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January 2007 Welcome to The Eller Times, sharing highlights of news, events, people, and partners of the School of Public Administration and Policy, Eller College of Management, The University of Arizona.
For nearly 20 years, the School of Public Administration and Policy has offered a dynamic public administration program that has been at the cutting edge of the field, focused on collaborative networks in areas like health, local government, natural resources, and criminal justice and security. We describe our program as “Public Service with a Management Edge” because we are enriched by access to the Eller College of Management’s departments of management and organizations, management information systems (MIS), economics, finance, marketing, and accounting. We are unique among leading public administration programs as we combine a business school experience with a solid public management education. This critical advantage yields well-rounded managers who can lead across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. The success of this approach is measured in the quality of our graduates, whether they go on to positions in local or state government, nonprofit agencies, or private firms that deliver public services. I am pleased to share a few of these stories with you as we celebrate another year of success at The University of Arizona’s School of Public Administration and Policy. H. Brinton Milward UA Partners with University of Washington and University of Southern California for Consortium on Collaborative Governance
“The partnership evolved out of discussions over the past twelve months,” says H. Brinton Milward, director of the School of Public Administration and Policy. “We are all committed to encouraging the research needed to understand the impact and efficacy of public, private, and nonprofit collaborations and translate that into our curriculum.”
In addition, the CCG plans to sponsor an annual symposium series of research visits so that faculty at each school can present current research to the partner institutions. The purpose of these visits is to encourage the development of joint research projects between faculty at the three schools. A major goal of the Consortium is to develop teaching materials in the area of collaborative governance to move the MPA curriculum into an era where public services are delivered by public, nonprofit, and private organizations. Eller Hosts International Ethics Case Competition
Students from 21 universities — including schools from Canada, China, and Mexico — gathered at the Eller College on October 26 and 27 for the annual International Ethics Case Competition. “Business professionals face ethical dilemmas large and small throughout their careers,” says Paul Melendez, director of the Ethics and Honors Undergraduate Programs and a School of Public Administration and Policy lecturer. “The competition grew out of the need to prepare students for that reality.” Each university sent a team of two students to formally present their analysis of an ethical case, authored by Melendez and distributed in advance. Teams examined a proposal for a bank to offer loans to illegal immigrants using IRS-assigned Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, a legal practice with significant ethical gray areas. Students considered the bank’s potential revenue vs. risk, as well as factors including neighborhood revitalization and public perception as they prepared their recommendations. In the first round of the double-blind competition, teams were divided into regions, and gave presentations to a judging panel of business leaders. That afternoon, the four regional finalists presented to the full judging panel and an audience of nearly 200 students. “Four finalists emerged from the 21 teams,” says competition judge and Department of Economics executive-in-residence Bill Bowen. “There were five teams in the region that I judged, and though we ultimately selected BYU to go forward, it was close. There were some darn good teams.” Philip Arias and Sarah McMullin of Brigham Young University ultimately took top honors, winning a $1,500 cash prize to split, and the University of Wyoming came in second. “It was a horse race between one and two,” says Bowen. “BYU was even better in the longer regional round, but they demonstrated that they understood the case, developed a conclusion, and made a strong impact in presentation.” He notes that they were one of the few teams to come out in front of the podium and engage the judging panel with eye contact. McMullin, he says, didn’t even use notes during the team’s engaging presentation. University of Washington came in third, and University of North Dakota came in fourth. The University of Texas-Austin and Pennsylvania State University each won Bright Line awards for arguing highly ethical positions. Arizona Public and Nonprofit Leaders Grow Management Abilities at Southwest Leadership Program
During the last week of September 2006, 42 government and nonprofit leaders from around the state gathered for the 14th annual Southwest Leadership Program. Attendees came from organizations including the Better Business Bureau and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce; city governments including Tucson, Sierra Vista, and Peoria; and counties including Pima, Pinal, and Gila. The conference served police captains, public works officers, building inspectors, and management analysts alike. The five-day professional development program addressed the complexities, challenges, and rewards of leadership as a public servant through sessions on collaborative networks, ethics, working with the media, negotiation, and human resources. Participants earned a Certificate in Public Policy and Management from The University of Arizona. “It’s the longest standing executive education program at the Eller College of Management,” says School of Public Administration and Policy lecturer and program director Paul Melendez. This year, the program’s attendance grew 40% over last year.
