Welcome to a new academic year! This year is indeed a special year for the School of Public Policy (SPP). Our community of alumni, students, faculty, staff and public service professionals will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program. We will celebrate the past 50 years of contributions by our alumni and faculty as we map out the next 50 years for a professional graduate program that has provided much leadership to public and nonprofit sectors in the State of Connecticut and the nation. Our past is worthy of celebration, and so is our present path and future prospects.
The School of Public Policy has healthy enrollments and a great lineup of faculty and staff colleagues to equip our students with state-of-the-art competencies in their degrees. We start this academic year as a School that prides itself in research, teaching and service excellence.
Our faculty continue to be leaders in several areas of research including finance and budgeting, education reform, environmental policy, social equity, gender, race and ethnic disparities, nonprofit management, gun violence prevention, social policy and slavery reparations. Our faculty continue to be engaged in top scholarly research, and are also contributing directly to policy forums and policies in these areas. Our faculty are more than ever contributing to enhancing the quality of life of people in organizations and communities. Last year, we welcomed the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy (IMRP) to the School. IMRP adds to our portfolio of contributions to improving the lives of the State’s residents, particularly communities of color in the State of Connecticut. Our Internship and Professional Practice (IPP) program is stronger than ever. Our 53 interns will work in public and nonprofit organizations this Fall and Spring. Our mentoring program also engaged many of our alumni in its first three years, and is off to an excellent start this year. Many thanks to the over 100 alumni who are engaged in our mentoring program.
We will continue to post all job announcements on our alumni LinkedIn and Facebook pages. Three years ago, we also launched a moderated career listserv as a service to our students, alumni, and regional employers. If you have a position announcement to make, please email it to publicpolicy@uconn.edu and we will forward to the listserv as well as post it to our social media. We would appreciate you letting your HR staff know that we provide this service. Recent alumni are automatically added to the listserv while alumni who graduated more than three years ago can request to be added by contacting publicpolicy@uconn.edu.
Over the past four years, the Public Service Executive Leadership Collaborative (PSELC) has offered professional development opportunities to our alumni and the State’s public service community. In its first four years, this initiative enrolled more than 500 trainees in its workshops. I encourage you to take full advantage of the continuing education opportunities offered by the Collaborative.
Our Encore!Connecticut program is also back and is providing important support for future public servants. Our partnership with the Greater New Haven Community Foundation is continuing as we welcome our second cohort of Emerging Leaders of Color. We are very proud of this partnership – it is a very impressive group of leaders and we are honored to be in their career path.
Finally, my family and I wish our students’, faculty members’ and staff’s families a healthy and successful academic year. We also wish our alumni’s families a healthy year and success in their professional lives.
Sincerely,
Mohamad G. Alkadry, Ph.D.
Professor & School Director