Social Science Disciplines >> Public Administration

Faculty Awards and Recognition

O'Leary to Receive ASPA/NASPAA Award. Rosemary O'Leary, distinguished professor of public administration and co-director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (PARC), has been selected to receive the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award for Excellence in Public Administration. Given jointly by the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs (NASPAA), it recognizes a P.A. faculty member who demonstrates excellence in teaching, research, and service. O'Leary will receive the award during ASPA's annual conference in Washington, D.C., on March 26. Earlier, O'Leary was named a recipient of the 2006-2007 Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award from The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas. It is the highest honor bestowed by the college on its graduates.
 

Roberts's Book Wins Award. Alasdair Roberts, associate professor of public administration, recently won the Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration for Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age, published by Cambridge University Press in February 2006. The book describes the tactics that politicians and bureaucrats around the world have used to preserve government secrecy. It explains how profound changes in the structure of government –privatization of public services, the rise of powerful international organizations, the growth of tightly knit networks of security agencies – are complicating campaigns for openness. The complex effects of new information technologies – sometimes enhancing openness, sometimes creating new barriers to transparency – are also described. Earlier, Roberts gave evidence before the Canadian Parliament's Standing Committee on Access to Information and Privacy on October 18, 2006. Roberts, a specialist on open government, was asked to discuss complaints about the mishandling of politically sensitive requests for information made under Canada's freedom of information law.

Congratulations to Bill Duncombe! Professor Duncombe is one of this year's recipients of the NASPAA Leslie A Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award.

The purpose of this award is to recognize faculty members at NASPAA institutions who make outstanding contributions to education for the public service through excellence in teaching. The award will be given to a NASPAA faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in education for the public service over a sustained period of time.

Evidence demonstrating excellence in teaching and sustained contributions to education for the public may include: the content and presentation of course; the quality of advising students; the impact of the faculty member on students and their public service careers; and other relevant information.

Nominations for this award may be submitted by an individual or NASPAA program. Nominating materials should include: a nomination letter describing in detail the teaching excellence and contribution to education for the public service of the nominee; supporting letters (no more than five) from current and former students of the nominee; and evidence that teaching excellence has been sustained over time.

Popp Wins Moynihan Award. On May 3, during the annual awards ceremony in Maxwell Auditorium, David Popp, professor of public administration, received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Outstanding Teaching, Research and Service. Since coming to Syracuse in 2000, Popp has published or is about to publish 17 articles, many of them in highly regarded economics and policy journals. His excellence as a teacher was recognized in 2005 with a University-wide Meredith Professorship. Also noteworthy is Popp’s involvement in advising Ph.D. students in public administration as well as in social science and environmental science and forestry.

 Birkhead-Burkhead Award Given to Van Slyke. At its June 30 convocation, the Department of Public Adminitration presented the annual Birkhead-Burkhead Teaching Excellence Award to David Van Slyke, an assistant professor. The award is based on letters of nomination from students, teaching evaluations, and evidence of mentorship and advising; it is named to honor former P.A. teachers Guthrie Birkhead and Jesse Burkhead.

Professor Bill Duncombe is a recipient of the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award. This award honors faculty members whose dedication to graduate students and commitment to excellence in graduate mentoring have made a significant contribution to graduate education at Syracuse University.

Professor Len Lopoo received the Teaching Recognition Award Sponsored by the Meredith Professorship which is is a program sponsored by the Meredith Professors to benefit non-tenured faculty members. Its specific goals are to recognize excellence in teaching and to encourage a culture of collegial mentoring among faculty members.

Soonhee Kim, who received her Ph.D. in Public Administration from Rockefeller College in 1998, received the Young Alumna Award for her dedication to teaching and research, and achievements as an Assistant Professor at Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She is a highly productive scholar who conducts leading-edge work in information technology, employee retention, on-line recruitment in state and local governments, employee knowledge sharing capabilities, and leadership in electronic government development.

O'Leary's Book Studies "Guerilla Government." In her new book, The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government, Rosemary O'Leary, Distinguished Professor of Public Administration, writes that "guerrilla government" happens all the time in the everyday world of bureaucracy. (Guerrilla government is the term O'Leary has coined to describe career public servants who work against the wishes of their superiors.) The book, published December 15 by CQ Press, cites evidence from 24 cases, as well as from O'Leary's work as a member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Return-to-Flight Task Group and a National Academy of Sciences panel. Additional information about the book is available via the website for Maxwell's Program for the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts and at CQ Press. 12/20/05

Brooks Op-Ed Proposes that Money Buys Happiness. An op-ed by Arthur Brooks, associate professor of public administration, appearing in the December 8 edition of the Wall Street Journal, considers statistical evidence that wealth increases a person's tendency to describe him or herself as "very happy." The December 8 op-ed may be read online. This is Brooks's second recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal; a piece appearing in the November 21 edition defends American philanthropy against charges that donors no longer give to the neediest potential beneficiaries. That essay appears here. Brooks directs Maxwell's Nonprofit Studies Program. 12/12/05

Meigs to Head DoD Task Force. The Department of Defense announced on December 5 that Public Administration faculty member Montgomery Meigs has been named director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force, reporting to the deputy secretary of defense, effective December 12. Meigs will take a one-year leave from the Maxwell School to return to the Pentagon. The Task Force was formed in 2003 to coordinate resources across the military branches and technologies in order to defeat current and future improvised explosive device threats. As part of his new position, Meigs will oversee the creation of a training center to assist the service branches in providing troops with pre-deployment IED threat training. Meigs has extensive experience in asymmetric warfare and in addressing the IED threat. Before his retirement from the U.S. Army, he served on active duty for more than 35 years, most recently as commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe and of NATO's peacekeeping force in Bosnia. He previously served as commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and was a professor of history at the U. S. Military Academy. A military analyst for NBC News, Meigs has published various articles on military policy and leadership, as well as a book, Slide Rules and Submarines (National Defense University Press, 1990). Meigs earned a B.S. degree from the United States Military Academy, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Also available: Department of Defense press release. 12/5/05

Smeeding Wins Award. Tim Smeeding, Maxwell Professor of Public Policy and director of the Center for Policy Research, and Lee Rainwater, professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University, have been named the recipients of the annual Comparative Politics Dataset Award from the American Political Science Association (APSA) for their work on the Luxembourg Income Study. The APSA awards committee recognized Smeeding (director) and Rainwater (research director) for their research on inequality, poverty, redistributive policy, and a variety of related topics. The 22-year-old project provides the social scientific community with access to micro-data on income and its distribution in affluent countries since the mid-1970s. This information was compiled through cooperation with many national government agencies, and is available through a website that provides comprehensive documentation, a variety of summary statistics, software that facilitates statistical analysis, and access to working papers that have used the data. The project can be accessed at http://www.lisproject.org. 9/28/05