CHAPTER FIVE

THE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION

ON JULY 1, 2007, Patrick Harker became the twenty-sixth president of the University of Delaware. Harker had been a highly successful dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, expanding its programs and resources.¹ He was known as an innovator with documented success in fundraising, promoting new university-business partnerships, and raising Wharton’s global visibility and recognition. Harker was recruited with a mandate from the leadership of the Board of Trustees to pursue the same goals at UD, with the focal point being accelerating growth in research and graduate education.

When Harker arrived, UD was already an anchor institution in the Delaware economy. The university was one of the top ten employers in the state, that ranking only increasing in the early 2000s as other state employers such as DuPont and MBNA contracted.² UD was also a hub for advanced research in emerging technologies, such as biotechnology, solar cells, and composite materials. Between 1990 and 2005, its annual federal research and development funding more than doubled, rising from $40 million to $85 million.³ This growth in federal funding was expected to accelerate under Harker’s leadership. The former dean of the world’s premier business school would be the architect of UD as an entrepreneurial research university, as David Roselle had been the architect of UD as an engaged public university. That general mandate translated into a specific benchmark for success: earning membership in the American Association of Universities (AAU), representing America’s leading research universities.⁴

Harker’s push to become a premier graduate and research university was part of a larger strategic plan named the Path to Prominence that would advance the overall development of UD. The plan was designed to inspire high aspirations, and it was well balanced across the university’s core areas of undergraduate education, graduate and professional education, and advanced research. However, there was a significant difference between such balanced objectives and the priorities reflected in the new budgeting system developed to fund university operations. Responsibility-Based Budgeting (RBB) was introduced to incentivize federally funded research. For example, larger amounts of undergraduate tuition revenue would be allocated to units generating high levels of funding from federal contracts and grants.⁵ State funds also were allocated based on an algorithm that rewarded units generating federal funding rather than those carrying out research and public service for the state.

Without a medical school or law school, increasing UD’s profile as a research institution and attracting private investment to support that goal focused on strengthening the College of Engineering, the Lerner College of Business and Economics, and interdisciplinary science and technology programs such as the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. Harker launched new initiatives such as the Delaware Health Sciences Alliance, the UD Energy Institute (UDEI), and the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN) to bundle the university’s research capacity across academic units and external partners.⁶ These collaborative initiatives offered opportunities to attract sizeable federal research and development grants and contracts.

RECESSION AND RECOVERY

The implementation of the University of Delaware Path to Prominence was abruptly interrupted by the Great Recession of 2008, the impact of which was immediate and dramatic. UD’s endowment plummeted, and its state appropriation dropped by $15 million. Federal research dollars were cut, and expectations of launching a major private fundraising campaign evaporated. More families struggled to pay students’ expenses, which placed additional demands on the university’s financial aid resources. In response to these conditions, the university implemented budget cuts in administrative and non-academic units, deferred hiring, and postponed facility improvements.

Beyond the immediate impacts, the period after the onset of the recession changed the underlying economics of higher education at most universities, including UD. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that state governments spent, on average, 28 percent less per student on higher education in 2013 than they did in 2008.⁷ For the University of Delaware, by 2012, state support had declined to about 12 percent of its total budget. Meanwhile, the level of federal research and development funding through the years of the economic recession remained relatively flat compared to prerecession levels.⁸ However, many universities, including UD, competed more intensely for a relatively fixed amount of federal support. UD’s federal research funding continued to rise through 2010 but then sharply declined.⁹

At the same time, the costs of delivering higher education continued to rise at a rate that outpaced traditional sources of revenue. These higher costs were driven by increased expenses for facilities, technology, administration, and employee salaries and benefits. As the economic downturn slashed university endowments, fewer options were available for filling the growing gap between costs and revenue. In response, public colleges and universities increased tuition charges, and some issued debt to finance longterm goals.

