The Maxwell School (Text-Only)

The Maxwell School of Syracuse University | The School and Its Faculty

The Maxwell School's signature and top-ranked program, the Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.), is the oldest continuously operating University-based program in the country and consistently is ranked first in several national surveys, including U.S. News & World Report's ratings of "America’s Best Graduate Schools."

The Maxwell School also offers a strong professional master’s programs in International Relations. (Maxwell's I.R. program is a member of the elite Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs.) Both P.A. and I.R. (as well as economics) are available for mid-career executives via Executive Education.

Maxwell's master's and doctoral academic degrees are offered in Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Political Science, and Sociology. A Ph.D. only is offered in Social Science. Public Administration offers a Ph.D., too, in addition to its M.P.A. (Also, undergraduate degrees offered by the College of Arts and Sciences are taught in Maxwell's social science departments.)

This site's Academic Departments and Professional Programs pages offer one-page introductions to those degree programs. At the bottom of each one-page introduction is a link to each unit's own website.

The Students

Maxwell’s programs and the quality of its scholarship and research opportunities attract outstanding graduate students from around the world. More than 700 are working on master’s or doctoral degrees in any given semester. Typically, half are women, more than one-quarter are from countries other than the United States, and 15 percent of those from the United States are African American or Latino. About 20 percent of the students are involved in joint or concurrent degree programs. More than half are pursuing full-time coursework, and most of the remainder are working full time on their dissertations.

Size and Personalization

Maxwell's faculty, staff, and administration are friendly and supportive--remarkably so. New and prospective students testify that, from their first contact, there is a difference in the care and attention paid to them.

The student body is small. Individual classes are small. All faculty offices are within the Maxwell complex, as are the many graduate-student office bays. Some are located in the departments, others in the research centers and institutes. The result is collegiality and personal bonds that help carry students through their Maxwell careers and that last throughout their lifetimes.

The Facilities

The completion of Eggers Hall in 1994, followed closely by the renovation of Maxwell Hall, provided the School with peerless space and amenities. The most tangible impact was in the area of technology:

a state-of-the-art communications network, which supports a variety of hardware platforms and provides every network user access to word-processing, presentation, spreadsheet, database, and data-analysis software, as well as software to support connections to the Internet;
specialized labs and software to meet the research and educational needs of certain departments and programs;
the Global Collaboratory (pictured), a remarkable, high-tech, multimedia facility that can instantly link a Maxwell event with the other side of campus--or with the other side of the globe; and
lecture halls designed for multimedia instruction, featuring large rear-screen projection systems and sound speakers, and plug-ins for laptops at each position, providing connection to the network for interactive instruction.

Less salient than the technology, but just as important, is the effect of the Maxwell-Eggers complex on interdisciplinary pursuit. All academic and professional departments of the Maxwell School are housed under one elegant roof, with a glass-enclosed Commons linking the rich tradition of Maxwell Hall with its promising, younger partner. Specific endeavors housed here are more fertile because of this physical articulation of the interdisciplinary spirit.

Community

Among institutions of higher education, there are few where faculty, students, and alumni develop the brand of camaraderie exhibited in the Maxwell community. The school's size and physical configuration lend themselves to it. It's difficult to describe, but the next time you meet a Maxwell denizen, ask about it.

The spirit continues after graduation, and Maxwell's alumni body has a long-standing reputation for cohesion and enthusiasm. The halls of public administration, social-science scholarship, and international affairs are laced with deeply loyal Maxwell alumni.

Joint Degrees

Graduate students at Maxwell are encouraged to explore topics that cross disciplinary boundaries or to develop a course of study tailored to their own research interests. They may tap into the rich resources of the University’s 10 other colleges, in addition to those at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which is adjacent to the campus. Many joint degree opportunities exist at SU. For example, both public administration and international relations offer joint degree programs with the College of Law. (To be eligible, students must be admitted to both the appropriate Maxwell program and the College of Law.) Additionally, a new certificate program in Health Services Management and Policy, offered by Maxwell and the School of Management in association with several other SU colleges, offers multidisciplinary training in the areas of health policy and management. (Students should contact Executive Education Programs for application instructions.)

Because of the blend of professional and doctoral programs at Maxwell, many students who originally come for a professional degree in public administration or international relations decide to continue on for a Ph.D. in one of the social sciences.

A graphic version of this site is also available.