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Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706

Telephone:  608.262.3581
Fax: 608.265.3233


Last updated:
November 16, 2009

© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

La Follette School News: Spring 2008

Learning during crises can help correct problems, professor says

How emergency responders learn during and after crises was the topic of a presentation La Follette School professor Donald Moynihan gave at a conference organized by the Swedish Rescue Services Agency, the Swedish Emergency Management Agency, and the National Center for Crisis Management at the Swedish National Defence College.

Moynihan spoke May 12 to crisis management professionals and scholars attending the one-day conference called “Learning from Crises and Major Accidents.” He noted how much research on this area focuses on how people can learn from crises, but there is less attention to learning during crises in ways that improve crisis response in the short run.

Learning during crises helps to identify and correct problems that responders face in terms of helping victims. But such learning is difficult. People learn best through trial and error, but responders lack time to try many different strategies during crises, and crises are too important to risk significant error. “In addition,” Moynihan says, “the scope of what people need to learn to do during a crisis is very wide, and lessons from previous crises may not be relevant or ambiguous.”

“One of the key points to make is that such learning must occur among a network of responders,” Moynihan says. “We know a little bit about organizational learning, but we know much less about interorganizational learning.”

Networks of responders are inevitable in crises because no single organization has the skills and capacities to deal with the situation. In some way the interorganizational aspect makes learning more difficult — responders must communicate and build relationships with other organizations with which they have no experience.

But networks can also ease these problems, Moynihan says. “Networks bring together complementary skills, allowing responders an immediate and greater range of knowledge and skills than would be the case if responders had to learn new skills.”

As networks form during crises, people can create information systems that track and communicate the status of tasks in a timely fashion. Another mechanism to foster learning is regular interaction and meeting among key managers to consider key data and to identify future strategies. “Such learning forums are used on a daily basis in effective crisis response,” Moynihan says, “and they can help tie information back to decisions about the operation of the emergency response.”

Standard operating procedures can come in handy because they form a network memory and help responders build and disseminate formal routines, Moynihan adds. In some cases, new standard operating procedures have to be written.

He suggests that responders use caution when drawing lessons from the past, take the time to identify differences between past and current emergencies and keep in mind that generic management systems and skills are easy to transfer from one crisis to the next.

Presentation slides

How networks impact the Myanmar, China disaster responses, June 2, 2008, University of Wisconsin Madison–News

— posted May 24, 2008

53 students celebrate graduation with family, friends, faculty, staff

The class of 2008 embraced the benefits and challenges of lifelong scholarship at its graduation celebration Saturday, May 17.

Fifty-three students, their families and their friends joined faculty and staff in the Assembly Chamber in the Wisconsin Capitol. There, classmate Ryan Baumtrog outlined the responsibilities of lifelong scholarship as he discovered them during his graduate school career while earning a master of public affairs degree.

“Lifelong scholarship requires learning all you can from the people you encounter and a willingness to provie all that is asked of you to those who seek the information,” said Baumtrog. “Being a lifelong scholar also requires the personal drive toward intellectual improvement and the desire to never stop learning and sharing information.”

Baumtrog is returning to Minnesota to look for work with a municipal government. He was one of seven graduates who enrolled at La Follette through the school’s accelerated program through which an undergraduate begins working on the master's degree requirements as a senior and completes all requirements with an additional year of study beyond the bachelor’s degree. One student earned a master’s degree in social work in addition to the MPA. Three completed the dual-degree in law and public affairs, while two completed the double degree in urban planning and public affairs. Sixteen of the 53 earned degrees in international public affairs.

Making the acquisition and dissemination of information a priority deepens people’s experiences, Baumtrog said, enriching not only the lives of the people in search of answers, but the lives of those who share their scholarship and analysis.

He came to this realization in the midst of feeling overburdened by statistics and economics problems to solve, wondering why he was pursuing a master’s degree. “Then one day, it hit me. It it hit me harder than my first econ exam score,” he said. “I realized I had been given a gift and not a burden. All these opportunities enhanced my knowledge, opened my perspective, increased my freedom and promoted scholarship.”

Baumtrog urged his classmates to take up this responsibility of lifelong scholarship as they start their new jobs and fellowships. “Your mission as a long-life scholar, if you choose to accept it, will allow for true personal growth,” he said. “Your responsibility to embrace and teach all those you encounter is just as important as the freedom you gain from your knowledge.”

Baumtrog then introduced lifelong scholar Dennis Dresang, who is retiring in December after nearly 40 years of service with the University of Wisconsin–Madison, 30 of them with the La Follette School and its prior incarnations as the La Follette Institute and the Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration. He is the School’s founding director, nurturing its transition from the Center to the Institute in 1983. The School will mark its 25th anniversary during the 2008-09 academic year.

He shared the legacy upon which the La Follette School graduates will be building the next phases of their careers, sharing the history of Robert M. La Follette in representing Wisconsin in Congress, then returning home to serve as governor.

Throughout his political career, Dresang said, La Follette fought for the people, looking into the tired faces of those battered by a declining economy. He drew his power and purpose from those people, Dresang said. As a Progressive, he fought to curb the power of the banks and railroads to help farmers. He sought aid for workers who had been laid off or injured on the job.

“You have this same power and opportunity,” Dresang told the graduates. “You are intelligent, skilled, and with the baby boomers retiring, you have abundant opportunities.”

“Distinguish yourselves,” he advised. “Have a purpose, and get that purpose from those you serve: Look into their faces. Do well and do good.”

Dresang introduced Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton as the keynote speaker. She highlighted the challenges and opportunities the graduates face as they move into jobs in the public and private sectors. She noted several policy challenges, including the war, climate change, water, income inequality, health care and labor.

“The responsibility of your citizenship, the weight of a diploma from the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the intellectual muscle you’ve built here, position you to be part of the design team for our state and nation’s future – whether from the public, private or non-profit sector, from a local or state or national or international desk,” Lawton said. “So be bold. Your diploma pays tribute to your raw energy, spirit of adventure and even audacity — all the right stuff to open doors to an exciting future for every one of you. Now it’s up to you to keep the doors to our democracy open for the next generation.”

— posted May 22, 2008; updated May 23, May 30, 2008

3 students make PMF finalist stage, one takes Federal Reserve post

An unprecedented three international public affairs students reached the finalist stage of the Presidential Management Fellows Program that places recent graduates with federal agencies for two-year assignments. The program accepts applicants who are committed to excellence in the leadership and management of public policies and programs.

“Having three PMF finalists in one year is quite an achievement,” says Associate Director Menzie Chinn, “especially for a small program like La Follette. That all three are in our international track, which is relatively young, speaks to that program’s strength.”

Two La Follette students, Andria Hayes-Birchler and Patti Reis, are moving forward in the process to select their agencies. They have been interviewing and researching the possibilities. The third student, Kavan Kucko, decided instead to accept a position with the Federal Reserve Board, where he will work in the Emerging Market Economies section of the Division of International Finance.

“This is the first time that one of our MIPA students has secured a post in the International Finance Division, which focuses on the global forces affecting the American economy,” Chinn says.

Kucko says he appreciates the flexibility of the La Follette program. “It allows students to choose from a variety of related disciplines and really focus on whatever aspect of public policy they are most interested in,” he says. “I combined the most interesting La Follette courses with a few outside courses to augment my skill set and résumé in preparation for the job search.”

Internships are also an important component, says Career Development Coordinator Mary Russell. “All three students had excellent internships, and that goes a long way in helping them apply the policy analysis and research skills they develop at La Follette.”

Kucko spent the summer of 2007 at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s department of policy and planning doing regional transportation economic research and economic impact analysis. Hayes-Birchler interned with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Europe and Eurasia Bureau in Washington, D.C. Reis was at the Organization of American States, also based in D.C.

Presidential Management Fellows' assignments may involve public policy and administration, domestic or international issues, information technology, human resources, engineering, health and medical sciences, law, financial management, and other fields in public service.

Reis says she prefers to work for the Congressional Research Service, Department of State, or the Inter-American Foundation.

Hayes-Birchler hopes to enlist with the U.S. Agency for International Development. “The support and encouragement I’ve received from La Follette staff and professors has been very helpful through out graduate school,” she says.

Donation helps cover cost of student internships, fall 2007, La Follette Notes

— posted April 16, 2008; updated April 18, 2008

Chinn shares expertise, worry about euro

As worries about the economy grow, so do demands for economist Menzie Chinn to share his expertise. He has commented in several news outlets about the value of the dollar against other world currencies, the U.S. economy and the effects of the federal tax rebate.