At UD, tuition rates had been rising even before the recession. Between 2000 and 2015, in-state tuition increased by 84 percent (from $6,805 to $12,520, adjusted for inflation to 2015 dollars). However, during that same period, median household income in Delaware dropped by roughly 14 percent.¹⁰ A few years after the onset of the recession, Harker affirmed to the UD community that difficult decisions would have to be made. However, the university had to remain focused on its priorities. “We need to focus on creative programs, research activities, and partnerships that will drive the university forward,” Harker stated. As UD’s financial resources contracted, however, the vision projected by the Path to Prominence narrowed, with public affairs education and public service losing their place in that vision.

This reflected the challenges that public affairs programs across the nation were experiencing in the wake of the recession. In 2010, Francis Berry became president of the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA). In her presidential address, she proposed “that our programs—perhaps more than ever—have to demonstrate our purpose for existing; and our relevance to students, our universities, and our broader communities.”¹¹ Berry concluded that public affairs programs and the public service values they embody were no longer valued as they had been for the previous half-century. During that time, the dominant vision had been that universities would apply their expertise to address America’s critical social and economic issues at all levels, from those affecting neighborhoods to those affecting the nation, from the War on Poverty to the Cold War. As the vision of the public purpose of universities had constricted, the regard for public affairs programs eroded. The financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent economic downturn accelerated the decrease of public funding for higher education, leading university officials to justify budget cuts to programs that exemplified more expansive public responsibilities. The squeeze on program funding often was accompanied, Berry noted, by a shift in the prevailing models of university budgeting.¹² Under the new models, academic units were treated as cost centers that had to be justified either by providing compensating revenue or through becoming an institutional priority.

“Delaware First” was one of the guiding principles of UD’s Path to Prominence strategic plan. However, the interpretation of that principle became narrower, particularly after the onset of the recession. The university administration requested that state line items, many of which directly supported programs and services of priority to the state, be rolled into UD’s overall state operating budget allocation. The legislature declined these requests but did agree to bundle the state lines as allocations to the colleges rather than to specific programs, leaving it to the deans of the colleges to determine how the state funds would be used. Reduced in-state tuition rates for graduate students were eliminated, which was particularly problematic for a graduate-oriented school like the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy. University funding for public service programs and public service staff was cut, and no new faculty with primary public service responsibilities were to be appointed.¹³

CHEP UNDONE

From the time he arrived at the University of Delaware, President Harker questioned the rationale for the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy. He viewed it as a forced marriage of units that had distinct missions and that should have a different configuration within the overall architecture of the university. Harker was familiar with freestanding professional schools of education and did not see the value of combining education with public policy. Instead, he thought that public policy was best pursued in connection with substantive areas of inquiry and he had little interest in a comprehensive school of public affairs.

CHEP faced problems even before Harker arrived. From the outset, some faculty in the School of Education believed their school should remain a separate academic unit. Further, the projected added value from bringing the smaller colleges together under the shared CHEP banner had not materialized. While these academic units operated under the same college, there was little collaboration. Earlier plans for shared facilities that would bring faculty in these units into physical proximity to one another were never implemented.¹⁴ While the CHEP centers worked collaboratively, none of the anticipated academic collaborations between the School of Education and the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy succeeded.¹⁵

Once the start-up phase for the new college ended, each unit prepared a strategic plan that reflected its expectations and aspirations. Not surprisingly, most of these priorities were program-specific and did not focus on the integrated development of CHEP. Jeffrey Raffel has acknowledged that the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy focused on a desire to strengthen its own identity rather than that of the college. This focus was inevitable, Raffel claims: “Who identifies with their college rather than their program? What faculty member indicates what college they are in instead of their department or school, i.e., the closest unit to them and/or their discipline?”¹⁶ For the most part, CHEP remained an amalgam of academic units rather than an integrated whole.

