Describing a strategic vision for an institution as complex and diverse as the Maxwell School is a significant challenge. Maxwell contains many “moving parts,” and each department and research center has its own internal dynamic and intellectual agenda. I have spent the last nine months learning about the School’s needs and challenges, and that educational process is far from completed. I do believe, however, that I am now sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to share my initial impressions and to articulate a preliminary set of goals and objectives, i.e., a strategic vision, for my tenure as the eighth Maxwell Dean. Of necessity, this vision will continue to evolve as my knowledge becomes more fine-grained, and it is conceivable (perhaps even likely) that I may choose subsequently to modify some goals or to re-prioritize them. I offer a view of my plans and priorities under six major rubrics: (1) academic departments and initiatives; (2) sponsored research and programs; (3) fundraising; (4) outreach and policy engagement; (5) image and public relations; and (6) potential new Maxwell initiatives. Some of the specific objectives I describe can be accomplished by the Maxwell Dean’s Office. But the majority of the ideas, of necessity, will require that the Maxwell community lend its considerable intellectual talents to their successful pursuit.

Academic Departments and Initiatives

I have indicated from the earliest days of my tenure that, as an alumnus of the Maxwell Public Administration department but also as the holder of Masters and Ph.D. degrees in political science, I have a strong interest in and responsibility to strive to improve the quality of all academic departments in the School. At the same time, I want to acknowledge explicitly that we have in play within the School three competing spheres of academic interest: undergraduate social science education, graduate education in the social science disciplines, and the professional graduate degree programs (and it could be argued that the mid-career programs under Executive Education represent yet a fourth sphere). Clearly, there are tensions and complexities associated with the inter-play of these interests, in part stemming from the fact that there are differences in quality and in the level of available resources. This is the current reality, but there is no reason that the situation necessarily needs to remain this way. We can—and, I believe, we must—strive to “raise all ships,” even if progress is episodic and proceeds at differential rates among departments.

Undergraduate Education: Some of our best and brightest students, and most loyal alumni/ae come from our former undergraduate students. Many of those on our Advisory Board, as well as a number of University trustees, were Maxwell undergraduate majors. They remember fondly their former professors—names like Eggers, Ketcham, Fisher and Sawyer, to name only a few of those who have captured the imaginations of many hundreds of young people. Undoubtedly, many of those in our current faculty ranks have made similar impressions on recent or current undergraduates. The Maxwell faculty has a longstanding and well deserved reputation for strong undergraduate education.

I will continue to emphasize the undergraduate mission. In this connection, Maxwell will be a full partner in the efforts currently underway university-wide to improve undergraduate retention. I support the effort to make—and keep—Syracuse University an attractive place for quality undergraduate education. Given that we are likely to remain a tuition-driven institution for the foreseeable future, we can not afford to undervalue the importance of this effort.

The inter-disciplinary MAX courses are now very popular with students. I see these courses as a way to draw undergraduates closer to the Maxwell School and to give them an enduring identity with the School. This is an extremely important retention device, because student identity through innovative, interdisciplinary, “gateway” courses is very important to making people feel a greater affinity with the School and the University. Such cross-disciplinary courses are a growing trend in undergraduate curricula nation-wide. Accordingly, I will give high priority to keeping the MAX courses at full enrollment, and I will seek ways to encourage and incentivize new faculty to develop and offer such courses.

Political Science is the second most popular undergraduate major in the College of Arts & Sciences, and other Maxwell departments also attract a substantial number of undergraduate major commitments. At the same time, however, some Maxwell departments lag well behind in terms of undergraduate enrollments. I am convinced that if we can do a better job “marketing” these disciplines, and the career tracks they lead to, we will see a significant jump in enrollments (and retention). Working cooperatively on this matter with the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, I intend to encourage department chairs with low undergraduate enrollments to lay out a specific plan of action and to set specific performance benchmarks for increasing the number of majors.

Moreover, I plan actively to seek ways to encourage undergraduates to develop a deeper loyalty to the Maxwell School and to take pride in its prestigious national position. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that many—perhaps most—undergraduate social science majors do not even realize that their chosen department is located within the nation’s #1 ranked school of public affairs. Thus, in addition to helping to improve the intellectual environment for undergraduates and attracting more majors, I believe we should do more to encourage undergraduate majors to feel connected to the School. One way to accomplish this is by implementing the strengthened departmental honors programs that are on the drawing boards. While this and other “affinity-building” efforts will require the identification of additional resources, such programs will greatly expand the engagement of the best undergraduates in the intellectual life of the Maxwell School.

