Assistant Professor
Ph.D. Virginia Commonwealth University, 1998
Fields: Public administration/public policy, public budgeting, political economy, comparative budgeting and tax systems, state and local taxation and economic developing financing.
Professor Beckett-Camarata teaches in the doctoral program in public policy and the masters program in public administration. Her research interests include tax policy, forecasting, comparative budgeting and tax systems, economic development financing, intergovernmental fiscal relations, government capacity building, measuring government financial performance, e-government finance and using critical thinking in distance learning.
Her most research research has focused on changes in local government pension fund assets during fiscal crises, revenue forecasting accuracy, e-government finance in China and comparative budgeting and taxation. Professor Beckett-Camarata's research has appeared in the Journal of Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, International Journal of Public Administration, the Municipal Finance Journal and American Review of Public Administration. As a former Chief Financial Officer in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Dr. Beckett-Camarata managed operating and capital budgets, financial accounting, managerial accounting, revenue forecasting and was instrumental in integrating the strategic plan and the budget and establishing financial performance measures.
Professor Beckett-Camarata's teaching interests include Regulatory Policy, Political Economy, Capital Budgeting and Infrastructure Finance, Economic Development Finance, Budgeting and Taxation, Financial Management, Financial Analysis, State and Local Public Finance, Managerial Accounting, and Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations. She has facilitated training sessions for state and local governments in economic development financing, capital budgeting and strategic planning and performance budgeting. She has participated in faculty exchanges with Tver, Volgograd and Voronezh Universities in Russia and has lectured and conducted research in Seoul, South Korea on E-budgeting and comparative taxation.
Professor Beckett-Camarata serves as an expert witness in the area of public budgeting and financial management, is an expert reviewer for the Annual GFOA Budget Award and consults with the Governmental Accounting Standards Board. She is a member of the NASPAA Commission on Peer Review and Accreditation (COPRA), is active in the American Society for Public Administration and serves on the National Council. Jane serves as Co-Chair (with John Bartle) of the ASPA Finance Committee. She is on the Board of Directors of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management and Chairs the ASPA Section on Public Affairs Education.
In addition, she chairs the Kent State University Teaching Council and is a member of the Kent State University Faculty Senate Budget Committee. She is also active in a variety of organizations such as the Government Finance Officers Association, Kent Rotary, Academy of Management, Public and Non-Profit Section and Cleveland Association of Business Economists.
She has traveled extensively in England, Ireland, Wales and France. She has conducted research at the University of Wales, Bangor, on the European Community and its impact on the United States economy. Professor Beckett-Camarata also taught and conducted research at three universities in Russia through a Kent State University Faculty Exchange/U.S. Agency for International Development Grant in Summer, 2002 and Summer 2003. She has recently been selected as a Fulbright Scholar and will spend six months at Kharkiv National University in Kharkiv Ukraine in Spring 2006, teaching and conducting research on the Ukraine budget and tax system. She was selected as a member of the ASPA delegation at the KAPA Conference in Seoul South Korea in 2001 and 2002. Jane was also selected as a member of the 2005 ASPA Chinese delegation and will present a paper on E-Government Finance in China at Cheng du University and conduct a workshop on Teaching with Cases at Xiamen University. Dr. Beckett-Camarata recently won the Baruch College, CUNY distinguished Municipal Leadership and Finance Award, which funded her 2005 summer research on changes in New York City's pension fund assets during fiscal crises.e-mail: jbecket1@kent.edu