In my fifth year at UConn, I am grateful to have the opportunity to work in an exceptional team of faculty and staff, excellent students and dedicated alumni. I feel that we accomplished a lot together, and I am thrilled about the future direction of the Department of Public Policy (DPP). The coming year will be one of the most exciting years in the history of our Department.
First, through the appropriations process, the State legislature has moved the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy (IMRP) from Central Connecticut State University to UConn. Leadership at UConn has decided that the DPP would be an appropriate home for IMRP, which will launch at UConn on October 1, 2021. The IMRP brings six full-time employees as well as several contractors and part-time employees. Its current research portfolio includes applied research on traffic stops, racial profiling, sentencing equity and children of incarcerated parents. We look forward to welcoming IMRP to the DPP Network!
Second, our three masters programs (MPA, MPP and MASR) will be undergoing a full curriculum review in 2021-2022. Curriculum review is a process that engages our alumni, students, faculty and employers to ensure that our curriculum is adequately preparing our graduates for the job market. Our faculty and staff will be using state-of-the-art technology and elaborate engagement of our stakeholders throughout this process.
Third, this year we will be recruiting two tenure-track faculty members, an outreach coordinator, and a career director. While we will miss our retiring colleagues, the new hires will help reshape our operation while maintaining our strong values of service. We hope to continue serving our students and community with cutting edge curriculum, professional graduate education, applied and scholarly research, and outreach.
As we look forward to the opportunities ahead, we also want to acknowledge our current activities that have done well over the last few years. This Fall, the Department welcomed 100 MPA, MASR, MPP, and Nonprofit students. Our current and incoming MPA Fellows cohorts continue to draw a diverse and exceptional group of public service professionals.
Thanks to our alumni and community partners, the Internship and Professional Practice program (IPP) continues to be successful. This year, we placed 74 interns who will complete over 43,000 hours in public and nonprofit agencies over the academic year. Our strong program curricula and exceptional students continue to attract employers to our IPP program.
Our mentoring program continues to be very successful in its third year of operation. More than 100 alumni will mentor our current and incoming students this year. If you are interested in participating in the program, please email Candace Fitzpatrick. As a token of appreciation for their efforts, our mentors will also enjoy free enrollment in any Public Service Executive Leadership Collaborative (PSELC) workshop when they accompany their mentees to that workshop.
Encore!Connecticut was relaunched in March 2020 as a Saturday program. We have had two full cohorts and the program has been continually successful in recruiting and placing professionals in nonprofit positions across the State.
This year, we also entered into a partnership with the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven to provide nonprofit leadership programming for nonprofit leaders of color. We are thrilled about this partnership and are looking forward to adding more of these programs to our outreach portfolio.
We have been regularly posting news about our student, faculty, and staff achievements on social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter). We have also been posting job announcements on alumni LinkedIn and Facebook pages. Our career listserv has also linked students and alumni to regional employment opportunities. If you have a position announcement to make, please email it to DPP@UConn.edu and we will forward to the listserv and post to our social media. We would appreciate you letting your HR staff know that we have this free service. We automatically added all current students and recent graduates (two years out) to the listserv. All our alumni are also welcome to join. If you would like to receive these job announcements, please join the listserv by:
- Sending an e-mail to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UCONN.EDU
- Leaving the subject blank
- Entering in the body of the e-mail this command, filled in with the respective information:
- To subscribe: SUB DPP_CAREERS-L Firstname Lastname
It is my pleasure to welcome to our team Nina Brooks, Charles Kaye-Essien, Amy Keach, Gregg Adler, Lilia Minaya, and TJ Jones. We are all looking forward to an excellent 2021-2022.
Sincerely,
Mohamad G. Alkadry, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head