Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. Quoted in Peter Bothum, “New Name, Familiar Face,” UDaily, December 11, 2018.
2. Daniel Rich and David Wilson, “White Paper: The Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration,” unpublished, University of Delaware, June 17, 2016. Obtained from the author’s collection of documents.
3. “The Biden School’s Transition to a Free-Standing Professional School: A Report to the University Faculty Senate,” February 10, 2020, 2. Courtesy of the Dean’s Office, Biden School of Public Policy and Administration.
4. University of Delaware Graduate College enrollment report, October 2021. Courtesy of the Dean’s Office, Biden School of Public Policy and Administration.
5. “Mission Statement,” University of Delaware, accessed March 20, 2022, https://www.udel.edu/about/mission/
6. Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordan Gee, Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), 57.
7. G. Arno Loessner, “Ford Foundation Investment Is Delaware’s Long-Term Gain: 50 Years of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware” (unpublished manuscript, 2012), 3. Courtesy of G. Arno Loessner.
8. Through the middle of the twentieth century, the primary public service program was the agricultural cooperative extension service.
9. The desegregation case revolved around whether the university was a state, and thereby public, entity subject to the most stringent interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The university claimed it was not. In his ruling, Judge Seitz declared that it was.
10. Daniel Rich, “The Changing Political Economy of Higher Education: Public Investments and University Strategies,” South African Journal of Public Administration 48, no. 3 (September 2013): 429–53.
11. J. R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 260.
12. In the three decades after World War II, public university systems greatly expanded due to increased state funding for new campuses, academic programs, and university operations. The growth of state-level investments, combined with the incentives of the G.I. Bill, kept tuition rates low and drove an unprecedented increase in college enrollments. See ibid., 260–80.
13. John A. Munroe, The University of Delaware: A History (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 447.
14. Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 52.
CHAPTER ONE: THE DIVISION OF URBAN AFFAIRS
1. Daniel Rich and Robert Warren, “The Intellectual Future of Urban Affairs: Theoretical, Normative and Organizational Options,” The Social Science Journal 17, no. 2 (1980): 50–66.
2. John A. Perkins, “Proposal for an Urban Services Project for the University of Delaware,” unpublished typescript, September 20, 1960, 2–5. Courtesy of the University of Delaware Archives and Records Management.
3. Ibid., 5–6.
4. The grant to UD was one of eight Ford Foundation urban affairs grants awarded across the nation.
5. Joseph McDaniel, Jr., Secretary of the Ford Foundation, to John A. Perkins, President of the University of Delaware, grant award letter, April 20, 1961. Courtesy of the University of Delaware Archives and Records Management.
6. Munroe, The University of Delaware, 385.
7. Overman served as director until 1968. He left UD to become the founding director of the Institute for Urban Studies at the University of Texas, Arlington.
8. Edward Overman, “The Division of Urban Affairs: First Two Years of Operation, July 1961–June 1963” (unpublished report, 1964), 1. Courtesy of UD Archives and Records Management.
9. George Worrilow had served as dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences and was familiar with the cooperative extension services that were part of the traditional land-grant mission.
10. G. Arno Loessner, “Ford Foundation Investment is Delaware’s Long-Term Gain: 50 Years of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware” (unpublished typescript, 2012), 1. Courtesy of G. Arno Loessner.
11. Carol Hoffecker, Corporate Capital: Wilmington in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983).
12. Legendary for its philanthropy, the du Pont family was a generous benefactor to the University of Delaware. Most of the land on which the main campus is located was donated by Pierre S. du Pont and H. Rodney Sharp in 1915. The early endowment of the university grew from contributions by members of the family, and the university has continued to thrive from annual grants provided by the Unidel Foundation, set up from the estate of Amy du Pont solely to support the academic enrichment of the university. The names on many campus buildings bear witness to the du Pont legacy.
13. “Decennial Censuses, 1940–2010,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed May 5, 2019, http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html.
14. William W. Boyer served at the University of Delaware as Charles P. Messick Professor of Public Administration in the Department of Political Science. He later joined the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research, developing a remarkably productive collaboration with the center’s director, Edward Ratledge, that resulted in a series of books on Delaware policy and politics.
