Rate My Professor Michael Fitzgerald

Michael R. Fitzgerald is Faculty Emeritus and Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has served as Chair of the American Studies program and teaches courses on American national institutions and public policy. Fitzgerald's fields of interest include American politics and institutions, public policy, and public opinion, with his work cited over 562 times on Google Scholar. His academic career at the University of Tennessee began in 1978 as Assistant Professor of Political Science, advancing through the ranks to full professor. From 2006 to 2011, he held the positions of Senior Fellow and Director of Governance Studies at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy. Additionally, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies at Vanderbilt University.

Fitzgerald has earned recognition for his teaching excellence, including the Teacher of the Year award from Pi Beta Phi Sorority at the University of Tennessee in 2009 and the Faculty of the Month award from Kappa Alpha Fraternity in 2008. His scholarly contributions include editing the anthology Out of the Cold: The Cold War and Its Legacy published by Bloomsbury. Other key publications are Desegregating Urban Schools: A Causal Perspective (co-authored with David R. Morgan, 1980), Federalism and the Environment: The View from the States (co-authored with Amy Snyder McCabe and David H. Folz), Openness in Public Administration and the Politics of Environmentalism, and as editor of Intragovernmental Regulation and the Public Interest (Bureau of Public Administration, University of Tennessee, 1983). He has also served as Principal Investigator on research grants, such as Changing the Way People Vote in Knox County funded by the Tennessee Department of State ($1,000, 2008-09). Throughout his career, Fitzgerald has advised numerous doctoral dissertations as major professor, contributing to the training of the next generation of political scientists.