Douglass P. Smith
Professor of the Practice in project management at the University of Kansas, and Minister and Sunday School Superintendent at Resurrection Life Family Worship Center. Teaching, writing, and preaching on one conviction: that people should leave able to think for themselves.
Teaching
Courses Taught
Ministry
Essays
Academic & Professional
Appointments, courses, and two decades of practice before the academy.
Teaching and practiceWriting
A newsletter on faith at work, and project management taught through familiar characters.
Two bodies of workMinistry
Fifteen years across two congregations in preaching and teaching.
Credentials and serviceGod @ Work
Scripture read carefully, then brought to bear on the decisions people actually face at work.
Read & subscribeI would rather send someone out able to read a passage for themselves than send them out having admired mine.
Teaching from the practice
Dr. Smith teaches project management as someone who has run projects. Before entering the academy he served as Chief Information Officer for the Kansas Department of Agriculture and spent two decades managing technology work for clients from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies and from municipalities to the federal government. That practitioner orientation shapes how he builds courses: around exercises that put students inside real decisions rather than around coverage of a body of knowledge.
Teaching Philosophy
Effective teaching combines command of the content with the skill to convey it.
My overarching goal as an educator is to develop students who not only understand the material presented but build the skills to apply that knowledge across different situations. I design courses around exercises that emphasize critical thinking and collaboration while working through real-world issues tied to the course material, so students can use what they learn in the near term and carry it into many areas of interest.
I see the teacher as a knowledgeable guide who takes students on a journey of discovery, tailoring material to different learning styles and drawing on current events and humor to keep the work engaging. I vary my methods across cases, discussion groups, lecture, and technology to enrich the experience.
I want students to retain and relate what we discuss to the world around them, transforming into scholar-practitioners. Through a habit of active learning and applied knowledge, students form a deeper connection with the material that lasts well beyond the course.
Academic Appointments
Courses Taught
Undergraduate through doctoral, across six institutions and in face-to-face, hybrid, and fully asynchronous formats.
Professional Experience
Certifications
- Authorized Training Partner (ATP) Instructor — PMP2025
- Authorized Training Partner (ATP) Instructor — CAPM2025
- Project Management Professional (PMP) — Credential #21779302018
- SAP ERPSIM Level 1 Certification2015
- State of Kansas Certified IT Project Manager2008
Published and presented
Research spans entrepreneurship pedagogy, the history of management thought, and technology adoption in the public sector.
Selected Publications
- Muldoon, J., & Smith, D. (forthcoming). Creative Destruction; Drucker’s Seven Sources; Joseph Schumpeter (three entries). In T. Montonen & P. Eriksson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Innovation Management. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
- Vecchiarini, M., Muldoon, J., Smith, D., & Boling, R. J. (2023). Experiential Learning in an Online Setting: How Entrepreneurship Education Changed During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy.
- Muldoon, J., Deal, N. M., Smith, D., & Lakshmikanth, G. S. (2022). The Past Masters: The Impact of the Evolution of Management Thought on History. Journal of Management History.
- Smith, D., Muldoon, J., & Lakshmikanth, G. S. (2022). The Need for Modification: The Impact of COVID-19 on Pitch Competitions. Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy.
- Smith, D., & Muldoon, J. (2021). COVID-19 and Its Impact on Venture Pitching Competitions in Higher Education: A Case Study. Small Enterprise Research.
- Smith, D. P. (2016). E-Government Initiatives Case Study: New Models for Success. International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, 15(1), 21–40.
- Smith, D., Ezell, S., & Brooks, J. (2015). MOSAIC: Teaching Cultural Competence. The Advocate, 23.
- Smith, D. P. (2008). Models of Successful Adoption and Implementation for IT Projects in the Public Sector. ProQuest.
Speaking Topics
- Escalation and the Transparency Trap Why teams keep reporting green on projects that are already red, what the pressure to stay positive costs, and how a project manager raises bad news without losing standing. Drawn from ongoing research on status reporting.
- Teaching Project Management That Sticks Simulation, experiential learning, and familiar narrative as instructional design. For faculty, training teams, and anyone who has to make process content land with people who did not ask for it.
- Technology Projects in the Public Sector What separates government and agency IT projects that succeed from those that stall, from the vantage of a former state CIO. Based on doctoral research on adoption and implementation.
- Trust, Data, and the Generations Technology trust in healthcare across Generation Z and millennials, longitudinal trends in data breach metrics, and what students actually believe about institutional data collection.
- Faith in the Marketplace For congregations, men’s ministries, and professional groups. How Scripture speaks to the decisions people face at work, and what marketplace ministry asks of ordinary Christians.
Selected Engagements
Grants & Honors
- Faculty Research Grant — Emporia State University2023–2024
- Koch Center for Leadership and Ethics Grant — Emporia State UniversityFall 2015
- Innovative Teaching Grant — Emporia State UniversitySpring 2015
- Upsilon Pi Epsilon — Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines2013
Two bodies of work
A newsletter on faith in the marketplace, and an article series that teaches project management through characters everyone already knows. They come from the same instinct: take something people think they understand, and read it closely enough that it says something they did not expect.