15. William W. Boyer, Governing Delaware: Policy Problems in the First State (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000), 94.
16. L. Ware, D. Rudder, and T. Davis, The State of People of Color in Delaware: A Comparative Analysis of Racial Disparities in Income, Employment, Education, Homeownership, Business Ownership, and Involvement with the Criminal Justice System (Wilmington, DE: Metropolitan Urban League, 2002).
17. C. H. Brown and K. O’Connor, “Population Analysis of Wilmington and New Castle County” (Working Paper Number 4) (Newark: Division of Urban Affairs, University of Delaware, 1963). Retrieved from UD Archives and Records Management.
18. Jason Bourke, “Urban Governance and Economic Development: An Analysis of the Changing Political Economy of Wilmington, Delaware, 1945–2017” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 2018). Jason Bourke received his PhD from the Biden School in 2018. His dissertation chronicles the changes in Wilmington’s political economy and economic revitalization efforts over the seventy years following World War II.
19. Timothy K. Barnekov and Daniel Rich, “Business and Urban Development” (unpublished typescript, 1975). From the author’s collection of documents.
20. Timothy K. Barnekov and Daniel Rich, “Privatism and Urban Development: An Analysis of the Organized Influence of Local Business Elites,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1977): 431–60.
21. The division staff convinced the GWDC to broaden its initial focus on the Wilmington central business district and consider the changing regional economy.
22. Overman, “Division,” 8.
23. Ibid., 13.
24. Joe Biden, Promises To Keep: On Life And Politics (New York: Random House, 2007), 4.
25. Ibid., 46.
26. Hoffecker, Corporate, 206.
27. Ibid., 207. The hospital decision confirmed in 1975 also favored the suburbs. The new hospital would be in the center of New Castle County, reflecting the new locus of population and development.
28. Federal Judge Murray Schwartz had declared the unitary principle as the foundation of his decision, anticipating that all Northern New Castle County residents needed to be in the same school district to ensure that all students would be treated equitably.
29. Jeffrey Raffel, a professor appointed in 1971 and later director of the school, published the seminal work on the process. Jeffrey A. Raffel, The Politics of School Desegregation: The Metropolitan Remedy in Delaware (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980).
30. Overman, “Division,” 9.
31. Ibid.
32. Edward Ratledge graduated from UD in 1972 with a BS and MA in Economics before joining the division.
33. Edward Ratledge, email message to author, July 17, 2019.
34. Ibid.
35. Overman, “Division,” 7.
36. G. Arno Loessner began his UD career in November 1969 in the Division of Urban Affairs. In 1978, he was appointed the executive assistant to the university president and university secretary, and in 1986, he also was appointed vice president for advancement. In 2012, he became the first chair of the Biden School’s Board of Advisors.
37. Loessner, “Ford,” 1–2.
38. Jeffrey Raffel, email message to author, May 20, 2019.
39. These efforts eventually led to the creation of the Delaware Community Reinvestment Action Council (DECRAC) in 1987, an organization devoted to supporting the implementation of the federal Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.
40. Jerome Lewis joined UD in 1969 after completing his PhD in Public Administration at New York University. In addition to leading the Institute for Public Administration for half a century, he worked with William Boyer to establish the MPA program. He became one of the key advocates for what would become the Delaware Model of public affairs education.
41. These functions continue in the Biden School as of 2021.
42. Loessner, “Ford,” 2.
43. Raffel, email message to author, May 20, 2019.
44. Robert Wilson, email message to author, July 24, 2019.
45. Raffel, email message to author, May 20, 2019.
46. William C. Pendleton, Urban Studies and the University—The Ford Foundation Experience (New York: Ford Foundation Reprints, 1974), 5.
