On behalf of my faculty and staff colleagues, I wish our community of students, alumni, colleagues, friends, and nation a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year.
This newsletter celebrates the work of our faculty in several research areas: social policy, social equity, public finance and budgeting, and nonprofit management. We rarely highlight our faculty’s research impact but we will start doing a better job of showcasing their impact! I strongly encourage you to look through the three articles. I am proud to be in the company of such amazing colleagues.
In March 2020, we were positioned for the opportunities ahead and we were enjoying record engagement, record enrollment, and continued excellence in teaching, research, and service. Although the pandemic has affected many lives and organizations, it has not affected our momentum and our resolve to always be a premier destination for public service education in the State of Connecticut, New England, and the nation. In the spirit of looking forward, I see three positive opportunities ahead.
First, the year 2020 brought new light to socio-economic disparities and racial and ethnic injustice. More people became aware of racial injustice in our law enforcement and criminal justice systems. The involuntary switch to distance learning highlighted the digital gap and socio-economic disparities that exist in our society. While these issues remain unresolved, I believe and hope that awareness is half the battle, and that future policy action will tighten the digital gap and move us toward a more just society. I know that our faculty, students, and alumni will be at the center of future action. To help position our students and alumni for these challenges, we recently introduced several initiatives including a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) specialization, a DPP alumni-faculty-students race and equity dialogue group, and several DEI professional development opportunities.
Second, the Covid crisis forced most of us to teach online this year. Our faculty and staff worked very hard to accommodate the new reality. Our students were very accommodating. We learned much about the appropriate mix of in-person and online training, and we will certainly put that knowledge to good use as we continue to imagine the curriculum and pedagogy of the future. Our outreach programs like Encore!Connecticut and the Public Service Executive Leadership Collaborative will resume in-person programming in Fall 2021, but will take advantage of the online learning technologies.
Third, the Covid crisis underscored the importance of professional public management and evidence/science-based decision making to the survival and prosperity of our communities. This will hopefully signal a renewed recognition of the value of the degrees and education held by our students and alumni.
I hope you will join me in seeing opportunities ahead. Until we gather again in the Hartford Times Building, please stay safe.
Sincerely,
Mohamad G. Alkadry, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head (link)
Our mentoring program continues to successfully provide support to our students. If you are interested in joining that program, please email Candace Fitzpatrick.
Alumni may now join our DPP career listserv and receive/send position announcements to the listserv. Please let your HR staff know that we have this free service for area employers. If you have an announcement, please email it to DPP@UConn.edu and we will share it with our listserv subscribers as well as post it to our social media. If you would like to receive these job announcements, you are welcome to subscribe to this listserv by:
- Sending an email to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UCONN.EDU
- Leaving the subject blank
- Entering in the body of the email the following command, filled in with your name:
- SUB DPP_CAREERS-L FirstName LastName