"The Humphrey year enabled me to turn an idea into action," says Nimrod Goren, founder of Mitvim: The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. The Humphrey Fellowship Program, which honors former US vice president Hubert H. Humphrey's commitment to international cooperation and public service, brings midcareer professionals from emerging democracies to the US for graduate study, professional development, and cultural exchange, with Maxwell being one of the 13 colleges selected by the US Department of State to provide hosting and teaching.

Matt Bonham, former director of the international relations program, recently passed away. Though he is gone, the M.A. (IR) program continues to build upon his legacy. “He wanted a world where people could get along and understand each other,” says University Professor Dennis Kinsey, with whom Bonham co-founded a dual degree for careers in public diplomacy. “Matt wanted the world to be a safer place.”

“This is a time to rally the troops—to say, ‘Your appreciation of and affection for Maxwell matters now more than ever. We need your vote of confidence,’” says David M. Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School, about seeking donor funding.

“He wears his brilliance well,” says Joe Mareane ’79 M.P.A., chief fiscal officer for Onondaga County and former student of Professor Bernard Jump, who is retiring. “He is patient, calm, reassuring, and responsive. Dr. Jump had a wonderful knack for reassuring a bunch of polisci majors that the complexities of public finance are within their reach, and a teaching style that fulfills that promise.”

As John Liu sees it, the fundamental objective of science is to generate knowledge to help solve real-world problems. “As a research university, we need to align ourselves with major societal challenges,” says Syracuse University’s vice president for research.

Supporting and improving public service has been a major focus of Paul Volcker, former chair of the Federal Reserve, for decades. From Volcker’s perspective, Maxwell is an exception to the general trend among universities of paying less and less attention to training future civil servants in how to implement public policy effectively and efficiently.

As undergraduate programs have become more visible, Maxwell donors—many of them alumni of the undergraduate majors themselves—have grown more eager to support those programs.

This is a boom time for undergraduates at the Maxwell School—new majors, expanded research programs, diverse experiential opportunities, enhanced advising, and more. It all builds on a tradition of undergraduate education that goes back to Maxwell’s beginning. There has never not been a “Maxwell undergrad.”

A new program helps veterans convert their sense of community investment to civic engagement and political office.

Ghanaian physician Laud Boateng will use his MPA/IR to improve health policy worldwide.

The nonprofit A Tiny Home for Good, founded by Andrew Lunetta ’14 M.P.A., has constructed roughly a dozen tiny homes in Syracuse for occupants at risk of homelessness. Onondaga County recently granted $235,000 to Lunetta’s organization to fund seven new tiny homes.

Bob Watson heads a company using technology to prepare organizations for risk and emergencies. Watsons company helps a broad range of organizations and communities plan for emergencies,  helping minimize risk across the board.

At AARP, policy chief Debra Whitman serves the needs of a 50-plus cohort while studying how everyone ages.

Old Testament scholar Yolanda Norton ’04 BA (PSc) reinterprets scripture through the lens of African-American women.

Sarah Stegeman, a doctoral candidate in history, is embarking on dissertation research on the role of African-American women in colonizing Liberia. “There’s a large gap in the historiography of Liberia,” she says, “where women have not been part of the historical narrative.”

The drive to fund a new scholarship reminds us there is an alumni community bound in the ways of Bill Coplin.