Graduate Education: There is substantial variation in the quality—and, hence, the national ranking—of the graduate programs in the seven major degree-granting disciplines represented in the Maxwell School. It is evident that this is a source of considerable consternation for the affected faculty and for the University’s leadership. Clearly, the dual challenge is to continue to improve the current quality and standing of our highly ranked departments while addressing, within the limits of our available and projected resources, the shortcomings of those departments that are not as highly rated. This problem has been well recognized for many years, and my able predecessor took initial steps to address it. I believe, however, that a more systematic approach may now be warranted.

Presently, all of our academic departments offering the doctorate can point to successes in their programs. Our students have earned dissertation prizes, post-doctoral awards, and most have obtained good professional placements. Given the size of our faculty and the mission of the School, I hope to move more of our doctoral programs into the top echelons of peer institutions nationwide, while continuing to make steady, incremental improvements in others. We can accomplish this through continued, strong faculty hiring (which is currently being aided by the funding “ crisis” in the public universities), more focused curricula, and greater efforts to recruit the top graduate students.

A few of the Maxwell academic departments already have begun to think more strategically about the scope and nature of their graduate degree offerings. I would like to see this planning process extended, however, to all Maxwell departments. My initial impression is that we still may be attempting to offer too broad a menu of academic sub-fields at the Ph.D. level. Because we must constantly struggle to make due with insufficient resources, there is a serious discussion to be had about whether a narrower focus would be beneficial with regard to such matters as the quality of the graduate training, the ability of departments to attract high caliber graduate students, and the retention of high performing faculty (and the latter is clearly linked to the former). Unless they have already done so, I will urge that the disciplinary departments take up these questions as part of their strategic planning discussion.

While there neither can nor should be a “one size fits all” approach, it also would seem useful as part of such a planning process for each department periodically to seek an independent, outside assessment of the quality, scope and direction of its graduate program. This effort also would be compatible with the stated goal of the Dean of the Graduate School to undertake outside assessments over the next few years for all of the graduate degree-granting departments at the University.

More graduate student support clearly will be necessary to improve the ranking of our graduate departments. We previously have relied to a great degree on hard money provided from University resources. But if our goal is to develop graduate programs with small class sizes and highly individualized faculty attention, we must increase our efforts to identify externally funded research grants that can help to support graduate students. I believe that external fundraising and the successful pursuit of additional research grants will be essential to our efforts to raise the quality of our graduate degree programs, and I will return to this subject later.

Professional Graduate Programs: Much of our national and international reputation stems from our consistent #1 ranking among graduate professional schools of public affairs. The welcome news that the new U.S. News & World Report poll has awarded us sole possession of the top position is an enormous boost to our national and international prestige. The legions of professionals that have been trained in the Maxwell Public Administration (PA) department over the last 80 years have gone on to become loyal alumni/ae (i.e., the “Maxwell mafia”) and have helped to solidify our standing among the leading graduate schools of public administration and public policy. The mission of PA department remains critical to Maxwell’s future success, and maintaining the superior quality of that program will remain a high priority.

In the next five years, the International Relations (IR) program must seek to strengthen its standing in comparison to its peer competitors and strive to attain the visibility and prestige currently enjoyed by the PA department. Student demand for the IR program continues to increase, and it has become an increasingly visible element of the Maxwell School’s professional education programs, both in the United States and abroad. Yet, unlike Public Administration, it currently does not have departmental status, and therefore it must rely almost entirely on courses offered in the disciplinary departments to provide an adequate range of academic opportunities to suit its very diverse student audience. In an ideal world, we would transform the IR program into the eighth Maxwell disciplinary department—and this may be the right solution in the long run. But, for the short-to-medium term future, we must take account of the large (and likely, prohibitive) budgetary commitment that this would require in terms of new faculty lines, and so on. I have established an IR taskforce, which is chaired by Senior Associate Dean Michael Wasylenko, and have asked the group to examine how to advance the mission of the program in the coming years. Closer integration of the program with the disciplinary departments, faculty hires made explicitly to support IR students, and greater use of combined M.A. degrees in key departments are likely to be necessary if we are to enhance the Program’s standing and to enrich the experience of its graduate students.