Bloomberg, the Financial Times and the Observer reference Chinn's argument that the U.S. dollar giving way to the euro as the world's favored reserve currency. He and co-author Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard University have a new La Follette School working paper that suggests the euro will overtake the dollar by 2025. A second working paper debunks the oft-repeated policy tenet that a flexible exchange rate regime would facilitate current account adjustment.

In other news, Chinn presents work on exchange rates at an April International Monetary Fund Conference on Macro-Finance — a "Featured Event" on the IMF web site. During the summer, he will make presentations at a workshop at Goethe University in Frankfurt, a conference on “The Impact of Global Financial Imbalances” in Siena, Italy, and an Austrian National Bank conference on “Global Market Disruptions” in Salzburg.

In May, Chinn and colleague Charles Engel will convene two conferences focused on the state of the global economy. The Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy, the Department of Economics and the La Follette Schjool are sponsoring both gatherings. On May 1, they will hold Global Imbalances and the U.S. Dollar: Doing Business in the World Economy at the Fluno Center of the UW Business School. Panelists from Harvard, Columbia, Brandeis and Barclay’s Global Investors will speak. On May 2-3, Chinn and Engel will hold an academic conference devoted to investigating Current Account Sustainability in Major Advanced Economies.

The Euro May over the Next 15 Years Surpass the Dollar as Leading International Currency, La Follette School Working Paper 2008-007

A Faith-based Initiative: Do We Really Know that a Flexible Exchange Rate Regime Facilitates Current Account Adjustment?, La Follette School Working Paper 2008-008

Euro Reserves May Top Dollar by 2015 {sic}, Economics Say, April 8, 2008, Bloomberg

Dollar chilled by rise of euro, March 30, 2008, The Observer

This crisis could bring the euro centre-stage, March 24, 2008, Financial Times

— posted April 16, 2008

La Follette director wins Guggenheim to study links between health, poverty

La Follette School director Barbara Wolfe has won a Guggenheim Fellowship. The award recognizes artists, scholars and scientists based on distinguished past achievement and exceptional future promise. Read more …

— posted April 9, 2008

Professor wins $100,000 collaborative grant to explore global energy conflicts

Professor Gregory Nemet has been awarded a $100,000 multiyear grant from the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Nemet will work on a collaborative research project called “Governing New Conflicts in Global Energy Futures” with these other University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty members: Tracey Holloway (Environmental Studies, Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, Civil & Environmental Engineering), Bernard Lesieutre (Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Paul Wilson (Engineering Physics).

Nemet says he expects to engage La Follette School students in the research, especially those in the international public affairs degree program.

The researchers will investigate emerging conflicts that arise from changes in energy policies, examine how the conflicts relate to global governance mechanisms and assess the preparedness of those mechanisms for tackling these conflicts. They will pursue three parallel themes: 1) new competition between energy, food and water as seen with biofuels; 2) constraints that global environmental agreements impose on energy options; and 3) security concerns driven by inequities in energy resources and technology distributions.

Nemet's latest contribution to the La Follette Working Paper Series examines the effects of publicly sponsored research and development and of demand subsidies on energy costs.

WAGE Awards Three Research Collaborative Grants, April 8, 2008, Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy

Demand Subsidies Versus R&D: Comparing the Uncertain Impacts of Policy on a Pre-Commercial Low-Carbon Energy Technology, La Follette School Working Paper No. 2008-006

— posted April 9, 2008; updated April 15, 2008

Spring symposium to examine health-care reform

La Follette School faculty and other researchers, policymakers and health-care practitioners will address the challenges of aligning incentives for the health-care industry to provide better and less expensive health care.

Participants will explore using the goal-setting and outcomes measurement inherent in performance management and then paying the health-care industry according to how well it performs.

"The health-care industry can learn from other sectors," says La Follette School Director Barbara Wolfe, a health economist. "We know some systems work and others do not. This is an opportunity to share the real success stories."

The symposium starts at 1 p.m. and is at the Monona Terrace convention center.

The keynote speaker, management science professor Gwyn Bevan of the London School of Economics, will share examples of performance measures used in England. He directed the Office for Information on Healthcare Performance at the Commission for Health Improvement, which assessed the quality of the National Health Service in England and Wales. He has served on various advisory groups to the government in England.

Bevan is scheduled to speak from 1:15-2 p.m. after opening comments by Wolfe and Population Health Institute Associate Director Donna Friedsam.

Two panel discussions will follow. In the first, from 2-3 p.m., practitioners and policymakers will explore how pay for performance has been implemented in Wisconsin. The panelists are Theodore Praxel, medical director, Quality Improvement and Care Management, Marshfield Clinic; Geoffrey Lamb, associate medical director, Medical College of Wisconsin; and Jason Helgerson, medicaid director, Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services

In the second panel, 3:15-4:15 p.m., La Follette School scholars will share implications and lessons learned from other sectors. Susan Webb Yackee will moderate panelists Carolyn Heinrich and Donald Moynihan, plus La Follette School alum Douglas Harris, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

— posted April 9, 2008

Student accepts city management fellowship in Kansas City

Throughout her academic career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carissa DeCramer has been narrowing her focus. As an undergraduate, she double-majored in international relations and political science. As a graduate student at the La Follette School of Public Affairs, she followed the domestic track.

Now she anticipates the hands-on nature of working for a local government as a fellow with the L.P. Cookingham Management Fellowship program with the City of Kansas City, Missouri.

“I’m looking forward to working in a big city and better understanding the dynamics of how local governments operate in metropolitan areas,” says DeCramer, who is from Rochester, Minnesota. “I want to make connections on the ground and see how abstract theory of public affairs fits into day-to-day, local operations.”

The Cookingham fellowship is the oldest and one of the most competitive city management fellowships in the nation. DeCramer is the second La Follette student to win the fellowship. Bryan Gadow from the class of 2005 was the first. He is now an assistant planner with the city of Wayzata, Minnesota, in suburban Minneapolis. DeCramer and Gadow both enrolled at La Follette through the Accelerated Program through which University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduates can complete their master’s in a fifth year of study.

DeCramer says she became interested in the Kansas City fellowship after meeting with a current fellow who was recruiting at La Follette. When she went to Kansas City to interview after making the initial cut, she was quite impressed with how engaged the staff were with the fellows. “I gained a good sense of how they would be as professional mentors,” DeCramer notes, “and that I’d be exposed to a variety of local government issues.”

The 12-month fellowship rotates interns through the offices for the city manager, capital improvements and budget, plus a fourth that DeCramer will choose. In each office, the interns work closely with staff on projects ranging from researching the city’s geographic information system policy to organizing public relations events for city projects to participating in a municipal court process improvement work group.

This year, environment and sustainability issues are high on Kansas City’s agenda, DeCramer says, and she hopes to contribute to the city’s strategy to rank in the top 5 of National Geographic’s most environmentally friendly cities. “I’m excited at the prospect of working on sustainability measures in an urban setting,” she says.

As an intern, DeCramer spent the summer of 2007 with United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta helping to implement performance management measures into its community impact program. She also worked with United Way’s early learning commission to compile data from the county government and area nonprofit organizations to assist the commission’s analysis of early learning programming. For the 2007-08 school year she is a research associate with the University of Wisconsin Extension’s Center for Community and Economic Development.

She says she feels well-prepared for the fellowship experience in Kansas City. “The La Follette School gave me the toolbox to prepare me, the skills and the tools,” she says. “This fellowship will enable me to identify and develop a specialization using those tools.”

Student wins city management fellowship in Kansas City, University of Wisconsin-Madison news release, April 8, 2008

Student wins prestigious city management internship, La Follette School News, April 1, 2005

— posted April 3, 2008; updated April 9, 2008

Prospective students take a look at La Follette School

Prospective students admitted to the La Follette School for fall 2008 heard from faculty and current students about internships, curricular focus fields, and the link between education and the practice of public affairs at the La Follette School’s Visit Days March 31 and April 1.

Guests talked with La Follette faculty, current students, alumni, and student services and career development staff members about life at La Follette and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Visit Days showed the many ways that the La Follette School program works with local, state, federal and international agencies to bring practical experiences and projects into the domestic and international public affairs courses,” says Associate Director Menzie Chinn.

Prospective students learned about how the domestic and international public affairs degree programs can help them make contacts, develop expertise and practice public policy with real-world clients. They came from New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, California, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, South Dakota, Minnesota and New Jersey.

A career development panel featured two alumni and four current students. They shared advice about how to prepare for La Follette coursework and be successful as public policy professionals in the private and public sectors.

“Prospective students who visit us gain a good sense of what their two years at La Follette can be like,” says Student Services Coordinator Mary Treleven, who organized the event. “They see firsthand how accessible faculty and staff are at the La Follette School, plus they learn more about the resources at a world-class research university like the University of Wisconsin-Madison.”