CHAPTER TWO: THE COLLEGE OF URBAN AFFAIRS AND PUBLIC POLICY
1. Mary Helen Callahan helped launch the Council of University Institutes of Urban Affairs (1975–80) and then served as executive director of the Urban Affairs Association (UAA) from 1980 to 2000. For thirty years, she also served as a special assistant to the dean of the College (and then School) of Urban Affairs and Public Policy and the college’s chief communications professional. Margaret Wilder, who had been a faculty member in the Biden School and became the executive director of UAA, describes Callahan as a transformative leader responsible for “the sustainability of a multi-disciplinary organization, and the core reasons for UAA’s continued relevance.” Email message to author, October 13, 2021.
2. Daniel Rich and Robert Warren, “The Intellectual Future of Urban Affairs: Theoretical, Normative and Organizational Options,” The Social Science Journal 17/2 (1980): 50–66.
3. Munroe, The University of Delaware, 409.
4. Ibid., 385.
5. Creating a law school had been considered by the Board of Trustees but was rejected because of the expected cost of launching a high-quality program.
6. “A Community Design: Division of Urban Affairs,” in The Decade Ahead: The Report of the Community Design Planning Commission, vol. 2 (unpublished, University of Delaware, 1971), 5. Courtesy of UD Archives and Records Management.
7. The College of Marine Studies represented UD’s designation as a federally funded sea-grant university, responsible for a broad range of programs supporting research and education to improve the conservation of coastal and marine resources.
8. David Ames became the cofounder of the Center for Historic Architecture and Engineering (later Design) with Bernard Herman in 1984, which he then directed for thirty years. Ames also was instrumental in establishing the original concentration in preservation as part of the MA in Urban Affairs and Public Policy.
9. David Ames, email message to author, June 18, 2019. In 1971, new faculty were hired with primary appointments in the Division of Urban Affairs (Mark Haskell, Jeffrey Raffel, and James H. Sills). Some senior staff members were awarded faculty rank in the division (C. Harold Brown, Francis Tannian, and Robert Wilson).
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Some of the nation’s leading social science scholars engaged in a battle that often entangled university departments and national and international academic and professional communities. Each discipline had a set of active protagonists who had large numbers of disciples: in sociology, Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills; in political science, David Easton and Sheldon Wolin; in economics, Milton Friedman and G.L.S. Shackle.
13. Irving Louis Horowitz, “Big Five and Little Five: Measuring Revolutions in Social Science,” Society (March/April 2006): 9–12. Horowitz noted other new fields including environmental studies, criminology, and communications.
14. Danilo Yanich, email message to author, June 8, 2020.
15. Jeffrey Raffel, email message to author, May 20, 2019
16. Francis Tannian, email message to author, July 8, 2019.
17. Robert Wilson, email message to author, July 24, 2019.
18. Quoted in the University of Delaware Messenger 15, No. 1 (2007).
19. Given that the PhD in Urban Affairs and Public Policy was one of the nation’s leading programs in a new field, the college hired some of its doctoral graduates. John Byrne (1980), Young-Doo Wang (1980), and Danilo Yanich (1980) all had long and productive careers on the faculty. The college also hired master’s and doctoral graduates as research and public service professional staff in the centers. Some of the senior professional staff also held faculty rank.
20. David Ames, email message to author, November 10, 2019.
21. The external review team visit was part of the Faculty Senate’s Academic Program Review (APR) process for the periodic evaluation of all academic programs. The recommendations from the APR external review team were summarized in the College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy Annual Report for 1987–88 (unpublished, 1988), 4. From the author’s collection of documents. Unless otherwise indicated, unpublished documents cited in this chapter were similarly obtained from the author’s collection. Concurrent with the APR, a 1987 report of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (now the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities) cited the college as “a model” because of the breadth of its research and engagement across a wide range of issues, noting that it was “responsive to both external clients . . . and to internal disciplinary concerns.” Quoted in Callahan, “A Brief History of the College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy (unpublished, University of Delaware, 1996), 3.
22. The Messick Chair was established in honor of Charles P. Messick, a 1907 graduate of the university who, for more than forty years, devoted his talents to addressing the problems of governmental administration in the state of New Jersey and the nation. 23. William W. Boyer, email message to author, March 11, 2019.
