Profile

Dr. Daniel Stephens is a Senior Lecturer, primarily teaching an array of undergraduate and graduate courses at UCF Downtown and online. Complementing his teaching responsibilities, he mentors honors students through the Burnett Honors College’s Honors Undergraduate Thesis program, serves as faculty advisor to various student organizations, organizes and leads the annual university-sanctioned trek to Tallahassee during each year’s legislative session, is President-Elect of Central Florida ASPA, and is an honorary member of Pi Alpha Alpha. Furthermore, he currently serves as chair to the UCF Faculty Senate’s Graduate Appeals Committee. Having earned his Ph.D. in Public Affairs from UCF in 2018, Dr. Stephens has continued studying the behavior of roadway users with a particular interest in active (i.e. human-powered) commuters, and more recently, with micro-mobility devices and general traveler behavior. Given that his doctoral dissertation examines the effect of the thematic elements found in mass media on the perceived self-efficacy of pedestrians, he continued this work through his service to Metroplan Orlando as a regional appointee, advocating on behalf of vulnerable roadway users and historically excluded communities across the tri-county region for seventeen years. Prior to working in academia, Dr. Stephens worked for nearly five years in local government as an urban planner and nearly nineteen years before in the private sector, having founded the international freight forwarding company AutoShippers.com. He now parlays that same entrepreneurial expertise into producing Open Educational Resources via his production company, PlannerDanner Productions.

• Transportation policy, with an emphasis on
  • vulnerable road users
  • the adverse impacts of highways
  • the positive externalities of New Urbanist communities

• Ph.D. Public Affairs, University of Central Florida
• Master of Public Administration, University of Central Florida
  • Specializations: Urban planning and transportation policy
• Graduate Certificate Nonprofit Management, University of Central Florida
• Bachelor of Arts, Public Administration, University of Central Florida
  • Minor fields of study: Political Science and Urban/Regional Planning

While my commitment to the University of Central Florida expects that I split my efforts as 90% of my energies towards teaching and 10% to service, a quick review of my Curriculum Vitae reveals that I dedicate considerably more time in public service than is required. I am a public servant at heart and proudly wear the badge. Whether it involves working with public school children during the Orange County Public Schools "Teach In" Day or leading an organization that seeks to bring practitioners and academics from nearly 70 universities across the southeastern United States to UCF Downtown, I give my all in equal proportions. My service spans the gamut of organizations catering to a variety of fields: academia, the local community, and the planning profession. I am comfortable leading or following and do both regularly. Were I to identify a core service philosophy that guides me it would have to be that I lead by example. I get my hands dirty and help others to realize the reward of the same.

• UCF Faculty Senate – Graduate Appeals Committee (*chair)
• UCF Mobility 2030 strategic initiative
• American Society for Public Administration, Central Florida chapter (*President-Elect)
• Community Alliance for Education (*founding member)
• Community Traffic Safety Team (Orange and Osceola counties (*chair of Osceola's))
• Congress for the New Urbanism (*Chair of Executive Committee for state-wide 2023 summit)
• Downtown South Orlando Design Committee (bike rack promotion)
• Evaluation and Appraisal Report & public participation component for Kenneth City, FL (2024)
• Evaluation and Appraisal Report & public participation component for Sarasota County, FL (2012)
• MetroPlan Orlando (17 years of service, including as chair of numerous committees)

• Teaching Incentive Program award for the UCF College of Community Innovation and Education (2025-26)
• Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for the UCF College of Community Innovation and Education (2025-26)