School of Public Administration and Policy Partners with UA's College of Nursing and the Arizona Nurses Association to Boost Healthcare Recruitment and Retention
With its exploding population and an above-average proportion of 65+ residents, Arizona is facing a potentially massive shortage in available healthcare over the next 20 years. To head off the crisis, The University of Arizona’s College of Nursing, the School of Public Administration and Policy, and the Arizona Nurses Association have joined forces to develop the Arizona Healthcare Leadership Academy (AzHCLA). Nearly 200 healthcare workers have attended to date, and the Academy plans to train hundreds more each year. The Academy is a two-tiered program, each tier consisting of four education days, designed to teach fundamental (Tier I) and advanced (Tier II) leadership skills to professionals in the healthcare industry. Participants receive 26.4 contact hours from the Arizona Nurses Association upon program completion. The AzHCLA improves the nursing environment by providing skills and knowledge to nurses already in management positions but lacking critical leadership training. “Many healthcare professionals in management have great experiential training but little or no formal education in team leadership, finance, conflict resolution, organizational dynamics, communication, and other fundamental management skills,” says Eller Professor of Public Administration and Policy and program co-founder Keith Provan. “The Academy’s training creates more effective operations and a more positive work environment. Not only does that make for happier employees — again, targeting, attracting, and retaining healthcare workers — more importantly, it leads to better patient care.”
International Objectives
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Roberto Valdez, MPA '07, with his first FINCA client in Honduras. |
As an undergraduate student in Monterrey, Mexico, Roberto Valdez studied economics. Two years of experience in the private and public sectors — working first as a co-editor and analyst for a newspaper’s business and economics section and then as a small enterprise consultant for the state government of Sonora — helped shape his goal of working on international development issues.
“I enjoyed public sector economics because it combined my technical background with public administration,” he explains. Once he decided to focus his energy on international development, he began looking at graduate schools, eventually choosing the School of Public Administration and Policy because, he says, most public policy programs in Mexico focus on domestic issues.
Last summer, Valdez completed an internship with Washington, D.C.-based FINCA International, a nonprofit agency specializing in microfinance that provides poor people in developing nations with financial services. During the course of his time with FINCA, Valdez traveled to southern Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, surveying 500 FINCA clients for an assessment project. He gathered data on the impact of FINCA programs and ultimately offered recommendations to FINCA regarding the most successful programs, and those that could be improved in given communities.
FINCA allowed Valdez to use the data he gathered during his internship for a cross-country analysis that he is completing with Mark Langworthy in UA's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics as an independent study project.
Currently, Valdez is working for Pima County’s Community Services and Economic Development Department on a USDA-funded program to build capacity in non-incorporated towns such as Ajo and Arivaca.
After he completes the MPA program in spring 2007, Valdez plans to gain more practical experience in international development, possibly through a professional agency or a non-governmental organization in Washington, D.C. The Optional Practical Training (OPT) program will allow him to work in the U.S. for one year. In the long term, Valdez is considering entering a Ph.D. program in Public Policy and/or forming his own consulting company to funnel funding into poor communities, particularly focused on Latin America.
“My undergraduate experience in economics helps me say that I understand the business side of things,” he says. “Combined with my experience in the private sector, it has really enriched my public sector education.”
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| Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom. Photo courtesy Indiana University. |
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On January 16, Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University delivered a talk titled "The Challenge of Building and Sustaining Effective Social Capital: Why Collaboration is Important” at the North Ballroom in UA’s Student Union. Ostrom is co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Political Analysis and the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change.
Professor Ostrom founded the burgeoning field of common pool resource studies and her 1990 book Governing the Commons has won multiple awards, including the Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award from the American Political Science Association. In 2001, she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is past president of the American Political Science Association and the Public Choice Society. She is the author or editor of more than twenty books, and more than 175 journal articles and book chapters, many dealing with institutions, ecosystems, and sustainability.
Ostrom’s talk was sponsored by the School of Public Administration and Policy and the UA Department of Political Science, with funding provided by the Research Fund of the Providence Service Corporation Chair in Public Management.
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| Providence Service Corporation founder and CEO Fletcher McCusker. | |
In today’s global community, endeavors from nation building to disaster relief require an unprecedented level of collaboration between corporations, governments, and nonprofit organizations, and the Eller College School of Public Administration and Policy is training public and nonprofit managers to meet the challenges posed by these changing relationships.
The Providence Service Corporation Chair in Public Management has been awarded to H. Brinton Milward, associate dean and director of the School of Public Administration and Policy.