24. Ibid.
25. In 1988, the UD MPA program was granted permission to establish a chapter of Pi Alpha Pi, the national honor society for programs in public affairs and administration.
26. College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, Annual Report for 1989–90 (unpublished, 1990).
27. Ibid.
28. Center for Historic Architecture and Design, “CHAD: Halfway to Historic, 1984–2009” (unpublished, University of Delaware, 2010), 3. Courtesy of Chandra Reedy.
29. Chandra Reedy joined UD in 1989 after completing her PhD in Archeology at UCLA. In addition to her faculty appointment in the Biden School, she held a joint appointment in Art History. Her research focuses on the preservation of traditional technologies and their associated materials and intangible cultural heritage. She directed the Center for Historic Architecture and Design’s Laboratory for the Analysis of Cultural Materials, and much of her fieldwork was done in Asia.
30. Chandra Reedy, email message to author, May 24, 2019.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Mary Helen Callahan, “Brief History.”
34. A separate MA in Historic Preservation was initiated much later but was not sustained. The concentration in the MA program continued to be supported by the center.
35. CHAE also received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop, from the Federal Direct Tax of 1789, a reconstruction of early republican era landscape to improve historical preservation policies in Delaware. Callahan, “Brief History.”
36. In the 1980s and 1990s, Warren supervised more doctoral dissertations than any other faculty member, and some of his students later became leaders of urban affairs programs at other universities.
37. James G. Strathman, “A Ranking of US Graduate Programs in Urban Studies and Urban Affairs,” Journal of Urban Affairs 14, no. 1 (1992): 79–92.
38. College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, Annual Report for 1989–90.
39. Graham Hall originally had been an elementary school. After the New Castle County district consolidation to achieve desegregation in 1974, and subsequent restructuring in 1981, the newly created Christina School District no longer needed the building. A state law enabled the expedited transfer of surplus public school facilities to other public education institutions. As a result, the building was transferred to the university for a nominal fee.
40. Barnekov later served as acting dean of the college and then director of the Center for Community Development. As described in Chapter 5, Barnekov became dean of the College of Human Resources, Education and Public Policy in 2001.
41. The professional staff focused on research and applied research. The support staff maintained operating systems and services (such as the survey research center, which is a part of CADSR) and provided administrative assistance.
42. Ibid.
43. Munroe, The University of Delaware, 411, 447.
44. Roselle had been president of the University of Kentucky. He previously served as provost at Virginia Tech. A mathematician, he had earlier been Virginia Tech’s dean of research and graduate studies.
45. See Strathman, “Ranking.” In addition to ranking fourth overall, Delaware was ranked #1 by peer institution leaders. The ranking was based on a combination of peer evaluations and citations of the faculty’s published work.
46. In 2018, Schneider received the UD College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award.
47. College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, Annual Report for 1991–92 (unpublished, University of Delaware, 1992), 2. The Review Committee report affirmed that the college “has gained the respect and good will of local, state and regional officials and national colleagues in the field of urban affairs and public policy.” The committee also noted that “the college is underappreciated in the university where its image is not as strong as it is regionally, nationally and internationally.”
48. The concentration in historic preservation and planning was partly a compromise response to external pressure to prepare American Planning Association-certified planners for local governments. The college did not have the faculty capacity to support a new planning degree. However, the concentration would produce graduates with sufficient planning expertise to be employed by local governments for entry-level positions. The graduates would have the added advantage of understanding historic preservation planning, a specialty that most local governments did not have the resources to support as a separate position.
49. Gift funds also increased, enabling the development of small endowments, including scholarship funds.
50. Of particular importance, the college and the university administration came to a formal agreement on the terms governing the college’s budgeting system. The agreement confirmed the college’s high level of independence along with its responsibilities for generating a growing level of operating support from external sources and systematically reporting its budget status.
CHAPTER THREE: POLICY PARTNERSHIPS AND THE DELAWARE MODEL
1. College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, Annual Report for 1990–91 (unpublished, University of Delaware, 1991). Courtesy of UD Archives and Records Management.