Small-group sessions with faculty and current students gave the 31 admitted prospective students the chance to learn more about focus fields and how to use electives to create a program that best meets each student’s academic and professional interests.

Areas covered included international governance, social policy, policy analysis, public management, environmental policy, international trade and finance, education policy and health policy.

Joint degree programs in the environment, neuroscience, law, urban planning and public health also were discussed.

“The break-out sessions gave prospective students a great opportunity to ask questions specific to their academic interests and to hear from faculty and students about how to focus their interests," Chinn says. “The faculty in return got a good feeling for the interests and concerns of the incoming students.”

— posted April 3, 2008

La Follette School's U.S. News ranking climbs to 14

U.S. News and World Report has ranked the La Follette School of Public Affairs 14th among more than 260 U.S. public affairs master’s programs, up from 17th in 2004, the last time the survey was conducted.

The rankings for public affairs schools are based solely on the results of a peer assessment survey conducted in fall 2007. “While a survey like this cannot capture the high quality of our programs, we are still pleased that our rankings are so strong,” says La Follette School Director Barbara Wolfe.

The rankings for three La Follette School programs improved, while two held steady. La Follette’s Social Policy focus field again ranked third, behind only Harvard and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Public Policy Analysis ranked 11th in both surveys.

“We are very pleased with our continued, exceptional standing in Social Policy, which puts us in the top 1 percent of the 269 programs and in front of very distinguished peer schools," says professor Carolyn Heinrich. “With the level of personal attention students get at the La Follette School, it is hard to imagine them getting a better graduate education in social policy anywhere else.”

Public Management and Administration ranked 17th in 2008, up from 20th, while Environmental Policy and Management climbed from 19th to 10th. “The environmental ranking is due in part to our strong partnership with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies,” Wolfe says. “It connects our faculty and students to a wide academic and professional community.”

Health Policy and Management ranked 16. “U.S. News didn’t even rank our Health Policy and Management program four years ago, so we are delighted that it made the top 20 this time around,” Wolfe says. “Our new dual-degree program with the university's School of Medicine and Public Health and our partnership with the Department of Population Health Sciences further strengthen our health policy and management focus.”

U.S. News asked deans, directors, department chairs and faculty members at 269 master's of public affairs and administration programs to rate the academic quality of master’s of public affairs programs on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). Scores for each school were totaled and divided by the number of respondents who rated that school. The response rate was 40 percent. The survey did not address degrees in international public affairs.

The rankings are reported in U.S. News' America's Best Graduate Schools.

— posted March 28, 2008

Alumni, faculty presentations at education conference catch attention of national press

La Follette School professor Carolyn Heinrich was pleased to see one of her former students in action this week when she presented a paper at a symposium that he chaired — and their work garnered a little national press coverage.

2007 alum Matthew Steinberg organized and chaired the session for the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting in New York City. He now is a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago’s Harris School.

USA Today reported March 26 on findings presented at the symposium, “The Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services: Perspectives on Student Achievement in Multiple Urban Settings.” The research, including that by Heinrich and her co-authors, confirmed that federally funded tutoring programs that the federal No Child Left Behind Act mandates are failing to increase the achievement of the students who most need help with their academics.

Heinrich presented one of four papers at the symposium. She addressed the relationship of the NCLB’s supplemental educational services provision — tutoring programs — to the academic achievement of low-income students in perennially underperforming schools. She and her co-authors integrated qualitative and quantitative data from a large-scale study of tutoring programs in Milwaukee Public Schools they have been conducting since April 2006.

“Our preliminary results suggest that the students in the tutoring programs are not performing any better on Wisconsin’s standardized tests than students not involved with the tutoring,” she says.

They describe which students choose to enroll in the tutoring programs, the nature and quality of the instruction they receive, and how their participation affects the students’ academic performance. “The students mostly likely to need help, those who failed a grade or are frequently absent from school, are not likely to participate in the tutoring programs,” Heinrich says.

At the conference, Steinberg presented a paper of his own, “Parental Choice Programs as a Market-Based Reform: Local Implementation of the Supplemental Educational Services Provision of NCLB.” He and his co-authors examined implementation of a parental choice reform from the national, school district and family policy contexts.

La Follette School professor John Witte also was in New York for the conference. He chaired a session on public and private school choice programs. He served as a discussant for a session that examined factors that influence student achievement, teach choice and the racial composition of charter schools. He is part of a five-year study that is looking at school voucher programs in Milwaukee Public Schools.

1996 alum Douglas N. Harris, now a La Follette School faculty affiliate and a member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Educational Policy Studies Department, chaired a symposium on teacher quality and gave a paper examining qualities that make for a good teacher.

Free tutoring failing to help needy kids, March 25, 2008, USA Today

Study questions value of tutoring program, February 27, 2008, La Follette School News

Research exploring school choice in Milwaukee, February 29, 2008, La Follette School News

Supplemental Education Services under No Child Left Behind: Who Signs Up, and What Do They Gain?, La Follette School Workoing Paper No. 2008-005

— posted March 28, 2008; updated March 31, 2008

Economist to explore costs and benefits of health behaviors

How to make bad behavior, like overeating, cost more and how to make good behavior, like exercise, more rewarding without becoming a “nanny nation” is the focus of a free public lecture by a British economist next month.

Julian Le Grand, the Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics, will present “The Giant of Excess: Individual Behavior and Public Health” on Friday, April 4, at 4 p.m. in the Fluno Center. The La Follette School of Public Affairs is sponsoring his lecture.

“Excessive smoking, drinking and eating contribute significantly to the major sources of morbidity and mortality in our society, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and kidney and liver diseases,” Le Grand says.

“But few theories explain such behaviors where the benefits occur now, but the costs impact the future – for both the individual and government, “ he adds. “Policies have to be developed that either bring some of the costs from unhealthy activities (or the benefits of healthy ones) back from the future, or reduce some of the benefits from unhealthy activities (or reduce the costs of the healthy ones) in the present.”

Such policies should not restrict too greatly any individual freedoms or autonomy to avoid the danger of the “nanny nation,” Le Grand notes. Public policy can meet these criteria, including those derived from behavioral economics and libertarian paternalism.

— posted March 25, 2008; updated April 3, 2008

Public affairs journalist visiting campus

Tom Beaumont, chief political correspondent for the Des Moines Register, is on campus March 24-27 as the spring public affairs writer in residence. A University of Wisconsin-Madison grad, Beaumont will discuss in detail the evolution of the races for the White House.

Beaumont has been The Des Moines Register's chief political reporter since 2002 and has covered presidential politics nearly continuously during that time, leading the Register's coverage of the 2004 Democratic caucus campaign and most recently the yearlong campaign for the 2008 Democrat and Republican caucuses.

In the most recent campaign, Beaumont produced a continuous stream of high-level enterprise stories that often led the national coverage, including up-close examinations of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy positions, Mike Huckabee's grassroots support, the enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats. Beaumont was the lead writer on The Register's Democrat Iowa Poll, the first to show Obama leading in the closing days of the Iowa campaign. The poll foreshadowed the outpouring of support among independents and first-time caucusgoers to the Democrats' ranks.

Beaumont has appeared frequently as a guest commentator for C-SPAN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, National Public Radio and other national, regional and local broadcast news organizations.

Before taking the political beat, Beaumont was a metro general assignment reporter for the Register from 1999 to 2002, concentrating on development in Des Moines' western suburbs, immigration and federal court. Beaumont began his career at The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, Illinois, where he covered courts and politics from 1995 to 1999. Beaumont earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

— posted March 25, 2008

Professor's book examines role of performance management

How government organizations can better achieve their public service goals is explored in a new book by La Follette School associate professor Donald P. Moynihan.

Efficiency, innovation results and accountability are the fruits of performance management, advocates argue. In recent decades government organizations have embraced the performance model — but the rush to reform has not delivered as promised.

Drawing on research from state and federal levels, Moynihan's The Dynamics of Performance Management illustrates how governments have emphasized some aspects of performance management — such as building measurement systems to acquire more performance data — but have neglected wider organizational change that would facilitate the use of such information.

In his analysis of why and how governments in the United States have made the move to performance systems, Moynihan identifies agency leadership, culture and resources as keys to better implementation, goal-based learning and improved outcomes.

Moynihan develops a model of interactive dialogue to highlight how governments selectively use performance data, which promised to optimize decision making and policy change for the public's benefit, to serve the interests of particular agencies and individuals, undermining attempts at interagency problem solving and reform.

Georgetown University Press released The Dynamics of Performance Management in March.

