A few days ago we held our annual Department of Public Policy Welcome Back reception. The 150 students, alumni, faculty, staff and community partners added to our excitement about what our community of faculty, students and alumni accomplished last year and what we are well positioned to accomplish this coming academic year.
We had a very successful 2018-2019 academic year. The 2020 U.S. News and World Report rankings of public affairs programs placed us again in the top 50 among public affairs programs and top 10 among public budgeting and finance specialty areas. Many thanks to our faculty, students and staff who helped us maintain these top rankings. We have been regularly posting news about our student, faculty and staff achievements on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Follow us on any or all of these media if you have not already done so. We promise to not disappoint.
Last year, we relaunched the MPA Fellows program as a Saturday cohort program. Our current and incoming Fellows cohorts are full, and have a diverse and exceptional record in public service. This Fall we welcome 80 new students to our MPA, MPA Fellows, MPP, and MASR programs – which is a record number of incoming students in our Department.
Thanks to our alumni and community partners, our Internship and Professional Practice program is also seeing record engagement this year. Our welcome luncheon for Internship supervisors reminded us of the importance of these community partners to DPP. It also reminded us of the value that our interns add to the professional community that we serve. This academic year, our interns will spend a total of 30,825 hours working in these placements. Our internship program is central to our community engagement.
Our mentoring program engaged many of our alumni in its first year and is off to an excellent start this year. If you are interested in joining that 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 workshop when they accompany their mentees to that workshop.
We will continue to post all job announcements on our alumni LinkedIn and Facebook pages. Because we realize that many alumni might miss these announcements, our staff are launching a new 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 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 (2 years out) to the listserv. All our alumni are also welcomed 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
- We will be very careful to only send relevant career announcements to this listserv, and every message we send will give you the option to unsubscribe if you wish to do so.
Last year, we launched the Public Service Executive Leadership Collaborative, which brought professional development opportunities to our alumni and the State’s public service community. In its inaugural program, we enrolled more than 150 trainees in the first 6 workshops. The reviews were excellent. This coming year, the Collaborative is offering 9 workshops, and we are able to continue to offer our alumni a 50% discount.
Encore!Connecticut has now been redesigned to accommodate private sector working professionals who are interested in future public service careers. The new program will be run over four Saturdays in March-May 2020 with fellowships running through the end of June 2020. If you wish to recommend a friend or colleague for this program, please let Dave Garvey know.
We are also very excited to welcome some new faces to our Department in 2019-2020. Dr. Yusun Kim (Syracuse University) will join our faculty. Maura Maloney has joined our staff as an operations coordinator. Three exceptional public servants will also join our adjunct faculty: Matthew Hart (Town Manager, Town of West Hartford), Penny Davis (Chief Human Resources Officer, CT Department of Social Services), and Paul Sullivan (Sr. Vice President, American Red Cross).
We are all looking forward to an excellent 2019-2020.
Sincerely,
Mohamad G. Alkadry, Ph.D.