New Academic Initiative: As I joined the Maxwell School, I perceived a fairly urgent need to enhance and deepen our faculty capability in the national and
international security policy area. This has been something of a “hit or miss” proposition for Maxwell over the past few decades (depending in large measure on the level of faculty interest), and national security generally has not been one of the major strengths of the School. Yet, given our success in winning and retaining the DoD National Security Studies program, the known strengths of our most significant institutional competitors, and the apparent new student demand created, in part, by the post-9/11 concerns about homeland security and the war in Iraq, it is now more important than ever that we have credible and substantial, internal expertise academic capability in this essential policy area.

By strengthening substantially our faculty expertise, we will able to provide a broader array of course offerings, which will respond to the demand articulated by many graduate students in political science, public administration and international relations, as well as many outside of the Maxwell School. Moreover, I intend that we put in place, before the end of the 2004-05 academic year, a new academic concentration in national/international security policy with a Certificate of Advanced Study in this area. Finally, we will continue to pursue funding for and to develop research, policy conferences and additional training opportunities in the field of national/international security.

Sponsored Research Activities

The Maxwell School has the great good fortune to have a highly capable and intellectually active faculty who are pursuing important research agendas on both domestic and international issues. Indeed, my initial impression as I begin my tenure as dean is that the volume of externally supported research underway in the School is substantially below what one would expect in faculty of such quality. This represents an important missed opportunity not only to advance the academic reputation and national/international image of the School, but also to generate additional resources that can help provide badly needed summer support for graduate students and flexible funds that can be used to generate still other projects in the future. An examination of the data regarding sponsored research (by which I mean externally supported research from both public and private sources) over the past five years indicates a fairly alarming decline, from a high of $7.2 million in FY 1999 to $5.3 million in FY 2003. While there are some extenuating, explanatory factors, and while the situation varies from one research center to another, the fact of the matter is that we, as a School, can and should be doing much better than we are. Indeed, I believe that our current level of external support should be closer to $10 million, and probably a good deal higher.

It will be my goal, therefore, to double the current volume of sponsored research within the next three years and to strive towards tripling the School’s external support within five to six years. I truly believe that these goals are both reasonable and attainable and that the former, in particular, can be readily achieved with only modest additional faculty effort. To promote the chances of accomplishing these goals, I have appointed Professor Timothy Smeeding to the newly created role of Associate Dean for Sponsored Research (ADSR). I have asked Professor Smeeding to offer the benefit of his considerable experience with successful grant seeking to help faculty colleagues who wish to become more entrepreneurial and/or to seek larger amounts of outside support. In addition, we have established a new position within the Dean’s Office for a professional grant researcher/writer. This individual will be available to any Maxwell faculty member who would like assistance in identifying the most potentially applicable sources of external support from both private and public sources and/or in preparing a proposal that is organized and written in a style that maximizes the likelihood of success.

Clearly, we should not pursue a goal of expanding external research support simply for its own sake (even though the additional funds can have a most salutary effect regarding other needs within the School). But, for this effort to succeed, each of the major research elements within the School must have systematically thought through its research agendas and developed a strategic plan. This is not, at present, universally the case. Thus, I intend to work with the directors of the School’s institutes, centers and programs that have not already done so to develop strategic plans and specific programs of action. There is in my judgment, and in the view of many with whom I have consulted in the last nine months, substantial room to expand and, at the same time, bring greater focus to the activities of a number of the existing Maxwell research elements.

Fundraising

Beyond increasing sponsored research, it is clear that one of Maxwell’s (and, therefore, one of my) greatest challenges is to increase substantially the size of the School’s endowment and available programmatic resources. Despite the great success of the previous campaign, which resulted in the construction of the magnificent Eggers Hall, the Maxwell endowment currently is in the vicinity of $43 million—this as compared to the endowments of two of its leading competitors, the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University, which each have endowments in the vicinity of $600 million. Considering these comparisons, it is, as I have said repeatedly since my arrival, nothing short of remarkable that Maxwell is ranked as the #1 graduate school of public affairs in the nation! Indeed, given the fundraising capabilities of these competitors, we will need to work extremely hard simply in order to maintain the current endowment differential.

