When Lea Metz applied to the Clinton School of Public Service “in secret” in 2020, she was a consultant based in North Carolina looking for a way to grow her business. She certainly wasn’t planning on getting a doctoral degree, moving to Little Rock, or becoming a professional staff member at the school. Yet her life has changed in many unexpected and incredible ways since hitting the apply button.
She is now Dr. Metz. Her graduation from Fielding Graduate University with a Ph.D. in Organizational Development and Change caps off a five-year, nonstop academic journey that began the same day the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
“This was not ever a dream I ever conceptualized of having,” said Metz, who works as the Clinton School’s student success coordinator. “Even getting a master’s degree was not something I even considered at first.”
The Pandemic Pivot
Metz began her Master of Public Service program in March 2020. She had previously heard of the program often through her wife’s uncle, Bob Gee, who has been a volunteer at the Clinton School opened.
“I secretly applied to the online program because I didn’t want U-Bob, which is short for Uncle Bob, to be disappointed if I didn’t get in,” Metz said. “He was mad at first that I didn’t tell him, but he got over him when I got in.”
That same day she started her graduate classes, her consulting business lost seven contracts due to the unfolding crisis of COVID-19.
“It was a wild time back then,” Metz recalled. “As my wife said, when I was falling apart and losing all this work, she told me to make school my new job. That is in essence what I did.”
The commitment paid off in unexpected ways. For her Capstone, she worked with faculty advisor, Professor Emeritus Susan Hoffpauir, on an evaluation of the Clinton School’s Online MPS program. This unintentionally laid the groundwork for her future role. About a year after she graduated, Dean Victoria DeFrancesco Soto asked if she wanted to join the staff in a newly created role focused on student success.
“When I was doing my Capstone project, I didn’t know that it would morph into this,” she said. “It’s taken a serendipitous turn.”
Metz now serves as the student success coordinator, where she coaches students, works with faculty members to connect students to services, and teaches courses like Organizational Development and Systems Change and Foundations of Public Service.
Project Managing a Doctorate
Metz didn’t even take a break between her graduate programs. Her Ph.D. orientation began the day after she received her master’s diploma from the Clinton School.
To manage a full-time job, consulting business, and a doctoral program simultaneously, Metz applied her professional skillset.
“Having consulted for a long time, a lot of my work is project management, so I really project managed my degree,” she said. “It’s how I work in general and how I live.”
Metz’s dissertation, “Post-Traumatic Growth and Ego Development: A Developmental Perspective on the Therapeutic Process,” explored how therapists help clients navigate and transform after trauma. The research focused on distinguishing between healing (a return to baseline) and growth (the emergence of new wisdom and capacity).
“I am really looking for what therapists see and how they adapt their therapeutic modalities for the capacities of their clients,” Metz said.
Her dissertation included interviews with 11 developmentally aware therapists. She plans to continue this work by creating a graphic novel to share her research with a wider public.
For the newly minted Dr. Metz, the dissertation is more than an academic achievement. It’s a powerful tool she brings into her job every day. Her Ph.D. helps her to teach, coach, and support students with a research-based framework, ensuring that the Clinton School is equipped to support students in public service education.