During Harker’s tenure, CHEP would come under direct challenge as a result of two events. In August 2007, Barnekov announced his retirement as dean of CHEP effective at the end of the next academic year, and a national search was launched for his successor. However, the search failed when the search committee did not recommend a candidate. Harker saw the failed search as further evidence that CHEP was an obstacle to raising the prominence of UD’s education programs. After the search failed, Michael Gamel-McCormick, director of the Center for Disabilities Studies and former chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, was appointed interim dean in July 2008 and named dean in May 2009. To raise the profile of the education programs in CHEP, he proposed a change in the college’s name to the College of Education and Public Policy. This action was approved but did little to mollify those interested in a complete reconfiguration of programs.

The second event was Rich’s announcement to the University Faculty Senate on March 9, 2009, that he was resigning as provost effective June 30. Thomas Apple, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), was named the incoming provost.¹⁷ He confirmed his intention to replace the College of Education and Public Policy with a comprehensive College of Education that would absorb the secondary education programs in CAS that enrolled about half of UD’s teacher education students. Apple’s proposal generated almost immediate resistance from the CAS secondary education faculty, who believed that their students should continue to be educated in the academic disciplines that they would be teaching. Even so, Apple proceeded with his plan.

On March 17, 2010, Apple announced Gamel-McCormick’s resignation as dean of CHEP, at which time he also announced several changes under consideration for the college, including moving the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy to the College of Arts and Sciences. He proposed that moving the school under CAS would have many benefits. It would strengthen the social sciences, enhance SUAPP collaborations with other programs (such as the new Center for Political Communication), and provide additional educational and research opportunities for the school’s students. He later acknowledged that some faculty wanted the school to form its own college, as it had been until the late 1990s, but this option, he believed, would not be viable given the RBB budget system.¹⁸

In May 2010, the UD Board of Trustees approved creating the College of Education and Human Development, which would no longer include the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy. No decision had been made about the school’s future. As an interim measure, it would report directly to the provost as a freestanding unit until a permanent resolution was presented to the Faculty Senate in the next academic year. The controversy continued into the fall of 2010. At that point, the school’s faculty concluded that becoming an independent college or professional school would not be supported by the university administration, so they voted to join the College of Arts and Sciences.

Maria Aristigueta, who succeeded Jeffrey Raffel as SUAPP director in 2007, had been on the faculty for a decade and had a strong record of academic leadership.¹⁹ It was left to her to navigate the school’s development through the period of CHEP’s dissolution. One of her first steps was to establish a steering committee to plan for the transition. The steering committee recommended that the centers that had historically been affiliated with the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy should move with it and become units within it. The compelling logic, supported by the center directors, was that the school and its centers would be stronger together.²⁰ The exception was the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP) and the Energy and Environmental Policy (ENEP) program, which would move to the College of Engineering to strengthen faculty collaboration in technology and policy.²¹

The faculty and staff also voted to change the school’s name to the School of Public Policy and Administration to reflect the broader scope of its programs. In November 2010, the University Faculty Senate approved a resolution to implement a move of the entire school to the College of Arts and Sciences with the new name School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA), effective July 1, 2011. Despite these organizational changes and negative shifts in the university’s outlook on public service programs, the school maintained a strong base of support among state leaders, some of whom were alumni and many of whom remained committed partners. That became evident when the school celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.

THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY

On March 19, 2012, less than a year after the School of Public Policy and Administration joined the College of Arts and Sciences, more than three hundred alumni, friends, and partners, as well as faculty, staff, and students assembled at a reception at Clayton Hall to celebrate the school’s fiftieth anniversary. University administrators, members of the state’s congressional delegation, and other state leaders applauded the school’s impressive legacy and commended its vision for the future. President Harker joined the celebration. “When we talk about UD’s service mission—when we talk about a ‘Citizen University’—we’re talking about the School of Public Policy and Administration,” said Harker. “It’s at the heart of service scholarship—research applied to public policy and the public good.”²² U.S. Senator Thomas Carper, who had actively supported the school during his tenure as Delaware’s governor, praised the expertise and commitment to public service demonstrated by the faculty, professional staff, and students. He said that they helped him and other decision-makers “address the critical issues facing our state and nation and, in a practical manner, helped all levels of government.”²³