Despite the daunting nature of this task, I am very upbeat about our prospects. For one thing, we have a capable and experienced development team in Associate Dean for Development Gary Livent and his colleague, Linda Birnbaum. We have already been hard at work on plans for how we are going to achieve the highly ambitious goals that are being established for the Maxwell School in the University’s upcoming fundraising campaign. A second positive factor is the important “leg up” that we will achieve if the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs receives the remaining half of the promised $10 million endowment from the U.S. Congress. At the same time, we will be striving during the upcoming campaign have plans to seek private funding to support the creation additional endowed chairs and named professorships in a number of Maxwell departments.

To state it plainly, if Maxwell is to remain fully competitive and highly selective for graduate education, it must retain the services of its best faculty. Yet, these are the very individuals who are frequently the targets of attractive job offers from other universities; and some of these offers are sufficiently robust that Maxwell has difficulty making a successful counter-offer, even with the support of the Vice Chancellor’s office. Clearly, we must identify additional resources to support the creation of named professorships—and, ideally, additional endowed chairs—for our most prestigious and accomplished faculty. We also need an internal fund, which can augment resources made available by the Vice Chancellor through the Strategic Faculty Development Fund, that the School can use each year to increase the salaries of key individuals before they become targets for “cherry picking” by other universities. I intend to make these objectives a priority in the upcoming campaign.

A second major priority necessarily must be to address the School’s looming space problem. It seems difficult to believe that, barely a decade after its completion, Eggers Hall is already full to capacity. Yet, the reality is that Senior Associate Dean Wasylenko was forced last summer to begin dividing up small conference rooms in Eggers to provide additional space for faculty offices. It is, of course, an indicator of the success of our programs that the size of the faculty and staff continues to grow. But the space problem—in particular, the lack of an adequate number of large teaching spaces and an insufficient number of offices for new faculty—is beginning to become a serious limiting factor, especially with regard to further expansion of our Executive Education program. This, in turn, constrains our ability to further expand the internationalization of the School (i.e., by limiting the number and frequency of outside groups that we can bring to campus), which also places limits on the volume of resources that Executive Education can generate for the School.

Thus, one of the major goals of the upcoming Maxwell capital campaign must be to identify one or more donors who would be interested in underwriting a significant fraction of the cost of a third building, known for now as “Maxwell III.” The construction of such a facility is already in the University’s long term plans, and there is a potential site under consideration just below (i.e., north) of Maxwell Hall. My objective is to be sufficiently far advanced in our fundraising by the end of Academic Year 2005-06 that we can initiate actual design work on the space.

A third major (and no less important) basket of fundraising objectives will focus on expanding the level of resources available to support faculty and graduate students. I am extremely mindful that part of building and maintaining an environment that is conducive to faculty development and retention, and that will continue to attract the best graduate students, is having resources available for (a) faculty summer support (especially for junior faculty), (b) faculty research (especially for the purposes of retention), (c) graduate student summer support, and especially (d) additional graduate fellowship support. I also would like to establish one or more “chairs” for pre-tenure faculty, i.e., appointments of limited duration that will reduce or eliminate teaching responsibilities for those trying to complete significant scholarly work prior to their tenure review.

Outreach and Policy Engagement

During the Maxwell Dean search, it was clear that one of the challenges facing the next dean would be to increase the presence and impact of the Maxwell School on the national and international scene. I will address the question of what can be done to improve the School’s image in the next section, but clearly a major challenge is to overcome the “geographic challenge” that Maxwell faces. I believe that this can be accomplished through various strategies designed to increase Maxwell’s policy engagement and outreach, and therefore its public visibility. I have chosen initially to focus on four approaches, and I intend to explore the viability of at least two others.

1. Continue to “internationalize” the Maxwell School – I am committed to continuing the policy to promote the international engagement of the Maxwell School and its programs and the international character of its student body. The decision initiated by my predecessor to move in this direction was extremely important in my view, and it already has paid dividends in terms of the mix of graduate students and the types of courses offered, among other benefits. The endowment of the (re-named) Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs will further promote attention to international issues and the development of new projects and programs. The challenge now is to become more strategic in our approach. For example, even with the Moynihan endowment, we surely can not—nor should we try—to address more than a very few major regions of the world. Thus, there are difficult decisions that need to be made regarding priorities and funding. We also need to identify the international institutions—and countries—with which we wish to establish or deepen long-term ties, including student and faculty exchanges. And finally, on the subject of graduate students, we need to review our policies and promotional practices for attracting foreign students to enroll in the Maxwell School. There is reason to believe that a carefully targeted international marketing effort might yield beneficial results in this regard.

