Patricia Shields is a Regents' Professor and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Texas State University. She served as Editor-in-Chief to Armed Forces and Society, the leading peer reviewed journal on civil-military relations for 24 years (2001 - 2025). She is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
She received her BA in Economics from the University of Maryland College Park (1973). She further pursued her study in Economics at Ohio State University by earning a Masters of Arts (1975) and finished her educational pursuit with a Ph.D. in Public Administration (1977). She began teaching at Texas State in1978 and received tenure in 1984. Since her Texas State career began, she has received many awards for excellence in teaching such as the National Association for Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, Leslie A Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award (2002), The Texas State Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching (2001), the Texas State Faculty Senate, Everette Swinney Teaching Award (2010) as well as the Professor of the Year Award from the Central Texas Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration (2006). She has taught 10 graduate and undergraduate courses including statistics, public finance, public policy, public sector economics and research methods.
Currently she focuses on the MPA Program capstone process and has supervised over 300 Applied Research Projects, many of which have won national and regional awards. She has published over 50 articles and book chapters in subjects such as public pricing, cut back management, privatization, the sunset review process, military recruitment, conscription, women in the military, military families, expeditionary and peacekeeping forces and military bureaucracies. Recently she has focused on applying the philosophy of pragmatism to public administration and research methods in public administration. She has also published (with Nandhini Rangarajan) A Playbook for Research Methods and three editions of Step by Step: Building a Research Paper, a system, which transforms writing a research paper into managing a project. In 1984 she won the Texas State Presidential Seminar research award and in 2007 she won the Public Administration Review Laverne Burchfield Award for the best review essay. In addition, professionally, she serves on the Editorial Board for Administration & Society and the Journal of Public Affairs Education.