While the school was applauded as the heart of the university’s service scholarship, it was located in a college with other priorities. The growing challenge for the school as an academic unit was to adapt to the culture and policies of the College of Arts and Sciences, which meant becoming more like a traditional social science unit. Even so, after being in limbo for nearly two years, there was a distinct benefit in being part of UD’s largest college. Aristigueta points out that CAS provided a safe haven under the new and somewhat unpredictable RBB funding system. However, the college had very little knowledge and experience with overseeing professional programs, interdisciplinary policy-oriented research, or centers designed specifically for applied research and public service.

Aristigueta appointed Leland Ware as associate director of the school to focus on adjustments it needed to make as part of CAS. From the time of his initial appointment at the university, Ware had collaborated with CAS faculty and contributed to some of the college’s programs. He was familiar with many CAS policies and took the lead in crafting some of the changes to SPPA policies that were needed to align the school with the college, including those on faculty promotion and tenure criteria and procedures. Ware also served as interim director for the 2012–13 academic year while Aristigueta was on sabbatical leave.²⁴

When it joined CAS, the school, predominantly a graduate unit, became aligned with other social science units mainly serving undergraduates. In its first few years in the college, SPPA faculty teaching loads were changed. Only traditional nine-month academic year faculty appointments were approved, and restrictions were placed on hiring public service faculty and professional staff. Some of these changes reflected the tightening of the university budget because of the recession. Other changes were designed to bring the school in line with CAS policies.

George Watson, who became dean of CAS when Apple was appointed provost, took deliberate steps to enable SPPA’s smooth transition to the college. Even though state line items were now under the control of the college, Watson reserved the funding for the programs for which the line items were originally allocated. In addition, Watson agreed that the school could establish a board of advisors. Given the challenges of the previous few years, Aristigueta and some senior faculty believed that SPPA needed an organized group of advocates to protect its interests and promote its development.

Chaired by G. Arno Loessner, then an emeritus professor, the SPPA Board of Advisors held its first meeting on March 19, 2012. The board’s mission was to support sustained communication between the school’s leadership and leaders in the broader community. Its objective was to mobilize increased support for SPPA’s programs and development. Accordingly, its members included alumni and donors, as well as leaders of the diverse constituencies the school served.²⁵ Some members, such as John H. Taylor, Jr., executive director of the Delaware Public Policy Institute, a unit of the State Chamber of Commerce, represented the school’s partners.²⁶ Others were prominent state and federal policy leaders, such as Jeffrey W. Bullock, Delaware’s Secretary of State, and Jane Vincent (MPA 1995), U.S. Housing and Urban Development regional administrator for the mid-Atlantic.

THE EXPANDING UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE MISSIONS

Despite the challenges of the transition and reductions in university funding from 2008 to 2014, the School of Public Policy and Administration was able to add academic programs. The new programs aligned with UD’s emerging budgetary priorities and took advantage of SPPA’s location within CAS. One of the most critical priorities was to enhance the school’s undergraduate mission.

The school had first offered an undergraduate program in 2005, with the transfer of the Leadership program to its purview. Even so, the school’s culture remained unmistakably focused on graduate education. That began to change with the move to CAS. A major and minor in Public Policy were established in 2010 and approved for permanent status by the university in spring 2014. Initially directed by Audrey Noble and later by Dan Rich and Andrea Pierce, this program provides undergraduates with access to many experiential learning opportunities previously available only to graduate students.²⁷ A minor in Public Health was also established in 2010 in collaboration with the College of Health Sciences. The undergraduate Leadership major was renamed Organizational and Community Leadership (OCL). Along with the name change, the curriculum was revised to focus on helping students understand the complexities of leadership in solving organizational and community problems.

