Return to Decades of Research.

Being the sixth of eight children may have helped prepare Jane Dockery for her job as associate director of the Center for Urban and Public Affairs (CUPA). "Learning how to get along with people was instilled in me at an early age," she said.

CUPA's mission is to help individuals, organizations, and communities solve problems, primarily by providing information and data analysis to inform strategic decisions. Much of its work is in economic development, community development, and resource development focusing on topics such as industry trends, housing, and health.

In the mid 1990s, CUPA implemented a new organizational structure. Instead of several research associates supporting a principal investigator, the new model made the research associates responsible for building their own research niche and obtaining funding to support their research.

As associate director of CUPA, Dockery, an M.B.A., functions as the chief operating officer. The organization moved from a traditional hierarchical design to a work team approach. The results were dramatic.

"We spread leadership responsibility across a lot of people," said Dockery. "The result added depth and breadth and instead of conducting eight projects at a time, we now conduct 25 or 30 projects at a time. CUPA is very dynamic."

In the early 1990s, CUPA conducted industry wage and benefit surveys for employers in the region. What began as surveys to learn what people earned evolved into surveys to help employers determine how to do more with less, and what skill sets employers and employees would need. Along with the raw data, employers wanted to know what the data meant and what the community should be doing in response to the data. CUPA became more than an information provider, as communities and organizations required CUPA to help them interpret and apply data to decision making.

"After I had spent several years gathering data and people saw the quality of the data and what you could do with information, they started to see me as an information expert who also had strategic planning skills," said Dockery. "My evolution kind of walked alongside CUPA's evolution."

CUPA's health research took off during the 1990s, and it continues today. For its nine-county health care survey, CUPA worked with nine different health districts and the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association. The survey analyzed health trends and then helped the communities interpret the results. CUPA interviewed 4,000 people and worked with 219 different agencies to develop nine county-level strategic plans and a regional strategic plan.

Dockery proposed an 18-month timeline to complete the work, but in the end had only 16 months. Nevertheless, the work was completed on time. Such a comprehensive survey had never been attempted in the region. A key result was that the ability and visibility of health districts to influence community health was elevated. "Just getting people to the table where they were sharing ideas made a big difference," she said. "Several of the county health districts began to work together to a greater degree than before the project. For example, they proposed collaborative grant proposals to the Ohio Department of Health. That paved the way for them to work very effectively together when Wright State instituted the new Master's in Public Health (MPH) program."

Dockery and CUPA staff are recognized as information experts and strategic planning experts in economic development. Dockery is working with several economic development and workforce organizations and committees that are addressing the economic transition affecting the Dayton region and other regions in Ohio.

The level and complexity of projects continue to increase. The number of research sponsors, collaborators, and topics are growing, as are the expectations for high-level analytical techniques and quick project turnarounds.

Dockery and Jack Dustin, Ph.D., chair and associate professor of urban affairs and geography and CUPA director, directed a statewide research effort entitled The State of Ohio's Urban Regions. The project addressed nine urban topics, including land use issues, health care access, educational divides, economic development, and more. Nine research teams worked at eight different universities, culminating in a statewide forum with the Governor.

"To me, this job is amazing," she said.