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Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes: Spring 2008
La Follette community responds to need to support students
Attracting top students to the La Follette School for this fall is going to be a little easier, thanks to the generosity of our alumni, friends, faculty and staff.
I’m very pleased to report that alumni and friends of the school responded to the challenge issued by all our faculty and three staff members to match dollar for dollar up to $8,000 in gifts. We met our goal in early March.
In the course of long-range planning, faculty have said repeatedly that the school needs to increase student support. Our university-fundedfellowships are no longer competitive with what other first-rate public affairs institutions around the country offer.
To increase the value of the individual package, we considered reducing the number of students we support.
Now we won’t have to do that, at least for next year. Sixty-three alumni and friends sent in checks or made online payments ranging from $20 to $1,000 in response to our challenge, helping us top our overall $16,000 goal. They joined the more than 85 people and organizations who already had donated to the University of Wisconsin Foundation in support of La Follette School students and programs in 2007. Every donation, no matter the amount, is important and enhances our programs.
In other news, the school has been busy hosting speakers. They include: Laurence E. Lynn Jr., professor emeritus of public management at the University of Chicago, Lois A. Vitt, founding director of the Institute for Socio-Financial Studies, and William A. Fischel, professor of economics at Dartmouth College. Hermann Habermann, former deputy director of the Census Bureau, planned a late March visit, while Julian LeGrand, named one of the top 100 intellectuals in the United Kingdom, was to present a talk in early April.
Admitted prospective students will take a look at the La Follette School up close this spring at our Visit Days. Our guests hear presentations from our faculty and staff, socialize with our students and see how our small program fits their academic and professional interests.
One of our prospective students was fortunate to be in Madison the day of
our alumni reception in February. This annual gathering drew 100 people, 48 of them alumni and friends of the school — including former career advisors Terese Berceau and Mary Woodward, two graduates of the Wisconsin Women in Government seminar and several loyal friends who assist our students with career
development.
Our visitor encountered an ideal sample of our alumni, with people who graduated in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and in the current decade. Some had retired; others were just starting their careers. All had a story to tell about La Follette or their
work in public affairs.
The Madison function followed an alumni gathering in Washington, D.C., that also was highly successful, with 60 people stopping by our reception at the hotel housing the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s national conference in November. Ten of our faculty were in town for the conference, which takes place in D.C. in odd-numbered years.
We plan to be there again in 2009, and we look forward to the opportunity to reconnect with all alumni in that area, as well as with those of you attending the APPAM conference from outside the Washington area.