Like the graduate programs, all SPPA undergraduate programs were distinctively interdisciplinary. They also promoted active, discovery-based learning that offered pathways to promising professional careers. The school’s undergraduate programs attracted students who wanted to prepare themselves to make a difference in the organizations and communities in which they would work and live. These programs grew dramatically after 2009. In the fall of that year, SPPA had 161 undergraduate majors and minors, all in Organizational and Community Leadership. At that time, the school had slightly more graduate students than undergraduates. Four years later, it had 542 undergraduate students across the OCL, Public Policy, and Public Health programs.²⁸ By 2014, the number of SPPA undergraduates was three times the number of graduate students.²⁹ Notably, overall College of Arts and Sciences enrollments, including those in the other social sciences, were flat or declining during this same period.

This growth in undergraduate education was significant not only for the students who now benefited from learning opportunities previously unavailable to them, but also for the faculty. In 2009, most of the school’s faculty continued to teach at the graduate level, with only a small fraction teaching regularly at the undergraduate level, but by 2013, most of them were engaged in both undergraduate and graduate instruction. The transformation in faculty workload was often challenging, as was the change in the predominant, exclusively graduate culture. However, school faculty agreed that, in the future, they would all regularly teach both undergraduate and graduate students.

The school was now making available to undergraduates the character and quality of educational experiences that graduate students had benefited from for decades. SPPA undergraduates were encouraged to participate in service learning and undergraduate research, often working side-by-side with faculty and graduate students on projects that helped translate ideas into policy and program initiatives for communities and organizations. These experiences also prepared students for success after they graduated. SPPA undergraduates were now eligible to become paid Summer Public Policy Fellows, working on research and public service in one of the school’s centers. They were also eligible to become Legislative Fellows, an opportunity earlier available only to graduate students.

Another such opportunity arose in 2012, when Ed Freel of the Institute for Public Administration initiated a Washington Fellows Winter Session program that enabled twenty undergraduates to spend a month in Washington, DC, taking courses on policy and politics taught by UD faculty and participating in internships with public and nonprofit organizations. The program, led by Freel himself, subsequently became a full-semester option offered in collaboration with the Colin Powell School of Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York.³⁰ The faculty of both institutions taught courses including frequent guest lectures by public and nonprofit leaders and opportunities for students to serve as interns with congressional committees, executive agencies, and advocacy organizations.

By 2014, excellence and innovation in undergraduate education had become part of the institutional signature of the School of Public Policy and Administration. Rather than conflicting with other facets of SPPA’s mission, this growing dimension of its identity dovetailed with and enhanced those other facets. One of the best examples of this was the establishment of three 4+1 options for highly qualified Public Policy majors in 2010. These options enable students to complete both a BA in Public Policy and one of three SPPA master’s degrees in five years. Even in the first years of the 4+1 options, it became clear that they supported the educational aspirations of exceptionally motivated and capable undergraduates. Some of them became outstanding students in the school’s graduate programs, which continued to thrive and expand. For instance, the Disaster Science and Management (DISA) MS and PhD degrees were initiated in 2010, and the program moved administratively to SPPA in 2011.³¹ Sue McNeil, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a joint faculty appointment in the school, became the first director of the program, which took advantage of the university-wide interdisciplinary faculty capacity in disaster science and management.

The backbone of the program was the work of the Disaster Research Center (DRC), which was established in 1963. The center was the first in the world devoted to the social scientific study of disasters. Social scientific research was still one of DRC’s core products, even as the center expanded into interdisciplinary work. Historically, center faculty and students had conducted field interviews and extended research projects on community preparation for, response to, and recovery from natural and technological disasters. All DRC research was intended to yield both basic scientific knowledge and information that could be used to develop more effective plans and policies to reduce the impacts of future disasters. Because of this, DRC attracted funding from diverse federal agencies.³² While not a formal part of SPPA, the center had a close collaborative relationship with the school. DRC codirectors James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf had faculty appointments in SPPA, as did other core DRC faculty. The center was also physically located adjacent to the school. The DISA graduate program was developed to take advantage of the DRC’s strengths and recognition, so when the program was created, it was natural that SPPA would be its home.

