

For the past almost three decades, I have been an active contributor to research about technology and social change. When I first began my research in the mid 1990s, it was a rarely explored territory. Everyone was a pioneer and everything was new.  It was  exciting. I spent a lot of time defending myself from people who felt that this wasn't a serious topic for research.   Then came Jessie Ventura, Howard Dean and Move On.  This is now the mainstream and advocates who don't use these techniques are rapidly being considered dinosaurs.  I am currently looking at the role of data and data science in social change.  This is an exciting new area and I can see data science adding substantially to the future of practice.  While I think scholarship is important in itself, I strive to create scholarship that is useful for those whose efforts directly contribute to social change.

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• Curriculum Vitae

    (c) 2001-2018 by John G. McNutt. All Rights Reserved. Limited Permission is Granted for Reproduction for Non-Commercial Educational Purposes provided that the material remain in its original form and proper credit is extended.   Disclaimer:   The content of all linked sites are beyond my control and I assume no responsibility for their content.    Photos and artwork from the Microsoft Clip Art Gallery and my collection   Revised 09/21/18