• PAD3003: Public Administration in American Society
  This course is an introduction serving as a foundational course for the public administration discipline. It provides students with a basic understanding of the political, organizational, administrative, managerial, and cultural environment in which the public administrator functions, as well as providing the historical framework that has shaped the field. It examines the foundation and application of modern public administration theory and practice. (Offered fall and spring)
• PAD4034: Administration of Public Policy
  The objective of this course is to stimulate independent and critical thinking about process of public policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. This course is designed to provide the conceptual foundations, practical approaches, and analytical techniques to public policy analysis and management. In this class we will look into how public policy is made, what roles stakeholders play in policy formulation and implementation, and what impacts public policy can produce. Students are expected to understand the political context of policy analysis and conduct policy analysis. Students will learn the analysis tools to critically assess and communicate policy‐relevant information to stakeholders and decision‐makers. (Offered fall and spring)
• PAD4104: Administrative Theory
  Administrative Theory offers an overview of some of the major theories pertaining to leading and managing organizations, and an introduction to the theorists who formally studied and developed those ideas. It provides a review of the behavioral aspects of the administrative process, its impact on organizational goal achievement, and on supervisory strategies. It also focuses on many aspects of human behavior such as fostering creativity, managing stress, decision making, motivating yourself and others, leadership, power and organizational politics, communicating effectively, managing conflict, working in groups, and organizational change. The benefits of diversity in the workforce are also examined. Lastly, the curriculum helps students learn how behavior affects the administrative process, and the processes’ impact on organizational goal achievement and on supervisory strategies.
• PAD4204: Fiscal Management
  This course has been designed to provide an overview of fiscal management in the public and, to a lesser extent, nonprofit sectors. It offers an analysis of methods of securing public funds, the process of budget making, and the techniques used in managing public funds. Subsequently the primary topics to be covered pertain to accounting, budgeting, purchasing, risk management, cash management, and debt management. Students will learn about the creation of funds and accounts, and the types and sources of revenue. Intergovernmental relations will be discussed, as will Government-in-the-Sunshine and Public Meeting laws, particularly noting the ethical implications of public acts. The benefits of diversity in the workforce are also examined. Lastly, the concepts of “best practices”, market failures, and the measures of efficiency, effectiveness, and equity will be explored throughout the semester as to their relevance to fiscal management. It should be noted that this course does not, as an objective, cover fiscal management techniques that are unique to the federal government, the State of Florida, school boards, airports, seaports, hospitals, and special purpose districts such as water management districts, community development districts or municipal utilities: Its focus on local general purpose governmental units provides many of the principles used by these special purpose districts. (Offered fall and spring)
• PAD4414: Human Resource Administration
  This undergraduate course is designed to introduce students to the concepts, functions, and legal foundations of public personnel administration in public and nonprofit organizations. Students learn about internal and external factors that impact the effectiveness of human resource personnel. Topics discussed include strategic planning, diversity management, employee relations, collective bargaining, and performance management. Readings and case studies provide students with real-world application to contemporary human resource considerations. (Offered fall and spring)
• PAD4822: Intergovernmental Administration
  Intergovernmental Administration examines and explains the United States intergovernmental system, with an emphasis on federalism and inter-organizational activities. The course considers how the responsibility for addressing certain policy issues is or should be assigned to different levels of government and how these distributions of coordinate or overlapping functions work out in practice. It also evaluates the fundamentals of intergovernmental administration from a legal, political, fiscal, and administrative perspective by reflecting on current topics in local, state, and federal politics. (Offered fall and spring)
• PAD6035: Public Administration in Policy Process
  The objective of this course is to stimulate independent and critical thinking about process of public policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. This course is designed to provide the conceptual foundations, practical approaches, and analytical techniques to public policy analysis and management. In this class we will look into how public policy is made, what roles stakeholders play in policy formulation and implementation, and what impacts public policy can produce. Students are expected to understand the political context of policy analysis and conduct policy analysis. Students will learn the analysis tools to critically assess and communicate policy‐relevant information to stakeholders and decision‐makers. (Offered fall and spring)
• PAD6053: Public Administration in the Governance Process
  This course serves as a foundational course for the public administration discipline. It provides students with a basic understanding of the political, organizational, administrative, managerial, and cultural environment in which the public administrator functions, as well as providing the historical framework that has shaped the field. It examines the political, social, economic, and moral context of modern public administration, with special attention to the ethical dimensions of the administrator’s role. In addition, this course provides an overview of the key individuals, ideas, theories, concepts, methods, and tools that have helped to define the discipline of public administration from its founding to the present day. (Offered fall and spring)
• PAD6335: Strategic Planning and Management
  Strategic Planning and Management is a UCF sanctioned High-Impact Practice service-learning class that functions as an examination and analysis of planning, goal setting, and strategic management in public sector organizations. Students will spend a minimum of fifteen hours over the course of the semester on a service-learning activity. This activity will address a need in the community, support the course objectives, involve a connection between the campus and the world around it, challenge students to be civically engaged, and involve structured student reflection. The class will spend time reflecting on the service-learning experience through class conversations and the generation of a short reflection paper, required at the end of the semester. While there is a required 15-hour minimum volunteer component, the service-learning efforts (i.e., the creation of a strategic plan) will be the core of much of the learning in the course. (Offered summer, fall, and spring)
• *Undergraduate and graduate directed independent studies
  Over the course of the semester, the student, in consultation with the Thesis Chair will develop a research design / thesis roadmap and initiate bibliographic research or creative scholarship on their topic of interest. Students are expected to work on the proposal throughout the one or more semester(s). Students must assemble a thesis committee and then submit a completed draft of the thesis proposal to the committee at least two weeks before the proposal is due to the Office of Honors Research (OHR). Once the student and the Thesis Chair agree the proposal is ready to be distributed to the committee, students are responsible for sending the proposal to the committee for review and approval. (Offered summer, fall, and spring)

NOTE: I teach all of the above via Mixed-Mode or online modalities

• Transportation
• Public Policy
• Urban & Regional Planning