Van Slyke elected director of National Academy of Public Administration

David Van Slyke, Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business and Government Policy and associate dean and chair of the Maxwell School’s Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, has been elected one of six new directors of the board of the National Academy of Public Administration. He will serve a three-year term alongside roughly one dozen other representatives of government, academe, and business.

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) is an independent, non-profit, and non-partisan organization established in 1967 to assist government leaders in building more effective, efficient, accountable, and transparent organizations. Chartered by Congress to provide non-partisan expert advice, the Academy's unique feature is its 800-plus fellows — including former cabinet officers, members of Congress, governors, mayors, and state legislators, as well as prominent scholars, business executives, and public administrators. The academy helps government address its critical management challenges through in-depth studies and analyses, advisory services and technical assistance, Congressional testimony, forums and conferences, and online stakeholder engagement.

Directors of NAPA, elected by NAPA fellows, play an increasingly vital role in setting the Academy’s policy emphases and assuring that it makes a meaningful, consultative contribution to federal governance. “It is both an honor and a compelling challenge to help support the leadership of NAPA at this time,” says Van Slyke. “Not only are the complexities of federal governance greater than at any time in history, but NAPA is challenged to optimize its contributions to good governance, in an era when so many other parties — public and private — play a role.”

Van Slyke, now a director of NAPA, has also been a NAPA fellow since 2010 and has established himself as one of the leading scholars in the field of public policy and management.  Van Slyke writes on public and nonprofit management issues such as government contracting, public-private partnerships, and policy implementation. His 2013 book, Complex Contracting: Government Purchasing in the Wake of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater Program, received the Best Book Award from the American Society for Public Administration. He serves as co-editor of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory and the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation. He is a past winner of best article awards from the Public Management Research Association (2007) and the Academy of Management (2002).

Van Slyke, a member of the Maxwell School faculty since 2004, also serves as a non-resident faculty member in the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. He is engaged in executive education and has conducted trainings around the world — including in China, India, Singapore, and Thailand — and has worked in Russia with the World Bank on issues of corruption in government contracting and partnerships. Prior to becoming an academic, Van Slyke worked in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. 10/13/15