2. Develop a Maxwell “presence” in New York and Washington – Syracuse University is fortunate to maintain facilities in both New York and Washington, and these provide natural venues for developing a permanent Maxwell presence. Clearly, both cities are important because of the public policy decisions that are taken in them and because they are the primary sources of future support for the School. The challenge is to find or create a niche for the School that is not redundant with the activities of other universities, think tanks, etc. that are located in both places. In this regard, we are exploring the feasibility of establishing a “Maxwell Forum” in one or both cities that would identify highly salient, newsworthy issues and would convene high level panels or an individual “big name” speaker to address them. The audience would initially be Maxwell and Syracuse alumni/ae, plus invited guests, but the intention would be to make each session so timely, interesting and provocative that they eventually might become “must not miss” events that might even warrant media coverage. We hope to organize the first Maxwell Forum in New York by the fall of 2004.

3. Expand strategically the Maxwell Executive Education Program – One of the most important ways that the Maxwell School engages with government organizations and higher education institutions around the world is through its Executive Education program. In large measure as a result of Bill Sullivan’s entrepreneurial and energetic leadership as director, the Program has grown substantially in the last decade. It is already a very important income generator for the School, and it has the potential to do much more. But, as with our need to think strategically and make difficult trade-offs with regard to our graduate academic programs, we must do the same in the area of executive education. As noted earlier, this is necessary, in part, due to the physical space limitations that constrain the number of mid-career training activities that can be accommodated at any given time. It is also important in order to focus on strengthening the linkages between Executive Education and the research centers and academic programs, which would have the added advantage of providing opportunities for intellectual synergies and sharing of resources.

There are many attractive options and opportunities available to pursue under the Executive Education program. We currently have important international relationships in China, India, and Thailand, among other places, many of which could be expanded, either by bringing more mid-career students to the SU campus and/or by sending Maxwell faculty to teach for limited periods of time at the cooperating institution. This suggests a need for a well conceived strategic plan that will lead to a determination of which regions and specific countries to focus on. At the same time, on the domestic side, Executive Education operates the highly successful MA-PA mid-career program, which includes the degree program for the Army Comptroller General’s office (and also includes foreign students as well). In addition, Executive Education is the institutional home for the prestigious National Security Studies program, which the Maxwell School and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University jointly manage for the Department of Defense. At this writing, there is an additional exploratory effort underway, jointly with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, regarding the possibility of initiating a similar program for the Department of Homeland Security.

All of this is indicative of the enormous potential and dynamism of the Maxwell Executive Education program. While tough choices need to be made, I am committed to expanding these programs in a carefully targeted way. Indeed, there may well be other types of programs and new target audiences that we potentially may wish to reach out to—e.g., the growing number of active, intellectually engaged retirees interested in life-long learning opportunities (which only will grow in the coming years as the Baby Boom generation reaches retirement age).

Physical space constraints remain a serious problem. In the short term, we will need to seek innovative, interim solutions for accommodating further growth of our Executive Education program, perhaps involving the temporary use of off-campus facilities. In the longer term, this is another powerful motivation for the construction of a new building, i.e., “Maxwell III.”

4. Engage Maxwell faculty and students in addressing the problems of the Central New York region – Although various Maxwell faculty members have made efforts over the years to become involved in problems of the Central New York (CNY) region (either directly or through their students), and the Environmental Finance Center continues to have great success working throughout the region, the increasingly severe economic problems of the CNY region present both a challenge and an opportunity. There is little question that, given the challenges they deal with every day, the governments of the City of Syracuse and Onondaga County offer a valuable, real life “laboratory” for Maxwell’s MPA students, as well as students from such other disciplines as geography, anthropology and sociology. But the city and county are also the place where most of us live, and where faculty and staff will spend a significant portion of their adult lives. I believe that we have both a moral and social obligation to “give something back” and that the Maxwell School has substantial intellectual resources that can be brought to bear.