MEETING THE MARKET CHALLENGE

When the School of Public Policy and Administration entered the College of Arts and Sciences, it was the largest social science graduate unit in the college and among the largest at the university. The MA and PhD degrees in Urban Affairs and Public Policy were among the nation’s oldest, most well-regarded urban policy-focused programs. Consistent with this standing, in 2012, SPPA was ranked twelfth in City Management and Urban Policy by U.S. News & World Report. In 2011, the National Research Council had ranked SPPA’s PhD in Urban Affairs and Public Policy twelfth among all doctoral programs in public affairs, public policy, and public administration. NASPAA had fully and continuously accredited the MPA since 1982. In 2012, its accreditation was renewed for another six years.³³

Despite this success, the school’s graduate enrollment became difficult to sustain. The MPA program experienced a significant decline; full-time enrollment fell from sixty students in 2009 to thirty in 2013, and part-time enrollment dropped from nineteen to ten over the same period.³⁴ Some of that decline was undoubtedly a product of the impact of the recession. It became difficult for individuals to afford full-time enrollment, especially as employers reduced or eliminated reimbursements for education. However, other factors were much more consequential than the changing national and regional economy.

The MPA enrollment decline was largely the result of changes in university policy. Delawareans faced a doubling of tuition costs because the university had significantly increased graduate tuition while eliminating instate graduate tuition rates. Many Delawareans selected programs at other institutions or simply did not pursue an advanced degree. By 2009–10, the UD MPA program was among the most expensive in the nation, and the cost was rising. A 2013 analysis of revenue impacts of graduate tuition policies submitted by the SPPA to the CAS dean documented that its MPA program was more expensive than other highly ranked MPA programs in the U.S., including those ranked higher than UD’s. Further, most universities offered discounted rates to at least some students, and many provided tuition discounts to most students. Competing programs at most public universities continued to provide in-state tuition rates. Even many private universities offered significant discounts on the sticker price of their MPA programs.³⁵

The conclusion from the analysis was clear: “The University of Delaware MPA program has been priced so that it is no longer competitive in the regional, national or global marketplace.”³⁶ As a result of this analysis, Aristigueta negotiated with CAS Dean Watson for a scholarship program that effectively reduced the cost of tuition for in-state applicants and those working in the public and nonprofit sectors. However, the sticker price for the MPA program remained higher than that of the SPPA’s national competitors, and the actual cost was higher than that of many regional competitors. Even with the newly approved scholarships, fewer paying students enrolled since most had easy access to lower-priced options.³⁷ The result was declining enrollment and lower net revenue for the university and the College of Arts and Sciences.³⁸

THE CRITICAL CHALLENGE

Despite its many accomplishments, in addition to grappling with declining graduate enrollments, the School of Public Policy and Administration faced a severe challenge after moving to the College of Arts and Sciences due to the loss of faculty. Between 2009 and 2014, the number of SPPA faculty declined from thirty-two to twenty-six. Most of the loss was due to the retirements of faculty hired during the 1970s and 1980s. Two more faculty retirements brought the faculty down to twenty-four in 2015, a reduction of 25 percent since the late 2000s. The retirements included faculty who played central roles in the graduate and undergraduate programs. With limited resources to meet the needs of its many academic units in the wake of the recession, CAS did not approve the replacement of the faculty who left. In addition to the faculty reduction already experienced, the school expected further retirements over the next five years.

Including cuts in state funding, the total loss to the school in recurrent funding was over $2.23 million from 2009 to 2014. To address these losses, SPPA streamlined its graduate programs, redesigned its undergraduate programs, filled some faculty vacancies with temporary appointments and supplemental (adjunct) faculty, and made up for some of the lost university revenue through increased external contracts and grants. However, the situation was not sustainable and could not continue without a decline in program quality.