God @ Work
For professionals who believe faith belongs in the marketplace. Scripture read carefully, then brought to bear on the decisions people actually face at work.
Read & subscribe-
Beyond the Leaders: The True Test of Organizational Legacy
3 min
Written after an anniversary celebration where every tribute named the leaders. Asks the harder question: what has the organization changed outside its own walls, and what remains once those leaders step aside?
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Location, Position, Alignment, and Direction: Lessons from the Prodigal Son
3 min
Reads the prodigal son as a framework for career decisions. The son’s first misstep was not his spending but his relocation, which reframes workplace culture as the location that shapes who you become.
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Choose This Day: The One Decision Every Leader Must Make
3 min
On Joshua’s charge at Shechem. Turns on the Hebrew verb abad, which carries “to work,” “to serve,” and “to worship” at once, so that every organization already serves something. The only question is what.
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Calm in the Chaos: Philippians 4:5–7 for the Marketplace
3 min
Philippians 4 applied to deadline pressure and relentless competition. Makes the case that gentleness, usually mistaken for weakness at work, earns more trust under stress than a combative posture does.
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Lifted or Lifting: What Four Friends on a Roof Teach Us About Marketplace Ministry
3 min
The four friends who tore through a roof in Mark 2. On the relational trust that makes the impossible reachable, and on knowing whether you are currently carrying the mat or lying on it.
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Where Are You? Rediscovering God’s Presence in the Marketplace
3 min
God’s first question in Genesis, asked in the garden its keepers were charged to tend. Argues that your field of work is that garden, and that the instinct to keep part of your working life hidden is as old as the story.
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Marketplace Ministry and Evangelism: What Comes First?
3 min
Separates two things often treated as one: living faith visibly through conduct, and speaking the gospel outright. The difference is visibility versus verbalization, and the first lays ground the second needs.
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Where Is God and Your Ministry When the Pink Slips Come?
3 min
Written for people in the middle of layoffs and dedicated to them. The most personal issue of the newsletter, naming three of the author’s own unplanned exits and what each one cost before it clarified anything.
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Welcome to the first issue of God @ Work
2 min
The name carries two meanings: placing God in the marketplace, and recognizing God already at work in a career that feels exhausting or overlooked. Opens with Joseph, who ran grain reserves in Pharaoh’s palace rather than serving in a synagogue.
Project Management Articles
Fundamentals taught through familiar characters: risk and culture, scope creep, communications, earned value, root cause, and role clarity. The premise is a hook. The content is the curriculum.
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From Donuts to Deadlines: Why Every Project Manager Lives in Springfield
4 min
Springfield read as a project team: Homer’s tolerated risks, Marge’s influence without authority, Lisa’s ignored warnings, Bart’s disruption, and Mr. Burns as the sponsor who funds the work while poisoning the culture. Argues that culture management is part of risk management.
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What Felix the Cat Knew About Project Management (Before We Had a Name for It)
5 min
Felix’s Magic Bag as an argument against methodological doctrine. The best managers tailor and blend waterfall, agile, and hybrid to the situation rather than treating one framework as scripture.
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The Surprising Project Management Wisdom of Casper the Friendly Ghost
4 min
Makes the case that emotional intelligence is a strategic skill rather than a soft one, and that sound decisions still fail when stakeholders read them through fear and misperception.
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Feathers, Fortune, and Forecasts: Tales About Earned Value and Cost Management
5 min
Uses Scrooge McDuck’s expedition funding to work through cost-benefit analysis and earned value management: what it costs, what it might return, and how you know mid-journey whether it is still worth finishing.
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Thing 1, Thing 2, and Scope Creep Too
3 min
The uninvited stakeholder who arrives with his own plan, and the goldfish nobody listens to. On identifying stakeholders early and what it costs to run a project with no risk register at all.
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What the Pink Panther Can Teach You About Project Management
2 min
Adaptability treated as a necessity rather than a luxury, with Inspector Clouseau as the cautionary tale: relentless pursuit of the goal while blind to what anyone else wants.
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What Calvin and Hobbes Can Teach Us About Project Communications
3 min
On the assumption trap of believing stakeholders already understand and want the plan, and the case for Hobbes-style listening over Calvin-style charging ahead.
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What Godzilla Can Teach Us About Project Management
3 min
Godzilla as the black swan that testing awakened: what happens when long-term risk goes unidentified, and why every stakeholder sees the same monster differently.
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What Snoopy and the Red Baron Teach Us About Project Management
3 min
Vision, preparation, and resilience, drawn from a beagle who geared up in full flight kit for every mission on a doghouse that never left the yard.