2. Mary Helen Callahan, “Urban Affairs and Public Policy Newsletter” (Spring 1993): 6.
3. Daniel Rich, “Report to the Provost” (unpublished, University of Delaware, 1995), 6. From the author’s collection of documents.
4. Sponsored research and public service per full-time equivalent (FTE) college faculty increased to over $300,000 in 1995, among the highest level of any academic unit at the university, including the science and engineering departments.
5. Rich, “Report,” 6.
6. Quoted in Callahan, “Brief History,” 6.
7. Ibid., 9.
8. Ibid.
9. The first study of homelessness in Delaware was conducted by Steven Peuquet, a city planner and urban economist, who joined the Urban Agent Division in 1983 and became director of the Center for Community Development, which evolved from that division, in 2005.
10. Callahan, “Urban Affairs” (1993), 13.
11. Before joining the university, Sills had, in 1963, become the first Black executive director of Peoples Settlement in Wilmington. He was an early and strong advocate for neighborhood improvement through community development organizations and for removing political and economic barriers facing Blacks.
12. Mary Helen Callahan, “Urban Affairs and Public Policy Newsletter” (Spring 1994):
6.
13. The Urban Agent Program was renamed the Urban Agent Division in 1976.
14. He became director again in 2005, serving until his retirement in 2018.
15. In 1993, CCD, the Delaware State Housing Authority, and the Delaware Community Foundation formed the Housing Capacity-Building Program, providing grants to nonprofit organizations to expand their housing assistance programs. CCD also worked with the City of Wilmington and New Castle County to develop Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategies to qualify each jurisdiction for financial assistance across various federal programs.
16. Quoted in Callahan, “Urban Affairs” (1994), 12. Gilman retired from the college in 1992 and served as professor emeritus until he died in 1998.
17. Ibid., 2.
18. Loessner led nearly two dozen graduate study abroad programs over four decades.
19. As UD vice president and secretary, Loessner took the lead in promoting the partnership with the Salzburg Seminar.
20. Timothy Barnekov, Barry Cullingworth, Dan Rich, Paul Solano, and Robert Warren were visiting scholars at the University of Strathclyde in the 1980s. The college hosted a half-dozen visiting scholars from among the Strathclyde faculty.
21. The results included two books by Cullingworth, one updating earlier work on planning in the U.K. and another on planning in the U.S., a series of articles, and a jointly authored book: Timothy K. Barnekov, Robin Boyle, and Daniel Rich, Privatism and Urban Policy in Britain and the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Rich continued as a visiting professor at Strathclyde through 2004.
22. IPA staff also undertook a project, with the assistance of the Salzburg Seminar and the Hewlett Foundation, to extend the concept and function of IPA to universities in the former Soviet Union. This led to a key partnership with Babes-Bolyai University in Romania.
23. Since the 1970s, the center had worked with the UD Institute for Energy Conversion, the federal government’s designated center of excellence for research on photovoltaics. That collaboration focused on policies related to photovoltaics and other solar energy options. This association became a growing partnership between faculty and students in science and engineering and those in the policy sciences. In 1994, the center received funding from the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory to examine the economic and environmental dimensions and policy implications of photovoltaics as a demand-side management tool.
24. The center’s study was a new initiative by the World Bank under its “Alternative Energy Paths” project.
25. Quoted in Callahan, “Urban Affairs” (1994), 2.
26. John Byrne was a contributing author to the Second and Third Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
27. Initially, the book series was published by Transaction Books, and later published by Routledge.
28. The program’s name was subsequently switched to Energy and Environmental Policy, parallel to the center’s name. While the program was sponsored by CEEP, UD policy precluded centers from administering degree programs. The issue of a suitable administrative home for cross-college interdisciplinary programs was not resolved until UD created the Graduate College in 2019.
29. Robert Denhardt, Jerome R. Lewis, Jeffrey A. Raffel, and Daniel Rich, “Integrating Theory and Practice in MPA Education: The Delaware Model,” Journal of Public Administration Education 3, no. 2 (1997): 153–62.