Recently, a group of Maxwell alumni from the CNY region, many of whom are well connected to the governments and political and social organizations in the region, have expressed interest in this idea. There also has been a separate approach from the Onondaga County Executive. I think that there is a real opportunity, therefore, for Maxwell faculty and students to engage productively in helping to develop solutions to the difficult economic and governance issues that municipalities and other government entities in the CNY region are struggling with. I would like to make this a continuing area of engagement during my tenure as dean.

5. Ideas requiring additional exploration – As I’ve gone about exploring ideas, at least two additional thoughts have occurred (or have been reinforced by conversations with others) regarding other initiatives that the Maxwell School could take to expand its outreach and policy engagement. One idea might be to establish an annual, juried, “Maxwell Prize for Excellence in Public Governance or Leadership.” Endowment funds would have to be sought to underwrite such an award. But it would enable the School to focus attention on examples of success, creativity and cost-effective management in government at all levels—local, county, state or national. It would be one way for Maxwell to follow on the work of the Volcker Commission. A second idea might be to establish, perhaps in conjunction with a major opinion research organization and/or foundation, a “Maxwell Public Opinion Poll.” This poll might focus on such issues as: public attitudes towards government, its ability to address in a significant way the primary issues of concern on the public agenda, and its ability to manage—and, where necessary, contain—growth in public spending. But given the Maxwell School’s reputation as the nation’s leading school of public affairs, and especially given the substantial expertise of our faculty in public finance and budgeting, there is a strong prospect that we could achieve significant impact and national attention if we were to decide to pursue either idea. Before deciding to do so, however, we would need to undertake a substantial amount of “due diligence” and to identify sources of external support for one or both endeavors.

Sharpening Maxwell’s Public Image

As noted in the Dean Search, one of the major challenges facing the next Maxwell Dean was (and is) to strive to overcome the “geographical disadvantages” of Maxwell’s upstate New York location that cause the School to be “one of the best kept secrets” in terms of the national print and electronic media and other opinion-making venues. I have learned subsequently that this matter also has been a matter of concern to the Maxwell Advisory Board, which had worked during John Palmer’s tenure to help develop measures to address the problem. The good news is that progress has been made in terms of clarifying the “Maxwell brand” (e.g., its logo and name) and promoting Maxwell faculty and programs to the media. Jill Leonhardt, the Director of Communications and Media Relations, deserves great credit for these efforts. Yet, despite the progress that has been achieved, there still is much more to be done for Maxwell to attain the visibility and attention that it deserves, based on the quality of our faculty and our national standing. Improving our visibility is essential if we are to succeed in achieving our other goals (including fundraising). I would like us to become known as one of the “go to” places when there is breaking news or when an issue raises to the forefront of the national debate.

Accordingly, I will place high priority on developing a more comprehensive and aggressive strategy for reaching out to the print and electronic media. Discussions on how to accomplish this objective already have been initiated with key members of the Maxwell Advisory Board, and with other friends of the School who work in the journalism or public relations professions. I have explored with them the possibility of establishing a Media Advisory Group, who would advise Jill Leonhardt and me on specific, additional steps that can be taken to (a) convey the work of the School and the expertise of the faculty more widely and effectively, (b) establish and cultivate substantive relationships with reporters and editorial boards, and (c) encourage interested faculty to make themselves available to the print and electronic media to comment on breaking news developments. In this latter regard, we will seek to take better advantage of the studio facilities in the Newhouse School to build relationships with the cable news networks and other major media outlets. We also will offer media training to faculty who are interested in engaging with the print and electronic media. (These efforts will be further strengthened with the arrival in August of Professor of Practice (and retired General) Montgomery Meigs, the new holder of the Bantle Chair, who is under contract to NBC News as a military commentator. )

