Terry L. Cooper is The Maria B. Crutcher Professor in Citizenship and Democratic Values (Social Ethics) at the University of Southern California (USC). His research centers on citizen participation and public ethics. He is one of the coprincipal investigators in the USC Neighborhood Participation Project (NPP), conducting research on the role of neighborhood organizations in governance in the City of Los Angeles through the system of neighborhood councils established in 1999. Also, he is the director of the USC Civic Engagement Initiative, which is expanding the work of the NPP beyond neighborhood councils and beyond Los Angeles.
Cooper is the author of The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role (4th ed., 1998) and An Ethic of Citizenship for Public Administration (1991). He is the coeditor of Exemplary Public Administrators: Character and Leadership in Government (1992) and the editor of Handbook of Administrative Ethics (2nd ed., 2001). His articles have appeared in Public Administration Review, Administration and Society, International Review of Administrative Sciences, International Journal of Public Administration, Administrative Theory and Praxis, International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, Public Budgeting and Finance, and The Bureaucrat. He is a past member of the editorial boards of Public Administration Review and Administrative Theory and Praxis and currently serves on the editorial board of The American Review of Public Administration. Cooper is the editor of the Exemplar Profile series in the journal Public Integrity.
Cooper has previously served as chair of the Section on Ethics of the American Society for Public Administration. He has conducted ethics training for many professional groups at different levels of government around the United States and in several other countries.