— posted March 24, 2008

Alumni, friends enjoy reception

Forty-eight alumni and friends of the La Follette School joined more than 50 students, faculty and staff at a reception February 21. Some came from as close as the GEF 3 building across King Street, while others drove more than 60 miles from where they work in the Milwaukee area.

The public affairs crowd filled Cocoliquot, which 1993 La Follette alum Brian Haltinner owns. Several alumni admitted they didn’t really have excuses to NOT attend, given the restaurant’s proximity to where they work.

Others went the extra mile to attend, with Kelly Rifelj edging out fellow 2007 grad Kristen Grill for traveling the most miles from work (63 vs. 61) to attend the reception, though Rifelj managed to piggyback the drive onto a meeting for work. She is a policy advisor and outreach specialist with Governor Jim Doyle’s southeast regional office. Grill is development director with the Waukesha Civic Theater.

Both said the reception was well worth the drive. “We traded a lot of stories,” Rifelj says. “The conversations ran the gamut from our opinion of positions with different Wisconsin state agencies to the benefits of organic milk.”

In attendance were alumni from 1973 and the late 1970s, a few from the 1980s, a handful from the 1990s, and a good representation from the first decade of the 21st century, including 12 members of the class of 2007. Several friends of the school who assist with career development and classroom projects stopped by, as did a couple of graduates of the Wisconsin Women in Government seminar.

The evening was made possible thanks to gifts to the La Follette School via the University of Wisconsin Foundation. “The annual reception is always a good way for students to learn about careers and possible job openings, and for alumni and friends to reconnect with each other and with the La Follette School,” says Director Bobbi Wolfe. “We also value Brian Haltinner’s graciousness in hosting the evening and we wish him well as he transitions his restaurant into its next incarnation as Restaurant Muramoto this spring.”

Three lucky alumni took home door prizes in the business card drawing. The big winner was 2007 grad Nina Carlson, who selected the travel coffee mug. She is a policy advisor to Governor Jim Doyle. Second place was Susan Levy, class of 1978, who selected the vinyl La Follette School decal, leaving Bob Nikolay, 1989, with a La Follette School ceramic coffee mug. Levy has retired as chief of the immigrant integration section for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development’s Bureau of Migrant, Refugee and Labor Services. Nikolay is a budget director with the Department of Corrections.

Faculty appreciated catching up with former students and letting them know about their research. Professor John Witte alerted several Capitol staffers about a press conference the following Monday announcing preliminary findings of a school voucher study. “The evening was a good chance for us to exchange news and ideas,” Witte says. “A lot is going on at both ends of State Street, and it’s good to hear what our alumni are up to.”

Almost 100 expected at Thursday's reception for alumni, friends, La Follette School News, February 7, 2008

— posted March 5, 2008; updated July 7, 2009

Research exploring school choice in Milwaukee

A new set of reports on the Milwaukee school voucher program provides baseline descriptive data comparing private school students who receive vouchers to students in the Milwaukee Public Schools. La Follette School professor John Witte is one of the leaders of the team carrying out the five-year School Choice Demonstration Project.

Witte and researchers from the University of Arkansas and research firm Westat reported preliminary findings in a five-year study of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program at a Madison news conference on February 25. They issued five baseline reports that examined the program’s effects on the students, parents, taxpayers, schools and communities of the city and state. The voucher program was the first if its kind when it started in 1990. It enrolled 17,749 students at 122 private schools in 2006-07. The Milwaukee students in the choice program are from the inner city; 85 percent of them are from minority groups; and the majority comes from single-parent families.

Witte’s part of the study focuses on longitudinal educational growth. The research design calls for tracking and estimating educational achievement and attainment during a five-year period. “Ultimately, we expect to answer many questions about how well voucher systems can improve academic achievement and attainment and how they can affect other student and family outcomes,” Witte says.

In the current report, Witte and his co-authors compare test scores and survey responses of students in the choice program with comparable public school students. The students’ parents were also surveyed. For the comparison, about 2,700 students in each group were carefully matched by grade, neighborhood, gender, English-language learner status and current test scores.

The summary of student testing suggests that choice students in grades 3 to 5 tend to perform slightly below Wisconsin averages compared to public school students, while students in grades 6-8 perform about the same. Ninth-graders in the private schools performed somewhat better than the average ninth-grader in MPS. Witte cautions, however, that these are only baseline data and have no implications for the impact of the voucher program or for causal effects of the different schools.

Witte’s group of researchers found that parents of students in the choice schools had lower incomes but higher levels of education than parents of otherwise similar children in public schools. Both groups of parents expressed relatively high levels of satisfaction with their child's school, but satisfaction with the choice schools was somewhat higher. The same was true of the students’ reported satisfaction, although private school students were more satisfied with specific aspects of their schools, such as safety and less drug use and violence.

Voucher study finds parity, February 25, 2008, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Research Expected to Answer Questions about School Choice in Milwaukee, February 25, 2008, University of Arkansas Daily Headlines

— posted February 29, 2008

Study questions value of tutoring program

A tutoring program in Milwaukee Public Schools does not seem to help students improve their test scores, preliminary results from a study led by La Follette School professor Carolyn Heinrich suggest. The tutoring program is funded under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

"'The preliminary results would suggest that, on average, you don't see much happening there,'" Heinrich says in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "'You don't see strong relationships between number of hours (students attend) and results.'"

Preliminary results indicate that participants in the tutoring program did not perform better on state tests than non-participants. The most effective tutoring programs involve students for 40-45 hours each school year, or about an hour a week, but few students participate that often. Students who failed a grade or who were frequently absent from school were not likely to participate in the tutoring.

Heinrich and her research team from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research will continue their investigation through June by analyzing test data and observing tutoring sessions. In 2006 they hosted focus groups and surveyed students.

Study finds tutor plan lacking, February 17, 2008, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

— posted February 25, 2008; updated March 27, 2008

Students raise $3,441 for Special Olympics

The nine public affairs students who jumped into Madison's Lake Monona in February raised $3,441 for Special Olympics Wisconsin, topping the Law School's efforts by at least $254.

First-year students take note: taking the Special Olympics polar plunge earlier in day is a good strategy to follow. "Before so many people have jumped, the lake is less churned up and less stinky," says second-year student Alexis MacDonald, one of four La Follette School students who jumped in 2008 and in 2007. However, first-year student B.J. Dernbach made up for lost time, plunging twice on February 16, once for La Follette and once for the American Girl team.

Forecast for students polar plunge relatively fair, February 14, 2008, La Follette School News

— posted February 25, 2008

Professor to focus on local enterprise, developing economies

Paola Perez-Aleman of McGill University will discuss "Upgrading Local Enterprises in Developing Economies: Building Standards and Networks" at the La Follette School Seminar on Tuesday, April 1, at noon in 206 Ingraham.

Perez-Aleman is an associate professor of strategy and organization at McGill. Her research centers on changes in economic organization and emerging governance in developing economies, particularly in Latin America. She researches institutional innovations in the private and public sectors, particularly how governments, firms and associations reshape themselves and their interactions to facilitate learning, adjustment and economic development. Her studies explore the relationships between large and small firms (multinational and local) in production networks, and the process of upgrading the capabilities of producers in developing countries to meet international productivity and quality standards. Perez-Aleman's research also focuses on the emerging institutional arrangements to coordinate decentralized organization and practices.

Perez-Aleman has received numerous awards, including those from the McArthur, Ford and Inter-American foundations. She has worked as a research consultant with the World Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the United Nations Fund for Women. She has been invited to present her work at conferences and seminars in Chile, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Netherlands, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Trinidad, and across the United States.

Her presentation is sponsored by the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy. It is co-sponsored by the Latin American, Caribbean & Iberian Studies Program, and the Sociology of Economic Change and Development Workshop.

— posted February 25, 2008

Panel recommends restrictions on radioactive materials

Hospitals, blood banks, and universities often employ devices that use radioactive cesium chloride.  A study requested by Congress and released by the National Research Council on Februrary 20 found that cesium chloride radiation sources pose a risk to society. If stolen, they could be used to construct a radiation dispersal device, a so-called dirty bomb, that, if exploded, could deny the use of large areas of a city for an extended period. The study recommends a variety of policies that would result in cesium chloride irradiators being gradually replaced by X-ray devices. These policies range from banning the importation of new cesium chloride radiation devices to a buy-back program that would encourage hospitals and blood banks to convert quickly to x-ray technology. La Follette School Professor Dave Weimer was a member of the committee that prepared the study.  

The release of the report received wide news coverage. Among those that covered the report:  Washington Post, National Public Radio, AP, Reuters, Chemical & Engineering News, New Scientist and Congressional Quarterly. The AP and Reuters stories have appeared on more than 100 news websites across the country.