“Our support of the Eller College efforts in public management is designed to enhance the curriculum and strengthen the research on the privatization of social services,” says Fletcher McCusker, founder and CEO of the Providence Institute. “Most university programs do not address this national trend.” Having worked in all three sectors — public, private, and nonprofit — McCusker recognizes the importance of the research being done at the College’s School of Public Administration and Policy on collaborative networks that cross the sector boundaries.
Earlier this year, Milward and McClelland Professor of Public Administration and Policy Keith Provan co-authored a comprehensive guide to managing collaborative networks based on 15 years of joint research in what is believed to be the first managerial handbook of its kind. The guide provides cross-sector tools which empower organizations to work together outside of the traditional bureaucratic command-and-control model.
Milward says that the Providence Service Corporation Chair in Public Management will help to fund new research and collaborative management efforts with leading schools in the field, in an effort to build a new base for public management on a foundation of sound research. These collaborations will also yield new curricular material for the classroom, including new case studies and exercises which will be made available to other public management programs.
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| Professors Keith Provan, left, and Brint Milward, right, have published a free guide for managers. | |
More and more, winning a grant means showing how well you work with other agencies. The requirement reflects a major trend in public service and beyond: the development of extended networks of organizations working together towards a set of common goals.
The network approach has definite strengths: Networks allow each organization to specialize in what it does best while drawing on the strengths of other organizations for products or services it can’t provide. Working in this way, networks can be more effective than the sums of their parts.
However, with those strengths come challenges. With no one person or organization in charge, issues of accountability often arise. At the same time, when disagreements and conflict surface, networks often lack clear procedures for resolution.
H. Brinton Milward, Providence Service Corporation Chair in Public Management and Director of the School of Public Administration and Policy, and Keith G. Provan, McClelland Professor of Public Administration and Policy, offer solutions to these problems in a new free publication.
Drawing on their extensive, world-renowned research on networks, Milward and Provan recently completed “A Manager’s Guide to Choosing and Using Collaborative Networks” funded by a grant from the IBM Center for the Business of Government. This guide is available from the Center in hard copy or online at www.businessofgovernment.org. Click on “Publications” and search for Milward.
Milward describes the publication as an easy-to-understand handbook for managers in any arena, one that is “…unique because it is not based on a few case studies but on more than 15 years of joint research. The guide book is a tool that people working in all three sectors — public, private, and nonprofit — will find valuable because it offers means of managing networks that do not depend on command and control.”
Chris Demchak
Associate professor Chris Demchak studies how large-scale organizations institutionalize their response to surprise from or with modern networked technologies. Specific areas of research include an emergency response application of a “computer as colleague” model, identity protection, and antiterrorism.
Roger Hartley
Assistant professor Roger Hartley is a scholar of the American court system, with particular interest in issues related to judicial administration. Current research projects include the origins and institutionalization of reforms to trial courts and restorative justice techniques. Due to his research into Jim Crow laws, several states removed outdated legislation from their books.
Michael Polakowski
Associate professor Michael Polakowski was appointed to the Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training by Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. His recent research includes a study of Pima County’s Juvenile Drug Court with assistant professor Roger Hartley.
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Tanya Heikkila, Ph.D. '01. |
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Tanya Heikkila enrolled in the MPA program at the School of Public Administration and Policy (SPAP), but she ended up earning a Ph.D.
“I was impressed with the work at the Udall Center and the research on water issues on the US / Mexico border,” she explains. “My undergraduate degree was in Spanish but I was interested in government work, environmental, and trans-border issues.”
In her first year of the MPA program, SPAP initiated its Ph.D. program. “I was working with [associate professor] Edella Schlager on a National Science Foundation grant,” says Heikkila. “She encouraged me to apply to the Ph.D. program.”
“Edella is a great mentor,” Heikkila continues, “and I applied knowing that if I was accepted, I would be working with her.”
So in the second year of her MPA program, Heikkila started the Ph.D. program as a research assistant with Schlager. “It was a great year,” says Heikkila. “SPAP allowed me to base my dissertation on research from the NSF project.” The project dealt with water management and policy issues in the southwestern US.
The dissertation explored the concept of conjunctive water management, how organizations that provide water work together, how watershed organizations collaborate, and why these institutions are critical. “I owe a lot to Edella,” says Heikkila. “I learned about the practical aspects of water management but more broadly, how institutions work together to manage resources. It’s given me a deep understanding of governance.”