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He-Man and the Power of Role Clarity in High-Stakes Projects
3 min
Argues that projects fail from role ambiguity rather than from lack of effort. Clear ownership of decisions and deliverables is what turns a group of capable individuals into a team.
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Project Management Lessons from Snoopy: The Beagle Who Leads Without Barking
3 min
On leading without a title: holding a vision from a modest position, influence in place of authority, and setting the tone for a team you do not formally run.
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What Does Tom and Jerry Have to Do with Project Management?
1 min
Elaborate plans undone by an unpredictable stakeholder. A short piece on iteration and resilience, and on why brilliant design without risk mitigation still fails.
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The Jetsons and the Illusion of Automation
1 min
A push-button future still running on unclear expectations. More tools do not produce better results when the team is not aligned on the problem it is solving.
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Scooby-Doo and the Case of the Project Root Cause
2 min
Surface problems as disguises. On root cause analysis and asking why past the easy answer, with Velma as the model for the manager who refuses to settle for “the sprint just went bad.”
The text first, then the room
Rigor that never reaches the pew is rigor wasted.
Dr. Smith’s preparation begins with exegesis and stays there until the passage has done its own work. He reads a text in its own context and questions it in its original language before any homiletical shaping begins. Only then does he ask what it asks of us.
He also holds that faithful preaching is not the same as inaccessible preaching. The congregation is not a seminary classroom. The aim is to carry the weight of serious study into language a person can hold onto through the week.
Credentials & Ministerial Formation
Ministry Experience
- Preaches regularly to the gathered congregation, with preparation grounded in exegetical study of the passage in its original language and literary context.
- Develops Sunday School curriculum and teaching materials, including full lesson plans with supporting study guides for congregational and small-group use.
- Serves in the church’s men’s ministry, contributing to programming, teaching, and event development for the Iron Men’s Ministry.
- Served as Senior High School Sunday School teacher, carrying responsibility for curriculum, lesson plans, and activities for the high school youth.
- Led the church’s men’s ministry, outreach ministry, and justice ministry.
- Designed and built the congregation’s website as a complete multi-page web application.
Preaching & Teaching
Preaching emphasizes expository work across both testaments, with attention to narrative texts and to the pastoral questions congregations actually carry. Recent preparation has included extended exegetical treatment of the foot-washing narratives of John 12 and 13 with an accompanying congregational study guide; a comparative study of Daniel 10 and Jacob’s wrestling at the Jabbok in Genesis 32, on the difference between trusting and contending persistence in prayer; the parable sequence of Luke 15, developed for a fifteenth anniversary service; and a message weaving Exodus 33, Jeremiah 29, and John the Baptist’s question from prison around the assurance that God has not changed his mind about his people.
Teaching ministry spans adult Sunday School and small-group settings, including lesson development on the genealogy of Mary for Mother’s Day and a self-study guide preparing Sunday School faculty to use artificial intelligence tools responsibly in lesson preparation.
Resource & Program Development
Degrees and community
Education
Community & Justice Ministry
Work together
Five distinct things, and people usually arrive looking for one of them.
Certification training
Authorized Training Partner instructor for both the PMP and CAPM exams, delivered to teams or open cohorts.
InquireCurriculum & course design
Twenty years building courses for adult learners in Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle, aligned to PMI, ITIL, Agile, and cybersecurity standards.
InquireSpeaking & professional development
Conference sessions and workshops on project leadership, risk, analytics, and technology in practice.
InquireDoctoral committees & research mentoring
Dissertation committee service in cybersecurity, project management, information systems, and business analytics.
InquirePreaching & teaching ministry
Pulpit ministry, men’s conferences, and Sunday School curriculum and teacher development.
InquireMedia Kit
Copy-ready bios for programs, introductions, and event listings. In programs: Dr. Douglass P. Smith. In citations: Smith, D. P.
Douglass P. Smith, Ph.D., PMP, is Professor of the Practice in project management at the University of Kansas and a licensed minister in Kansas City, Kansas.
Douglass P. Smith, Ph.D., PMP, is Professor of the Practice in project management at the University of Kansas, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and designs curriculum. A former Chief Information Officer for the Kansas Department of Agriculture, he spent two decades running technology projects before entering the academy. He is also a licensed minister and Sunday School Superintendent at Resurrection Life Family Worship Center.
Douglass P. Smith, Ph.D., PMP, is Professor of the Practice in project management at the University of Kansas. He previously spent twelve years on the faculty at Emporia State University, rising to tenured associate professor, and has taught graduate courses for institutions including Cornell, the University of Virginia, and Colorado State University Global. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences, an M.B.A., and a Master of Project Management, and is an Authorized Training Partner instructor for the PMP and CAPM exams. Before entering the academy he served as Chief Information Officer for the Kansas Department of Agriculture and managed technology projects across the public and private sectors. He is also a licensed minister and Sunday School Superintendent at Resurrection Life Family Worship Center in Kansas City, Kansas, and writes God @ Work, a newsletter on faith in the marketplace.