Government should spur replacement of radioactive cesium chloride in medical and research equipment, February 20, 2008, National Academies News

Radiation Change Urged, February 20, 2008, Washington Post

— posted February 22, 2008; updated March 4, 2008

Older women still likely to be impoverished, professor says

Poverty is not a disappearing problem for older women, argues La Follette School assistant professor Pamela Herd and co-author Madonna Harrington Meyer in an op-ed on The Huffington Post, and this should be kept in mind as policymakers consider changes to Social Security. "The financial well being of aging women is disproportionately worse than it is for their male counterparts," the two write. "The gender gap in wages combined with the higher propensity of women to take time out for family responsibilities, results in a substantial cumulative wage gap."

"Rates of poverty among women vary dramatically by race and marital status, hitting black and Hispanic older women hardest, as well as those who raised children on their own. The combined effects are serious: while less than five percent of older white married couples are poor, 40 percent of single older black and Hispanic women are poor."

In addition, older women are hit hard by health-care costs, Herd and Harrington Meyer note in an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Older low-income women spend nearly half their income on health care; by 2025 that could rise to nearly 70 percent," they write.

They suggest that Medicare include catastrophic insurance. This could be funded through an extra fee charged to Medicare beneficiaries and through reductions in federal payments to private health plans that participate in Medicare. "Gaps in Medicare coverage are threatening the economic security the elderly have come to enjoy during the past 30 years. If we do not address those gaps soon, many more older Americans will face a retirement dominated by concerns over how to pay for the health care that can extend their lives," they write.

Herd and Harrington Meyer are the authors of the 2007 book Market Friendly or Family Friendly? The State and Gender Inequality in Old Age.

A few calmatives for seniors' soaring health care costs, February 24, 2008, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Is Poverty a Disappearing Problem for Older Women? February 20, 2008, The Huffington Post

Public affairs professor’s book documents economic, health disparities women encounter in retirement, November 19, 2008, La Follette School News

— posted February 21, 2008

Leadership seminar draws women from around Wisconsin

Back-to-back winter weather systems that closed hundreds of Wisconsin schools and scores of businesses have not deterred 24 determined women from around Wisconsin who are hungry for leadership and management training.

The 24, members of the 2008 Wisconsin Women in Government Leadership Seminar, have braved below-zero temperatures and snowfalls of 12 inches or more to attend the sessions hosted by the La Follette School of Public Affairs.

The women come as far as Manitowoc, La Crosse, Oneida, Eau Claire, Jefferson and all over the Madison area. But there have been only two weather-related absences.

“This is a tremendous group of talented and devoted students,” says professor Dennis Dresang, who teaches the course with Professor Georgia Duerst-Lahti of Beloit College. “And it’s not like they’re even rushing out to get ahead of the weather at the end of class. They stay and network and discuss until well after 9 p.m.”

The conference opened with a daylong session on January 26. But monster storms on the following two Tuesday nights, January 29 and February 5, could have made less hardy or eager students stay away.  Not this group.

The class ends February 19. A February 13 panel featured state leaders who talked about their careers and what traits and skills help women be effective managers. Panelists included:

• Terese Berceau, state representative, 76th Assembly District
• Kathleen Falk, Dane County executive
• Roberta Gassman, secretary, Department of Workforce Development
• Diane Nicks, judge, Dane County Circuit Court, Branch 6
• Kitty Rhoades, state representative, 30th Assembly District

Wisconsin Women in Government funds the graduate seminar through an annual banquet that more than 1,500 state and local elected officials, business leaders, public servants and political enthusiasts attend. WWIG has raised money to support and encourage women to choose a career in government service since 1987, and each year awards scholarships to women pursuing undergraduate and post-graduate study in public service and administration and government affairs.

— posted February 15, 2008; updated March 10, 2008

Forecast for students polar plunge relatively fair

The nine students planning to jump into Madison's Lake Monona on Saturday, February 19, are facing a forecast of 28 degrees and no wind chill to speak of.

While 28 degrees may seem a tad chilly for an outdoor dip, Friday's predicted high is zero degrees with a wind chill of zero to minus 15.

The students and a few friends have formed up as the La Follette Fightin’ Bobs Polar Plunge team to raise money for Special Olympics Wisconsin, which provides sports training and competition for nearly 10,000 athletes with cognitive disabilities in 18 sports.

Faculty and staff are doing their part to support the students in their second polar plunge, with at least two faculty and three staff members contributing money to the cause. As of Thursday afternoon, the team had exceeded its $2,500 fund-raising goal, with rumors of another faculty member planning to add to the pot.

La Follette students to jump in Lake Monona for Special Olympics in February, January 10, 2008, La Follette School News

Bobbin' along plunges students into a chilly public affair, February 21, 2007, La Follette School News

— posted February 14, 2008

Faculty show their mettle on dodgeball court

A few La Follette School faculty were feeling a tad bruised Monday morning, though not from wrestling with lawmakers about policy proposals or with students about course projects.

No, the bruises are marks of honor after a series of matches in a Saturday night dodgeball tournament at a gym on Madison’s west side. The faculty Fightin’ Bobs — estimated mean age in the mid- to upper 30s — faced much younger foes — estimated mean age in their lower-20s.

“The other teams took the match a bit more seriously than we did,” reports team captain Carolyn Heinrich. “They all had matching shirts, which put us at a serious psychological disadvantage, plus they had good, hard throws. I’ve got a battle scar in the form of a massive, bruised welt on the front of my right thigh.”

For those who can’t remember that far back to grade school (or who skipped gym class), dodgeball involves each team hurling 8-inch rubber balls at their opponent, each team staying on its side of the gym. If someone is hit, s/he goes out. If someone catches a throw, all her/his teammates come back in. The team that first reaches a deficit of players loses.

“Pam Herd was a diehard. Her strategy was to hang back, so she was frequently the last one on the floor and had to endure peltings from all angles by the opposing team,” Heinrich says. “Those results proved to be robust, that is, for the other team.”

Joining Heinrich and Herd were Don Moynihan, Geoffrey Wallace, and Greg Nemet, plus enough friends and relations to round out the team. “I had never played dodgeball before and so did not expect to be very good at it,” Moynihan says. “As it turns out, this expectation was completely fulfilled.”

Data are incomplete on the final tally of wins and losses, but despite the disparity in firepower and nimbleness, the Bobs are pleased to report they won at least one game against their younger foes.

“We may have to start recruiting from among our student body to have a shot at the big cash prizes,” Heinrich says. “However, we are confident that we can overcome any future disparities in human capital.”

— posted February 13, 2008

Professor's paper wins award for best paper in comparative politics

La Follette School assistant professor Mark Copelovitch will receive an award in April for the best paper in comparative politics for 2007. The Midwest Political Science Association will honor Copelovitch and co-author David Andrew Singer with the Kellogg/Notre Dame Award at its national conference in April. Their paper, “Financial Regulation, Monetary Policy, and Inflation in the Industrialized World,” is part of the La Follette School Working Paper Series.

At the same conference, La Follette School assistant professor Susan Yackee will receive the “Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar” Award for her 2007 presentation. The paper, co-authored with La Follette School affiliate Jason Yackee, is entitled “Is Agency Rulemaking ‘Ossified’? Testing Congressional, Presidential, and Judicial Procedural Constraints from 1983 to 2006.”

These awards are two of the nine that the Midwest Political Science Association gives each year.

— posted February 13, 2008

Chinn says federal rebate will boost economy somewhat

The federal tax rebate should help to stimulate the economy, professor Menzie Chinn tells the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, but an approach better targeted to the people most likely to spend the money would do more.

Most single taxpayers will receive $600, while married couples will receive $1,200, starting in May, under the economic stimulus plan President Bush signed February 11.

Putting more money in the hands of people who receive unemployment insurance and food stamps would have done more for the economy, Chinn says, but attempts to do so failed in Congress. He questions the stimulus package’s move to let businesses depreciate capital expenses more quickly.

The best way for consumers to boost the U.S. economy is to spend the money on goods made in the United States and to hire local services, Chinn says. That puts money back into national and local economies. Using the rebates to pay off debt won't help the economy much, only to the extent that people avoid foreclosure or serious debt. “‘Even if they don't use it for spending, it relieves pressure along other dimensions, which would probably tend to keep up spending,’” he tells the Journal-Sentinel.

Rebate dreams taking shape, February 10, 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

— posted February 13, 2008

Almost 100 expected at Thursday's reception for alumni, friends

More than 95 people thus far have said they will attend the reception for alumni and friends of the La Follette School of Public Affairs on Thursday, February 21, at Cocoliquot, 225 King St., from 5 to 7 p.m.