A second major element of our efforts to sharpen Maxwell’s public image must involve the pursuit of a broader and better organized outreach effort to Maxwell alumni, both undergraduate and graduate, and to other long-standing friends of the School. Some initial efforts along these lines have already been initiated by Jennifer Potter Hayes, the Director of the Career and Alumni Services. For example, her office recently organized a first-ever Maxwell School alumni reunion on the West coast in San Francisco, California, which included a number of panel discussions and a opening address by NASA Administrator (and Maxwell MPA and former faculty member) Sean O’Keefe. The San Francisco reunion was successful in attracting our loyal MPA alumni, who represent one of the most important sub-sets of the alumni body. But, to reach graduate alumni of other Maxwell departments and programs, as well as those who majored in one of the social sciences during their undergraduate years, will require a significant amount of additional work, involving database research and public outreach. Many of these former students may have had little or no contact with Maxwell (and, in many cases, with Syracuse University) in many, many years. Our objective here will be to create additional regional alumni groups (clubs) around the U.S. and abroad and to establish regular communication with these individuals through the alumni magazine, Maxwell Perspective, and other means. Jennifer Potter Hayes and I have begun to discuss how we might pursue a broadened agenda of alumni outreach, and she will be working to develop a plan.

New Substantive Initiatives for the Maxwell School

I noted at the outset of this paper that the challenge of laying out a strategic vision for the Maxwell School is that it encompasses so many moving parts. Understanding the full breadth and scope of the research initiatives and other activities underway at the School has been one of the biggest challenges—and most impressive surprises—since my arrival as the new dean (and I’m still learning!). I am also sobered by the significant resource limitations that we face. But, as one of the foremost schools of public affairs in the nation—and, indeed, the world—we cannot and must not rest on our laurels, or become dispirited by our resource constraints. This is one of the principal reasons that I intend to place heavy emphasis on encouraging greater entrepreneurial behavior on the part of the Maxwell faculty in the pursuit of externally supported research.

But this begs the question regarding what should be the focus of our expanded external grant seeking? That is, should we “go deeper” along the lines of our existing research agenda and pedagogical approaches, or should we seek entirely new areas to explore and themes to emphasize with our students? I am attracted to the idea of having the School explore at least a few new (or significantly revised) areas of work. I have been listening hard for suggestions and thinking about various possibilities since well before my actual arrival in Syracuse. Accordingly, I put forward below four ideas for further discussion, some of which would be entirely new and others of which would involve a return to earlier priorities of the School or the redirection and/or expansion of current activities. It should be noted that each idea can benefit from the many talents and multi-disciplinary perspectives represented in the Maxwell School.

1. A renewed emphasis on “citizenship” – The School’s founder, George Holmes Maxwell, chose explicitly to name the institution the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (emphasis added). Yet, today, it can be argued that we address the issue of “citizenship” only indirectly through the content of courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, and then only in passing. The new SU Academic Plan did create a SPIRE on “Transnational Citizenship,” which is led by Professor Peg Hermann, the director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, and this represents an important new dimension. Indeed, with both legal and illegal immigration pressures reaching record levels, the entire notion of state-based loyalty and participation may be increasingly open to question. At the same time, voter turnout in the U.S. has been dropping with each successive presidential election, and many opinion polls show growing voter apathy and disinterestedness, especially among those of college age and immediately beyond. Thus, there are powerful reasons to think that a renewed and broadened emphasis on the basic notion of and responsibilities associated with citizenship in the new century, focused on both the undergraduate and graduate curricula and the Maxwell research agenda, could be both timely and important. Indeed, it could make the Maxwell School and Syracuse University once again the national leader in addressing these issues. There is also reason to believe that a number of private foundations and/or private donors might be very interested in helping to underwrite the costs.

2. A new initiative on “public leadership” – There has been much attention in the media during the past few years to a second problem that is related in many ways to citizenship and civic participation: the dearth of quality leadership talent in public governance. There are probably many reasons why the “best and brightest” apparently are choosing not to pursue careers, either elected or appointed, in the public sector. These range from the significant disparities in pay, to the requirements for public financial disclosure, to the opprobrium often heaped on public officials striving to cope with entrenched social problems, often with shrinking budgetary resources. In addition, as pointed out by the 2003 report of the Volcker Commission, thousands of highly experienced, senior managers are expected to retire from the federal civil service in the coming years. The Commission goes on to predict a “slow motion crisis” in the staffing of the federal government, due to the difficulty of finding people of equal quality and experience to replace these retirees. At the same time, the length of service of Members of Congress has been dropping steadily. But even more fundamentally, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the most capable individuals may simply be making other career choices. Maxwell faculty are already addressing many sub-elements of public leadership in their research, and the subject is surely at the core of Maxwell’s historical mission. Thus, an expanded and more highly focused effort would not be difficult to initiate.

