Our People

Dr. Howard R. Balanoff currently holds the Texas State University William P. Hobby Endowed Professorship for Public Service and currently serves as the Director of Texas State University’s William P. Hobby Center for Public Service.

He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and the recipient of the 2019 International/County Management Association (ICMA) Academic Award for Excellence in Education.

He received a Bachelor of Arts in political science and history from Hunter College of the City University of New York, and a Master’s, and Doctorate Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Texas A&M University.

He served 20 years in the United States Air Force: 7 years on active duty and 13 years in the Reserves. He retired as a Major in the United States Air Force. He is a Veteran of the Vietnam Era.

Previous to teaching at Texas State University he worked for 3 years as a planning coordinator for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

He is a Public Administration generalist and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in public policy, international & comparative public administration and personnel and human resources administration.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Dr. Balanoff currently serves as the:
1. Faculty advisor for graduate (MPA) Internships and teaches PA 5389 the MPA Internship course
2. Faculty advisor for Pi Alpha Alpha, the Public Administration National Honor Society
3. Editor in Chief of Good Governance Worldwide which is the official journal of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Section for Public Management Practice
4. Director of the Visiting International Scholars in Texas (VISIT) Program which helps sponsor international faculty and student scholars for visits to Texas State University.
5. Co-Director of the Texas Certified Public Manager (CPM) Program located in Arlington, Texas.

Miha Vindis is the Director of the Certified Public Manager Program (Texas) and Professor of Practice at the Department of Political Science. He was previously a faculty member at UT Austin as well ACC & St. Edwards.

Dr. Vindis is a founding partner at Engage Leadership Consulting and has extensive experience in management, strategic leadership, and supply chain planning. He has been involved in leadership and management consulting since 2010 and is a regular speaker and lecturer at leadership conferences, classes, and workshops.

His professional career includes time as a consultant at Deloitte and manager at Royal Dutch/Shell. Dr. Vindis has extensive international experience and has lived/worked in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Since 2015, Dr. Vindis has been an active investor and a mentor to numerous entrepreneurs, leaders, and non-profit organizations. He is currently the Board President at Habitat for Humanity TX. His research interests include gamification, leadership, strategic planning, and behavioral economics.

Dr. Helen Lowman is Professor of Practice in the Political Science Department, Public Administration Program, at Texas State University. She also serves as the Director of the Center for Research, Public Policy, and Training and Senior Advisor to the Associate Director of Volunteer Recruitment and Selection at the Peace Corps. Prior to joining the faculty at Texas State University in 2022, she was President and CEO of Keep America Beautiful. In this role for approximately five years, she ran the nonprofit, with more than 3 million volunteers and 650 affiliate organizations, that envisions every community to be a clean, green, and beautiful place to live.

Dr. Lowman is an innovative and experienced leader in international development, environmental sustainability, and organizational change. In July 2010, Dr. Lowman was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as Regional Director for the Europe, Mediterranean, and Asia region where she oversaw Peace Corps programs in 21 countries. In 2014, Dr. Lowman became Associate Director of Volunteer Recruitment and Selection, overseeing the largest department in the Peace Corps, with staff in eight US-based recruiting offices and Peace Corps Headquarters who were tasked with recruiting, assessing, and placing between 3,000 and 5,000 volunteers in more than 60 countries annually. Dr. Lowman was then appointed by President Obama as Director of Individual and Community Preparedness Division (ICPD) for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the US Department of Homeland Security, in October 2015. In her role as Director of ICPD, she oversaw programs that partner at all levels of government, the private sector, and community organizations to increase citizen and community preparedness and encourage the development of disaster resilience across the United States.

During her career, Dr. Lowman has served as Country Director and Associate Director of the Peace Corps program in China, acting Country Director in Mongolia, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand. She has also held senior leadership positions at AFS Intercultural Programs/USA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Dr. Lowman has served on numerous boards including, but not limited to, Pyxera Global, World Neighbors, Better World Leadership Council, Osgood Center for International Studies, and the Council on Standards for International Travel Education.

Dr. Lowman completed her undergraduate studies at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies and Spanish. She obtained a master’s degree in international studies from the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. In 2022, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Austin College.

Dr. Sheriff F. Folarin is a Professor of International Relations. He teaches as a visiting professor at Texas State University, and University of Rwanda. He is also a Senior Research Associate of the Institute for the Future of Knowledge, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His areas of specialization and research interest include foreign policies and the soft power of African states, governance and politics of Africa, international and comparative public administration, foreign policies of the great powers, and Middle East politics. Folarin is a 2024 Texas International Education Consortium COIL grantee, a 2015 Carnegie ADFP Fellow, and a 2007 SUSI Fellow. In addition, he is a member of the Citizen Diplomacy International, Midwest Political Science Association, Nigerian Political Science Association, and American Society for Public Administration.

With over 100 academic publications, Dr. Folarin is a research-active scholar and a seasoned academic with 26 years of teaching and research experience in Africa and North America, with numerous local and international academic honors and awards in the course of the journey. He has published seven books, including African Politics: From the Age of Empires to Contemporary Times (2025, Kendall Hunt), Homeland Security and Terrorism in Nigeria (2024, Bloomsbury-Lexington Books), and Rwanda’s Radical Transformation (2023, Palgrave Macmillan). A mentor and facilitator per excellence, he has graduated dozens of Master’s sets and 26 generations of undergraduate students. He’s also supervised and graduated 13 PhD students and examined/produced 55 doctoral degree holders in total.

In 2017, Dr. Folarin became the first professor of international relations at Covenant University, his former university in Nigeria, and is one of the leading lights in the African political science space

in National Role Conceptions, which is a relatively new theoretical perspective and fresh lens of studying foreign policies of African nations. He has served as head of his academic department on two occasions and pioneered internationalization in his Nigerian university, where he served as the director of the international office at its inception in 2007, and later in the same position in 2012. In 2013, he started the Covenant University Journal of Politics and International Affairs (CUJPIA), which he edited for eight years. He’s also on the board of several global journals and has reviewed books and journal articles for Taylor and Francis, Springer Nature, Bloomsbury, among other leading publications. He also served as the Chairman of the Management Board of the African Leadership Development Center in Ogun State, Nigeria.

Dr. Folarin is a public intellectual, who serves on the editorial board of some African newspapers, including Nigerian Tribune, and has appeared as guest analyst on current affairs and news programs of major media houses across the globe.