Among the expected guests are alumni from as far back as 1973, 10 members of the class of 2007 and five from 2006, plus former career development coordinator Mary Woodward. Thus far, 42 alumni and friends, plus 12 faculty members, have said they plan to to attend the gathering, which is an opportunity for alumni, students, faculty and others with ties to the school and public affairs to gather and talk. To RSVP, e-mail or call (608) 263-7657.

Alumni who work near the Capitol say they appreciate the event is close by, as does 1993 alum Brian Haltinner, owner of Cocoliquot. He worked in Madison restaurants while earning his bachelor’s degree in economics and then his master’s degree in public affairs.

“One of the best parts about running restaurants in downtown Madison is being close to the political action,” Haltinner says. “I’m looking forward to having those most in the know — La Follette School alumni, faculty and students — visit my establishment.”

This year's reception will have no formal presentations, just time for people to talk, says La Follette School Student Association alumni chair Alexis MacDonald. “We want to give alumni, students, faculty, friends and staff plenty of time to meet each other, and for classmates to reminisce and catch up.”

Plenty of networking took place at the 2007 reception, MacDonald says, with more than 50 alumni and friends of the school talking with each other, as well as with faculty and first- and second-year students. More than 110 people attended the February 2007 reception, 53 of them alumni or friends of the school.

The La Follette School reception is a last hurrah for Cocoliquot, which is closing at the end of February. Haltinner is partnering with another restaurateur to operate Restaurant Muramoto in the space. Haltinner also owns the cigar bar Maduro and is co-owner of Italian small-plate restaurant Osteria Papavero, both in downtown Madison.

The Madison reception follows a successful gathering in November in Washington, D.C., that drew more than 60 people, 11 of them faculty members in the area to attend the national Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management conference.

Both receptions are funded with generous donations from alumni and friends, including members of the advisory board of visitors that the La Follette School shares with the Department of Political Science.

35 alumni, friends expected at D.C.-area reception on Nov. 8, La Follette School news

Reception builds network of La Follette School alumni, friends, February 14, 2007, La Follette School news

Cocoliquot to go, Restaurant Muramoto to grow, January 7, 2008, Capital Times

— posted February 7, 2008; updated February 12, February 15, February 18, 2008

 

Speed-networking event brings together alumni, students

No one but the career development coordinator was watching the clock on a damp and rainy Monday evening. Every four minutes Mary Russell would blow her whistle, but the students and alumni were so engaged in their conversations that they delayed shifting partners for just a few more seconds.

The 13 alumni and 16 students had gathered for the La Follette School’s first speed-networking session on Monday, February 4. After registering and chatting for the first 30 minutes, the alumni took their seats, then each was joined by one or two students. They had four minutes to introduce themselves and for the students to quiz the alumni about their jobs, their career paths and advice they might have.

For alumni, the event gave them the chance to learn about what is going on at their alma mater, share their experiences and scope out potential employees. John Montgomery, deputy administrator of the Division of Administrative Services for the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance, says he appreciated meeting students in a more relaxed atmosphere before the job application process would start. “The gathering enabled us to let students know we’re interested in them and view the La Follette School as a good place to recruit,” he says.

Alumni from the event spanned 30 years of La Follette’s history. Montgomery graduated from the school’s precursor, the Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration, in 1977. Two others graduated in 2007: Kate Battiato, a policy consultant with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, and Nina Carlson, a policy advisor with the Office of Governor Jim Doyle.

Other alumni included attorneys from the public and private sectors, a human resources director, a marketing director, a legislative aide and several analysis and consultants. "I appreciated the range of career paths represented," says first-year MPA student Daniel Bush. "The interconnectedness of La Follette alumni is amazing, especially here in Madison."

Networking — finding someone who knows someone who knows someone — is an important component of the job search, says Russell, who organized the session with the La Follette School Student Association.

Students and alumni exchanged business cards as participants found they had interests in common. “Feedback from students so far has been great,” says Alexis MacDonald, LSSA alumni chair who worked with Russell and LSSA president Joe Fontaine on the event. “I’ve had a few classmates tell me they were able to make connections that may even lead to a job or internship.”

“Having the event early in the spring semester was part of the plan,” Fontaine says, “in the hope that it would help students jump-start their internship- or job-search process and help them zero in on what might interest them.”

Students may not initially appreciate a specific agency or career path, Russell says, but after they talk with a variety of people and hear about different employers, they see more options about directions to pursue.

“I learned that there are applications for policy skills in virtually every department within Wisconsin state government, not just in the budget planning and program auditing offices,” says first-year master of international public affairs student Andy McGuire. “While most of the alumni had careers in state government or local organizations, several had suggestions about where I could pursue my interest in international affairs, including the international trade and investment office within the Department of Commerce.”

On both sides, the prospects for employment looked good.

“The students were bright, motivated and enthusiastic, all qualities we look for,” Montgomery says. “I’m confident they’ll do well, whoever gets to hire them.”

Career Development: Speed Networking

— posted February 6, 2008; updated February 7, February 11, February 12, February 25, 2008

Nichols to share causes of economic slowdown

Professor emeritus Donald Nichols will outline prospects for the U.S. economy at a lunch presentation to the Rotary Club of Madison on February 6. He will focus on the causes of the economic slowdown, including subprime mortgages, the credit crunch and oil prices. After reviewing the possibility of foreign growth for maintaining U.S. growth, he will assess the likelihood that policy can keep the United States out of recession.

— posted February 4, 2008

 

La Follette School economists meet with head of Chicago Federal Reserve Bank

A day after the Federal Reserve dropped its interest rate by 0.75 percent, three La Follette School faculty met with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles L. Evans. Economists Menzie Chinn, Charles Engel and Donald Nichols joined a January 23 academic advisory meeting with Evans for a free exchange of views and ideas among policymakers, and business and academic economists about the direction of the economy.

— posted February 4, 2008

Student with Fulbright, La Follette professor have lunch — in Beijing

One of the hallmarks of the La Follette School’s small program is that professors often go the extra mile for their students.

So La Follette School professor Melanie Manion’s offer to buy student Allison Quatrini lunch in January was not all that surprising, since professors are so accessible to students.

However, they had lunch in Beijing.

Manion took time out from a workshop on constructing legal institutions for anti-corruption efforts at Peking University in mid-January. In China since August on a Fulbright scholarship, Quatrini had arrived in Beijing in December to start her research at Peking University.

“I wanted to connect Allison and Professor Xie Qingkui, who is one of the most prominent public administration scholars in China,” Manion says. “It is practically impossible to get anything done in China without good friends, and I’ve known Professor Xie for 20 years.”

Xie heads the Chinese Local Government and Local Administration Research Center where Quatrini will examine the link between the election and selection of local government officials (called cadres) and the practice of Confucianism in a Leninist context. She is focusing on the open recommendation and selection method of choosing township officials.

“I hope my research will answer three questions,” Quatrini says. “One, where do we see manifestations of Confucian theory and practice in cadre selection procedures? Two, how do the Chinese define legitimate democracy? And three, how successful is open recommendation and selection in maintaining a Leninist framework while advancing China’s political agenda?”

Before arriving in Beijing, the international public affairs student spent almost four months in Harbin in Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China. She took two introductory courses, one in newspaper reading and another in classical Chinese to prepare her for her research at Peking University. “I now have little difficulty in communicating,” she reports. “I can read newspapers and Chinese books with greater ease — I went to a bookstore yesterday looking for books to use for my research project, and I had no difficulty finding what I needed.”

She won the Fulbright scholarship and a Critical Language Enhancement Award, a new part of the Fulbright program to increase the number of Americans learning needed languages that is affiliated with the National Security Language Initiative.

Quatrini earlier won a Foreign Language and Area Studies Graduate Fellowships from the U.S. Department of Education. She used it to complete an intensive language studies program at Wisconsin’s Beloit College, where she studied intermediate Mandarin Chinese. She eventually wants to pursue a Ph.D. in political science and Asian studies.

Manion and Xie worked together on a survey project in the late 1980s and 1990s and they have kept in touch since — Manion tries to see him every time she travels to China to conduct her research on corruption and Chinese politics and policy.

Professor Xie joined the lunch group and gave Quatrini suggestions for contacts to help her plan her field research. “I especially appreciated his taking us to his office so I could find him easily again,” Quatrini says.

“I told Professor Xie that this working relationship makes him sort of a grandfather, as he was my mentor and Allison is my student,” Manion says.