The reduction of faculty numbers translated into more than a loss in overall university financial support. The decrease in faculty numbers had profound implications for the delivery of academic programs, most immediately the school’s graduate programs. Between 2011 and 2014, most SPPA academic programs were redesigned because of this diminishing faculty capacity. In some cases, the redesign was dramatic, as it was for the PhD in Urban Affairs and Public Policy. The faculty responsible for more than 75 percent of the dissertation supervision over the previous twenty years were no longer with SPPA and were not replaced. The MA in Urban Affairs and Public Policy and the MPA programs were revised to allow the sharing of some core courses between them and to reduce the number of specialty courses required for each degree. The MPA was streamlined to thirty-six credits (from forty-two), making it a more viable and competitive option for paying students, particularly part-time and 4+1 students. These changes helped in the short term, but they did not compensate for the loss of faculty resources.

BIDEN PROPOSALS

When SPPA entered the College of Arts and Sciences, Maria Aristigueta reported to Joseph Pika, associate dean for the social sciences, who had been an advocate for the school, helped facilitate its transition to CAS, and recognized and supported its need to operate differently from other CAS units.³⁹ Pika also was one of the first individuals to advocate for greater university recognition of alumnus Joe Biden by placing his name on important programs and initiatives. Pika’s colleague Ralph Begleiter, a former CNN correspondent and Rosenberg Professor of Communication, was the most active advocate for the university to name an important initiative for Biden. More than a decade before SPPA joined CAS, Begleiter and Pika recognized that opportunity. Begleiter argued, “To a non-Delawarean familiar with the national and global reputation of Delaware’s senior Senator, it seemed inconceivable in 1999 that the state’s flagship university had no Biden library, Biden statue, Biden lecture hall or Biden program of any kind honoring its famous alumnus.”⁴⁰ Pika recalls that “we talked about the issue on several occasions and agreed that Biden could be an asset, particularly on international issues because he was then serving as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”⁴¹

In 2003, Begleiter had submitted a memo to Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Bobby Gempesaw proposing the establishment of a Biden Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Biden Center would be “a major galvanizing initiative toward internationalizing the university campus and would significantly raise the visibility of the University of Delaware on both the national and international scenes.”⁴² The university administration did not pursue the proposal. At about the same time, Susan Brynteson, Vice Provost and May Morris University Librarian, was discussing with the provost the prospect of the university housing Biden’s senatorial papers and what would be required to effectively store and preserve the papers, and make them available as a scholarly resource. Biden did not indicate that he was leaving the Senate at the time, and no consideration would be given to the donation of his papers until he was at the end of his senatorial career.⁴³

The university administration became enthusiastic for proposals to recognize Biden once he was confirmed as Barack Obama’s running mate at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2008.⁴⁴ President Harker expressed interest in developing such proposals and had several conversations with Begleiter and others to encourage the fleshing out of ideas.⁴⁵ Pika and Begleiter stepped up their advocacy for the university to support a Biden-linked initiative to strengthen international studies and the social sciences. Those efforts were further encouraged by the increasing media attention on the university. In 2008, Bloomberg News characterized the University of Delaware as the “epicenter of politics” because Biden, President Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe, John McCain’s chief strategist Steve Schmidt, and newly elected New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were all UD alumni.⁴⁶ On CBS News, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni called UD a “maker of political kings.”⁴⁷ Begleiter reports that “amid this unexpected national profile, the concept of a Biden Institute was developed very fully, with much consultation among faculty, administrators, and other campus leaders.”⁴⁸ In 2010, the Center for Political Communication (CPC), headed by Begleiter, was created as a step toward a larger plan.⁴⁹