Schlager helped place Heikkila at Indiana University for post-doctorate work in political theory and policy. “It was a good step for me at a strong school, and during my time at Indiana, I established a publishing record,” says Heikkila. She and Schlager co-authored a book and Heikkila wrote several articles off her dissertation topic.
“The faculty did a great job of taking a strong mentorship role throughout the program,” says Heikkila. When SPAP director Brint Milward heard about a new environmental policy position at Columbia University, he encouraged Heikkila to apply.
“I landed an appointment in a professional masters program,” she says. “My training is directly applied, but it also opens me up to other types of programs.” Most recently, she says, she taught environmental policy course. “It’s a fun class to teach,” she says, “because it’s my research focus, my dissertation topic, and my professional experience.”
She also teaches workshops on policy implementation and program evaluation, which she says are similar to classes she took as a master’s student. “That means I know what they expect,” she says. “On a professional level, SPAP prepared me well.”
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| Nikki Floyd, BSPA Criminal Justice '02, with her fiance Chris. | |
Nikki Floyd develops emergency response plans for federal clients — which is not quite the future she envisioned for herself as a criminal justice and criminology major.
“I fell into this by accident,” she says. “I never would have chosen this path 5-10 years ago.”
After Floyd earned her Eller undergraduate degree in criminal justice, she entered the graduate program in criminology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Following her first year in the program, she began searching for a job and found a position with consulting firm SRA International.
It turned out to be a great fit.
At SRA International, Floyd works with federal clients including the U.S. Capitol Police, General Services Administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Homeland Security on a diverse assortment of projects that have given her experience in everything from cyber security to technical writing.
“Something new comes along every time a contract ends,” she says. And the projects she works on often make a significant impact on public safety, and so, she adds with a laugh, “It’s like being a Fed without being a Fed.”
But the job does come with its challenges: after Hurricane Katrina, Floyd worked with FEMA to train and deploy staffers to the Gulf region. “It was the most emotionally and physically draining work I have ever done,” she says. Floyd grew up in Texas and spent a lot of time in the Gulf Coast, so the disaster seemed close to home. But more harrowing, she says, was knowing that there were lives and futures hanging in the balance.
“One of the things I did was work with FEMA’s transitional housing unit,” she says. Hurricane survivors would call in looking for hotels. “You could find them hotels, but you couldn’t give them more,” she says. “I would leave in tears.”
The insights she gained as an undergraduate at Eller have helped shape her approach to disaster planning. “Studying social issues and policy conditions you to think of the world not in terms of quantifiable costs, but in terms of immeasurable human costs,” she explains. “Losing a home filled with worldly possessions is a loss that cannot be summed up in a balance sheet. I think in order to effectively assist people with preparation and recovery, you have to be willing to accept that there are no simple answers or formulas when it comes to human loss.”
As a contractor, Floyd felt somewhat insulated from the public outcry against the federal response to Katrina, but she says, “As hard as we work, we are still disappointed that we couldn’t do more.” If any good can come from the experience, she hopes that it will impress upon individuals and families the need to take a greater role in preparing for disaster.
Floyd is currently developing federal response plans for the anticipated avian influenza pandemic. “It’s a different league of planning,” she says. If a building blows up, another building can be found in which people can work. But a biological disaster presents other challenges including absenteeism, and the fact that employees bring the illness home to their families.
“Right now,” says Floyd, “the federal government’s tendency is to over-prepare. Hurricane Katrina showed the consequences of what happens when you’re not ready.”
“The focus of national security has undergone a long-needed shift,” she continues, and that shift means that Floyd is kept busy in the public safety sector. But she hasn’t forgotten her criminal justice education, and keeps current through the same journals she followed as a grad student. “I think it’s part and parcel with staying marketable in an economy that is always changing,” she says. “I see this as one of many careers I will have.”
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The School of Public Administration and Policy has teamed with the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at USC and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington for a groundbreaking joint research and curricular initiative, The Consortium on Collaborative Governance (CCG).
Capitalizing on the strengths of the three schools, the consortium will focus on collaborative governance with specific interest in nonprofit management, privatization, civic engagement, public-private partnerships, and policy formulation and implementation across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. According to Milward, the consortium will enable a breadth and depth of research that none of the schools can achieve alone. For example, the Eller College contributes its research strength in managing networks, the University of Washington adds its expertise in nonprofit management, and the University of Southern California brings significant leadership in community development and philanthropy.
Learn more about the Southwest Leadership Program and other Eller Executive Education programs. 