La Follette student wins Fulbright to study language, governance in China, May 24, 2007, La Follette School News

— posted February 1, 2008

Decline in research on new energy technology problematic, professor says

Without private and federal government research into new sources of energy, the United States may find moving away from fossil fuels difficult, La Follette School assistant professor Gregory F. Nemet says in a Chronicle of Higher Education article. He was commenting on a Center for Science in the Public Interest report outlining declines in the decline of research and development by the energy industry and the federal government. The center's report relied on data Nemet and co-author D.M. Kammen published in the journal Energy Policy in 2007. Nemet says research spending needs to increase tenfold.

His forthcoming article in the Winter 2008 La Follette Policy Report finds that the learning curve, a tool for predicting improvements in technology, is just one of several models policymakers should consider when weighing how to support emerging energy technologies.

Decades of Neglect in Energy Research will be Hard to Reverse, Report Says, January 22, 2008, Chronicle of Higher Education

Does Learning By Doing Improve Energy Technology?, Winter 2008, La Follette Policy Report

Nemet welcomes private investment in renewables, December 6, 2007, La Follette School News

— posted February 1, 2008

Trade journal features international business course project

Little did Todd Kowalewski realize that his experience teaching middle school students whose parents’ jobs were outsourced would lead to development of a method for corporations to evaluate potential locations for building new facilities.

The second-year international public affairs student is co-author of a January 2008 article in Inside Supply Management, an international trade journal published by the Institute for Supply Management. Kowalewski wrote the article with a classmate from a global sourcing class he took in spring 2007 at the School of Business. The course’s lecturer, John M. McKeller, is also a co-author. He is a member of the faculty at the School of Business' Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management.

Kowalewski first encountered outsourcing of labor as a teacher at a suburban Milwaukee middle school when the parents of two students lost their jobs because their employers outsourced their positions. Kowalewski came to the La Follette School of Public Affairs in fall 2006 to earn a master’s degree and decided to pursue outsourcing after talking with professor Menzie Chinn, an expert in international economics.

The global sourcing course fit perfectly with the La Follette School’s focus field on international business and government, Kowalewski says. “The analytical training and rigor of leading economic thinking that we receive at La Follette is widely applicable and made for a great partnership with the School of Business, from working with the client to conducting data analysis to publishing our results in the trade journal.”

The students’ client, Microsoft, sought an analysis of where to locate a call center. Kowalewski and classmate Asutosh Pathak, now a supply chain manager for AAR Aircraft Component Services in New York, devised a spreadsheet they call Decision Support Model that businesses can use to evaluate locations.

“Microsoft needed to assess worldwide locations for consistency with its operational needs,” Kowalewski says. “This meant they required an objective analysis of factors specific to each location so they could make comparisons.”

Rather than turning to expensive analysis tools and consultants, the students applied what Kowalewski had picked up in his La Follette courses. “In Melanie Manion’s Political Economy of Corruption and Good Governance and Menzie Chinn’s Macroeconomic Policy and International Financial Regulation classes, we learned about free databases that proved invaluable for our analysis,” Kowalewski says.

“What intrigued Inside Supply Management was that we were able to do the analysis using data accessible to anyone via the Internet,” adds Kowalewski, who presented the model to the Madison chapter of the Institute for Supply Management, which has about 160 members.

In the end, their model matched what giant consulting firms McKinsey & Company and A.T. Kearney had recommended. “It was exciting,” Kowalewksi says, “even though it’s not rocket science — anyone familiar with the tools and data analysis could have devised the same model.”

A New Method for Evaluating Outsourcing, January 2008, Inside Supply Management

— posted January 29, 2008

Reschovsky addresses foreclosures, property taxes, housing tenure and tax reform

While on leave from the La Follette School this academic year, professor Andrew Reschovsky is giving presentations and talking with the media.

He presents a paper, "Housing Tenure Choice, Race, and the Recommendations of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform," co-authored with Richard K. Green to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's New England Study Group on January 31. The following week, he addresses "Property Tax Responses to State Aid Cuts: Lessons from the Post-2001 State Fiscal Crisis" in a lecture given to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, where he is a visiting fellow. He explores the extent to which local governments responded to these declines in state aid by raising property taxes. On average local school districts increased property taxes on the order of 25 cents for each one dollar cut in state aid. These results highlight the important role that the property tax plays in maintaining the stability of the state and local sector.

Reschovsky tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the high number of foreclosures taking place in poorer neighborhoods in Milwaukee County is not a surprise. "In more affluent areas, property owners are able to hold on longer and have not yet reduced their asking prices, he noted. But, Reschovsky said, a large number of foreclosures could spread to other neighborhoods and owners could be forced to sell homes at substantially reduced prices. Some fear that would mean a broader decline in property values. 'Falling market values will be reflected in falling assessed values,' Reschovsky said. 'This means that local governments will need to raise their (property tax) rates just in order to collect the same amount of money they collected last year.'"

Foreclosed properties piling up, January 20, 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

— posted January 29, 2008

Reception for alumni and friends set Thursday, February 21

Invitations are in the mail to alumni and friends of La Follette School of Public Affairs living or working in the Madison area. Any alum or anyone involved with La Follette School programs is invited to the reception at Cocoliquot, 225 King St., from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 21.

Cocoliquot is owned by a member of the La Follette School’s class of 1993, Brian Haltinner, who worked in Madison restaurants while earning his bachelor’s degree in economics and then his master’s degree in public affairs.

The La Follette School reception is a last hurrah for Cocoliquot, which is closing at the end of February. Haltinner is partnering with another restaurateur to operate Restaurant Muramoto in the space. Haltinner also owns the cigar bar Maduro and is co-owner of Italian small-plate restaurant Osteria Papavero, both in downtown Madison.

In addition to a new location for the La Follette School reception, a new format is planned, with no formal presentations, says La Follette School Student Association alumni chair Alexis MacDonald. “We want to give alumni, students, faculty, friends and staff plenty of time to meet each other, and for classmates to reminisce and catch up.”

Plenty of networking took place at the 2007 reception, MacDonald says, with more than 50 alumni and friends of the school talking with each other, as well as with faculty and first- and second-year students.

More than 110 people attended the Madison gathering last year. The Madison reception follows a successful gathering in November in Washington, D.C., that drew more than 60 people, 11 of them faculty members in the area to attend the national Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management conference.

Both receptions are funded with generous donations from alumni and friends, including members of the advisory board of visitors that the La Follette School shares with the Department of Political Science.

“One of the best parts about running restaurants in downtown Madison is being close to the political action,” Haltinner says. “I’m looking forward to having those most in the know — La Follette School alumni, faculty and students — visit my establishment.”

35 alumni, friends expected at D.C.-area reception on Nov. 8, La Follette School news

Reception builds network of La Follette School alumni, friends, Feb. 14, 2007, La Follette School news

Cocoliquot to go, Restaurant Muramoto to grow, Jan. 7, 2008, Capital Times

— posted January 23, 2008; updated February 7, 2008

2 alumni start service as ambassadors to Greece, Angola

Two La Follette School alumni are serving as U.S. ambassadors. Dan Mozena, class of 1973, was accredited as ambassador to Angola upon presentation of his credentials to President José Eduardo dos Santos on January 9, while Daniel V. Speckhard, class of 1982, was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Greece on November 7, and arrived in Athens on November 15.

Speckhard’s last posting was as the deputy chief of mission at U.S. Embassy Baghdad, following a year as director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office there.

From 2003 to 2005, Speckhard served as director of policy planning responsible for advising and assisting the Secretary General, senior NATO management, and the NATO Council in addressing strategic issues facing the alliance. From 2000 to 2003, he was NATO's deputy assistant secretary general for political affairs, covering political relations with the countries of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, and the Mediterranean. During this period, Speckhard received the NATO Service Medal for his crisis management work.

As U.S. ambassador to Belarus from 1997 to 2000, Speckhard worked closely with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union to promote democratic reform, human rights, and institutional development. From 1993 to 1997, he was a deputy to the ambassador-at-large for the new independent states at the State Department in Washington. He was responsible for a broad range of political, security and economic issues facing large parts of the former Soviet Union.

From 1990 to 1993, Speckhard served as an advisor and then director of policy and resources for the deputy secretary of state, coordinating and overseeing foreign aid funding in support of U.S. policy objectives. He received special recognition for his role in reorienting these programs to meet the new challenges of the post-Cold War era. From 1981 to 1990, his assignments included positions in the International Affairs Division of the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Agency for International Development, staff member in the U.S. Senate, and in state and local government.

A member of the Senior Foreign Service, Mozena served as director for the Office of Southern African Affairs from 2004 to 2007, when, among other responsibilities, he provided leadership to the U.S. bilateral relationship with Angola. As director, Mozena established as his highest priorities developing and supporting U.S. policies to help southern Africa fight and win the war against HIV/AIDS, strengthen democracy and improve governance, enhance regional stability, and promote economic growth to reduce poverty.