3. A new initiative on mitigating the fiscal crisis in state and local government – If any graduate school in the nation has come to be associated over the years with public finance and finding solutions to pressing problems of the public sector, it is the Maxwell School. Since the collapse of the “dot.com economy” and “irrational exuberance” of the 1990s, with the resulting loss of billions of dollars in tax revenues, governments at all levels have been in crisis, struggling to balance their budgets. As we know, the issue caused the first successful impeachment last year of a sitting Governor of the State of California. Maxwell potentially could bring to bear its faculty expertise in public finance, public management, and applied economics to address these problems as a major focused of scholarly research. We could consider establishing a Center on Public Finance, which might provide advisory services to government bodies looking to address either macro or micro fiscal problems. It seems highly likely that external funding could be identified to help launch such an initiative with continuing support derived from the local, county, and state governments with whom the Center would work.

4. An initiative entirely new to the Maxwell academic community – It is intellectually appealing to explore an area of research and teaching that would be completely new to the Maxwell School. At the same time, it is sobering to consider the difficulties inherent in doing so, especially given that a major new undertaking might well require new faculty lines and substantial external resources. One strategy that would help to keep manageable both costs and new staffing requirements would be to identify areas of common interest with other academic units of Syracuse University, or perhaps with similar units at other universities or think tanks. For example, there would appear to be potentially fruitful common ground between the Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, the two strongest and highly ranked academic units of SU, focusing on “communications and public policy” and/or “communications and politics.” There may be similar opportunities for additional shared initiatives between Maxwell and the School of Information Science and Technology, the School of Engineering and Computer Science, or the Law School, and there are a number of ideas currently under discussion. At the same time, we also are exploring new collaborative opportunities with organizations outside of the University, including the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

But the prospect of doing something significant and new entirely within Maxwell also holds great appeal. I intend to be active and vigilant in search of such opportunities, and I will encourage faculty to explore new ideas, particularly those that would be truly inter-disciplinary in nature. I hope that, as part of the upcoming fundraising campaign, we might be able to establish a modest, internal fund that would be available to provide seed funding for such faculty exploration.

Conclusion

I have been privileged to assume leadership of a School that is in a solid economic condition and blessed with an outstanding faculty and high national and international prestige. Yet, the Maxwell School, in comparison to its much better endowed competitors, has always had to “try harder” in order to achieve its goals and objectives. Undoubtedly, this will continue to be the case during my tenure as Dean. But as I have tried to suggest in this paper, our primary challenge is to think more strategically in deciding which of the many programmatic alternatives available to us should be pursued. I am convinced that our unique physical and organizational structure, with all of the disciplinary departments, professional programs and research centers co-located in Maxwell and Eggers Halls, affords us an extraordinary advantage in pursuing inter-disciplinary research and teaching. Given the increasingly complex nature of the problems facing our nation and the world today, this is a strength that we have only begun to exploit. It is my intention that, in the years ahead, we will strive to make our unique structure and inter-disciplinary capabilities one of our strongest external selling points in recruiting new faculty and students and in obtaining external research support. It is, after all, the characteristic that truly sets us apart not only from all other schools of public affairs, but also from other schools of social science.

The ideas presented in this paper, taken in sum, describe a School with a future full of challenges and enormous opportunity. We have the capability of moving to a new level of accomplishment and national prominence if we are willing to think and act boldly. If we do so, I envision a Maxwell School 5-7 years from now in which all of our academic departments have improved their position in the national rankings; a School that is able to employ—and retain—the most capable and productive faculty; a School that is able to recruit the best and brightest graduate students and to challenge and retain growing numbers of undergraduates; a School with a growing volume of externally sponsored research and a larger permanent endowment; a School that is not only a place where distinguished faculty produce important new scholarly work but where they also address the important national and international policy issues of our time; and a School that is engaged with and open to differing ideological viewpoints and cultural perspectives of people from around the world and across our own nation.

It is an extraordinary time to be a part of the Maxwell School, whether as a faculty member, staff or student. I am honored to have the responsibility for leading the institution into and beyond its 80th year. Together, we are going to accomplish great things!

This page current as of: April 29, 2004