KUCIMAT Summer 2006 Newsletter - Department News

It used to be that summers provided a respite from the department’s annual work.  But that has changed.  Non-stop activity now. 

• We have 30 applications from potential career option students that we will review this summer for Fall admission.  While we keep intern option admissions at about a dozen, with our new faculty capacity we can serve more career option students at the Edwards Campus in Overland Park and at the Public Management Center in Topeka.  In fact, now that we are offering an undergraduate major in Public Administration at the Edwards Campus, we offer more classes there annually than in Lawrence and the Public Management Center combined.
  
  
• Mark Funkhouser, Auditor for Kansas City, Missouri, and David Warm, Executive Director of the Mid America Regional Council successfully taught classes for our students last year.
  
  
• We graduated thirty-five students this May.  There were fourteen intern option students and twenty-one career option students.  The on campus intern option students have left for their full time positions.  For the first time we have interns in Tacoma, Miami-Dade County, and Glendale, Arizona.  Curt Freeland hired an intern for Arkansas City in Kansas.  This year we had more opportunities to place full time interns than we had available students!  Life is good.
  
  
• We hired two new faculty members and will welcome a third as well.  Kelly LeRoux is from Wayne State University.  Her area of specialization is urban politics and administration.  She has worked for several years as administrator of a non-profit organization, so she brings that interest to us as well.  She is writing about metropolitan networks, and I think she is going to add significantly to our strength in city management and local government.  Michael Moody will come to us from the University of Kentucky where he specializes in public finance.  I am looking forward to ways that his work will complement that of Justin Marlowe who joined us two years ago.  Justin’s specialization is financial management and budgeting.  Michael and Justin give us strength in these important areas, and I have invited them to think of ways that we could develop a specialization in the budgeting and finance area for our career option students who never have had an opportunity to develop a specialization within their MPA studies.  The new faculty will be joining Sanjay Pandey who is coming to us from Rutgers with several years experience and a keen interest in learning about city management.
  
  
• In February we hosted a three day session of the Executive Leadership Institute for the National Forum for Black Public Administrators.   We focused on "community building and public management," and by all counts it was successful.  John Saunders, the Executive Director, stayed for the three days and spent his evenings at the Nalbandian’s where we got to know each other.  The group included senior administrators from Mecklenberg County, Oakland, Miami-Dade, Washington DC, San Antonio and a few other jurisdictions.  It was great to see Jonathan Allen, alumnus, who was a part of the group.  We are scheduled for another session in February 2007.  It is part of our continuing effort to increase awareness of the KU MPA program among minority local government administrators and potential MPA students. 
  
  
• We have been invited to explore an academic relationship with Tsinghua University, the number one academic institution in China.  It would involve delivery of our MPA degree in Beijing for Chinese mayors who serve as CEO’s of their cities. 
  
  
• Our last successful pledge drive has come to a close, and we will begin our next three year cycle this fall.  I will be calling on several of you to become pledge leaders—at least $500 annually for the next three years. 
  
  
• The past few years have seen wonderful KUCIMAT financial support not only in annual pledges but also in endowed funds.  Mike Wilden, Jerry and Lee Smith, the Daicoff family (faculty), Dick Chesney, and the Nalbandian family have each pledged $30,000 to support the department in perpetuity.  Art Davis has taken advantaged of planned giving and included the department in a bequest.  Also, we are working to establish the Joe Harkins/Marvin Harder fund and the Paul Reaume fund.