Immediately prior to returning to Washington as director, Mozena was deputy chief of mission in Lusaka, Zambia, where he had begun his Foreign Service career in 1982. In what proved to be his most rewarding Foreign Service assignment, Mozena served as officer-in-charge for South Africa and as deputy director for Southern African Affairs during South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. Mozena assisted with then-President Mandela’s historic state visit to Washington. Mozena was also posted to then-Zaire, where he and his wife had earlier served as Peace Corps volunteers, helping local farmers develop better ways to raise chickens.

— posted January 23, 2008

La Follette School pitches in to serve meal at Ronald McDonald House

Despite the busyness of finals and the impending winter break, the La Follette School faculty, staff, and students worked together December 18 to serve dinner at Madison's Ronald McDonald House.

Some Bobs donated desserts or funds for the meal, and four students — Holly Bedwell, Paul Ferguson, Melissa Swearingen and Kim Zamastil — prepared and served tacos with all the fixings to the families of children staying at the American Family Children's Hospital.

Zamastil, the La Follette School Student Association community service chair, hopes people from the La Follette School can serve dinner at the Ronald McDonald House at least once during spring semester.

— posted January 14, 2008; updated January 16, 2008

La Follette student stumps for Edwards

First-year student Peter Rickman has had a busy winter break. He is chairman of Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District Democratic Party and lead organizer for John Edwards' presidential campaign in Wisconsin, the Capital Times reported in late December, and so he spent New Year 's in Iowa for the January 3 caucuses.

Rickman works full time at a software company and is in his first year of pursuing a master's degree in public affairs at the La Follette School. He also is one of the student co-chairs for Students for John Edwards at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rickman has supported Edwards for more than a year.

Edwards “‘offers the most coherent progressive vision for where this country can and should be,’” Rickman told the Capital Times in December. “‘He is the candidate that will best help build a sustainable progressive movement in this country and he has been out in front fighting on progressive issues and winning for his entire lifetime.’”

When Edwards comes to Wisconsin, Rickman says he will try to get him to stop by La Follette.

— posted January 14, 2008

Faculty win awards, share knowledge around the world

La Follette School faculty are earning recognition for their research and teaching.

Susan Webb Yackee has received the “Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar” Award for her 2007 paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association’s annual meeting. The paper, which she co-authored with La Follette School affiliate Jason Yackee, is entitled “Is Agency Rulemaking ‘Ossified’? Testing Congressional, Presidential, and Judicial Procedural Constraints from 1983 to 2006.”

The Midwest Political Science Association sponsors 10 awards for outstanding papers presented at the annual national conference. Conference discussants, panel chairs, and section heads make nominations after the conference. Award committees select the winners.

La Follette School Professor Melanie Manion is joining four other American anti-corruption experts and several Chinese colleagues in a Workshop on Constructing Legal Institutions for Anti-Corruption, held at Peking University on January 12–13. The workshop is organized by the China Law Center of Yale Law School in collaboration with the Peking University Law School.

The team of experts was assembled by the China Law Center. The other American participants are Susan Rose-Ackerman (Yale University), Alasdair Roberts (Syracuse University), Nancy Boswell (president, Transparency International–USA), and Peter Clark (partner, Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft LLP).

Manion is the only participant with expertise on both anti-corruption issues and Chinese politics. Her book Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland China and Hong Kong (Harvard University Press, 2004) is being translated for publication in mainland China.

An article by Donald Moynihan has won the Dimock Award from the journal Public Administration Review for best lead article published in 2007. He co-authored the article, “The Role of Organizations in Fostering Public Service Motivation” with Sanjay K. Pandey. In January, Moynihan traveled to Singapore to talk to government officials and academics about the use of networks in crisis response, drawing on his 2007 report to the IBM Center for the Business of Government, “From Forest Fires to Hurricane Katrina: Case Studies of Incident Command Systems.”

Associate Director Menzie Chinn presented two papers at the annual American Economic Association meetings in New Orleans in January 4-6. The first paper was “China’s Current Account and Exchange Rate,” a La Follette School working paper coauthored with Yin-Wong Cheung and Eiji Fujii. The second was entitled “A Faith-based Initiative: Do We Really Know that a Flexible Exchange Rate Regime Facilitates Current Account Adjustment?,” coauthored with Shang-Jin Wei.

In addition, the Financial Times cited Chinn in a December story picked up by MSNBC about the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar against other world currencies. A 2006 La Follette School working paper Chinn wrote with Jeffrey Frankel, Will the Euro Eventually Surpass the Dollar as Leading International Reserve Currency?, argues that the euro could overtake the dollar.

During January, Bob Haveman and Barbara Wolfe are again visiting professors at Australian National University in Canberra. While there, they continue working on their research projects and engage in extensive interactions with faculty and students at ANU. Each of them will present research seminars on their work at the university, as well as attend conferences on topics related to their research. Rumor has it that they will also take in some of the Australian Open, and check out some of the nice South Australian wines.

Dennis Dresang shares his thoughts about athletes and independent study courses in a recent article in the Capital Times. The newspaper’s review of University of Wisconsin-Madison records for summer 2004 to spring 2007 found that Dresang taught the second-most independent, or directed, study courses for athletes.

The Capital Times reported that “legislators and members of the governor's Cabinet often come to [Dresang] with projects such as a policy analysis of women in the corrections system or youth involvement in gangs. Then he sends out e-mails and uses word-of-mouth to find interested students. Student who can't get a course in the timetable will sometimes seek projects, too.

“Students typically work eight to 12 hours a week on internships, as well as writing some papers and doing some reading.

“‘When somebody does directed study, I will say that this is a product we need done in a good way. I want you to commit to a good job,’ Dresang said. ‘I don't accept work turned in until it's an 'A' quality paper. That is the contract up front.’”

“He estimated that athletes make up about one-third of his directed study students.

“‘Athletes are students like anybody else. They are good students,’ he said. ‘We do a good job of screening out athletes who will not succeed academically.’”

Academic Rigor? Athlete's Independent Study Courses Draw Attention but UW Officials Say Everything's OK, January 1, 2008, Capital Times

— posted January 10, 2008; updated January 11, 2008

La Follette students to jump in Lake Monona for Special Olympics in February

Following a successful jump last year, students will return to the icy depths of Madison's Lake Monona when they take a polar plunge as part of a fund-raiser for Special Olympics Wisconsin.

So far, nine students, plus a few friends have joined the La Follette Fightin’ Bobs Polar Plunge team and are accepting pledges from family, friends and faculty. Special Olympics Wisconsin has scheduled plunging from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. on Saturday, February 16, at Olin Turville Park.

The idea to participate in the Polar Plunge all started last year when student Brad Campbell, then in his first year at La Follette, decided to step forward and take the plunge. He received an e-mail calling for volunteers and felt compelled to jump to benefit Special Olympics Wisconsin, which provides sports training and competition for nearly 10,000 athletes with cognitive disabilities in 18 different sports year-round.

“I was sitting inside over the weekend, looking at the thermometer drop lower and lower outside my window," Campbell says, “and I thought to myself 'Hmmm, I could really go for a swim right about now!'

“At the same time, I was feeling guilty about not having volunteered for anything lately. So when I read the e-mail invitation to participate, I thought 'Wow! Swimming in February AND helping a good cause, what could be better?'"

As it turned out, Campbell wasn’t the only one with the intention to jump into a frozen Lake Monona. Together with fellow students Kate Nast and Alexis MacDonald, he formed the Fightin’ Bobs Polar Plunge team. The three recruited a dozen more La Follette students and friends to join the team, and by plunge day, the Fightin’ Bobs had collected almost double their goal in donations.

“We ended up shattering our pledge goal and raised more than $2,500 for Special Olympics Wisconsin,” says second-year student Alexis MacDonald. “We were very grateful for the support of faculty, staff and fellow La Follette students, who generously donated almost $500 to our cause.”

Now, the Fightin’ Bobs are gearing up for their second appearance at the Polar Plunge.

“We had such a great time last year, that there’s no way we could pass up this year’s opportunity," says second-year student Kate Nast, the team’s co-captain. “We’re challenging ourselves to surpass last year’s record! A few minutes in freezing cold water is most definitely worth it.”

Second-year student Elizabeth Zeman, also making a repeat appearance at the Polar Plunge, says, “I used to work with cognitively disabled adults, so this is a cause that has a special place in my heart.”

Bobbin' along plunges students into a chilly public affair, February 21, 2007, La Follette School news

— posted January 10, 2008; updated February 11, February 14, 2008

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