An important part of Pika and Begleiter’s proposal was a new building that would house the social sciences and a new Biden Institute (previously referenced as the Biden Center).⁵⁰ Pika recalls that they made the building “a centerpiece of the forward-looking conversations” and referred to it as the “Interdisciplinary Institute for Politics and Policy” since, under a formal agreement signed at Biden’s request, there could be no use of his name associated with any university project until he “retired from any public office.”⁵¹ As conceived, the institute would be a core facility that would house social science units and have the capacity to support campus and community engagement with political leaders and policy-makers on critical issues to the nation and the world. The prospective site for its building was just south of the Morris Library in the last remaining space in the original campus plan for the Green. Pika publicly announced the prospect of the institute during one of UD’s Alumni Weekend events, and there was some preliminary planning for how such a building might most effectively be utilized.⁵² However, while President Harker expressed strong and continued interest in the institute, he prioritized other building projects.⁵³ While a fundraising plan was developed, it was not implemented, partly because of limitations on using Biden’s name while he was serving as vice president. Pika and Begleiter attempted to work around these limitations, collaborating closely with CAS and university development staff.⁵⁴ Despite these efforts, Pika concludes, “we could not find a way to pry out the funding necessary for getting the project off the ground.”⁵⁵

The donation of Biden’s senatorial papers, however, was moving ahead. On September 16, 2011, Vice President Biden came to campus to sign the agreement to have his senatorial papers housed at the University of Delaware, as well as to deliver the James R. Soles Lecture on the Constitution and Citizenship. Biden focused his presentation on the importance of the Constitution as a framework for civil discourse, enabling many different voices to be heard and providing the institutions through which they may be blended. He urged UD students to get involved in public service: “Politics is not a dirty word. Politics is the only way a community can govern itself and resolve its differences without the sword.”⁵⁶

President Harker thanked Biden “for this extraordinary donation of Senatorial papers, an abundance of materials that will illuminate decades of U.S. policy and diplomacy and the vice president’s critical role in its development.” The papers, Harker said, would provide students and scholars “an incredible asset for generations to come.”⁵⁷ Begleiter also thanked Biden for donating his senatorial papers. He said the university expected someday to have “an institute built around the policy themes to which Joe Biden has devoted his lifetime of public service—constitutional law and equal justice, political participation and responsible citizenship, economic opportunity and prosperity, effective government, and foreign policy and international relations.”⁵⁸ In June 2012, Biden’s senatorial papers were delivered to the University of Delaware Library. A separate section of the library was set aside to store, process, and preserve the materials, which consisted of 1,875 boxes.⁵⁹

In 2014, David Wilson succeeded Pika as associate dean for the social sciences.⁶⁰ For Wilson and CAS Dean George Watson, the School of Public Policy and Administration’s location in the college was an opportunity for strategic thinking about interdisciplinary synergy across the social sciences. In 2014, Wilson established a college-wide committee for strategic planning in the social sciences to identify priority areas for scholarship cutting across departments. He proposed that the connective links were in cross-disciplinary strategic values, such as social justice, public service, cultural understanding, well-being, and practices such as analysis, rather in than standard social inquiry topics. For his part, by 2013, Watson had identified a new interdisciplinary social science building as his top priority capital project. At his state of the college address, he proposed that the building be sited next to the University of Delaware Library and claimed that generating funds for this building would be “a major focus” of the college’s development effort. Watson said that the new building “will help facilitate . . . cross-disciplinary collaborations,” but there was an expectation that the building would specifically house programs and offices for Biden when he completed his second term as vice president.⁶¹

Wilson led the development of a proposal for a Biden Institute for Social Justice and Civic Engagement, which would be housed in the new building and focus on carrying on the work of Vice President Biden after he left office. Materials, both printed and digital, were prepared to showcase the projected makeup of the building, including future office space for the vice president, public event spaces, and research, exhibition, and public spaces.⁵² All of this planning took place in an environment in which the College of Arts and Sciences faced budget deficits that limited its ability to invest in the proposed new social science facility.⁶³ At the same time, a commitment had been made to build the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory (ISE Lab). That commitment required major multi-year funding contributions from CAS and the College of Engineering, as well as central university funding. No equivalent college and university commitments were made for the social science building.