30. Ibid., 152–53.
31. Ibid., 155.
32. Institute for Public Administration, “Legislative Fellows Program Update” (unpublished, University of Delaware, 2019), 3. Courtesy of the Institute for Public Administration.
33. IPA Program Manager Lisa Moreland Allred pointed out that the “kind of research and staffing of standing committees that our fellows are involved in is usually done by full-time professionals in other states” (Ibid., 5).
34. As of 2019, 315 graduate and undergraduate students had served as fellows (ibid.).
35. Quoted in School of Public Policy and Administration: 50 Years (Newark: University of Delaware Office of Communications and Marketing, 2012), 11.
36. Ibid., 9.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE SCHOOL OF URBAN AFFAIRS AND PUBLIC POLICY
1. Schiavelli became provost in July 1994. He was an experienced academic leader, having served as provost and interim president at the College of William and Mary.
2. In support of consolidating the colleges of Education, Human Resources, and Urban Affairs and Public Policy, the deans’ advisory letter proposed that these units were “linked by the common mission of being interdisciplinary pre-professional and professional programs with a policy and service orientation directed to central societal issues and challenges.” The programs were complimentary and were connected by “an historic association with the university’s responsibilities as a state-assisted, land grant institution and share a commitment to academic and professional values that emphasize interdisciplinary research and instruction in the service of meeting important societal needs.” UD Deans to Provost Melvyn Schiavelli, “Advisory Letter on College Reorganization,” October 17, 1995, 2. From the author’s collection of documents. Unless otherwise noted, other primary documents cited are from the author’s collection.
3. The academic units were the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, two academic departments focused on public education that later joined to become the School of Education, the Department of Individual and Family Studies, the Department of Consumer Economics and Apparel Design, and the Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management.
4. When Barnekov became dean, Pamela Leland became acting director of the Center for Community Development and Family Policy. In 2002, the center’s name was changed to the Center for Community Research and Service, and Leslie Cooksey was appointed director. The center continued to offer programs to address issues faced by lower-income communities in Delaware and strengthen the capacity of nonprofit organizations. In 2004, Steve Peuquet was appointed director.
5. Daniel Rich, “The College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy: A Progress Report” (unpublished typescript, 2000).
6. Ibid., 1.
7. The Engaged University model aimed at making the campus a more vital part of the fabric of its community. Engagement was viewed as a two-way process for defining needs and priorities and exchanging ideas and resources: “Embedded in the engagement ideal is a commitment to sharing and reciprocity. By engagement the Commission envisioned partnerships, two-way streets defined by mutual respect among the partners for what each brings to the table.” J. Byrne, Public Higher Education Reform Five Years After the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities (Washington, DC: National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, 2006), 7.
8. Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities (Kellogg Commission), Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged Institution (Washington, DC: National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, 1999), 46.
9. Ibid.
10. The funding for CHEP line items was especially significant since the state’s allocations for support of general UD operations were not keeping up with the rise in overall costs.
11. Secondary teacher education programs were in the College of Arts and Sciences. Most UD colleges had programs that provided services for K–12 public education, such as the economic education program in the Lerner College of Business and Economics.
12. The Center for Disabilities Studies was established under the UD Research Office and transferred to CHEP.
13. These partnerships included the New Castle County Professional Development Council (with the superintendents of five New Castle County school districts); the Delaware Academy of School Leadership partnership (with the Business/Public Education Council and the Department of Education); the Milford Professional Development School (with the Milford School District and the State of Delaware); the Institute for Public Administration’s partnership with the Delaware Public Policy Institute; and ongoing programs connecting the work of CHEP centers to the Governor’s Family Services Cabinet Council.
14. Functionally, the situation was more complex since many of those working in the centers, particularly the professional staff, also felt allegiance to the school even though they didn’t have academic appointments.
15. Jeffrey A. Raffel, “Founding the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy” (unpublished, March 11, 2019), 3. Courtesy of Jeffrey A. Raffel. Raffel’s recollections, initially shared in draft documents to the author, have been published in his memoir Lessons Learned: A Memoir of Leadership Development (Washington, DC: NASPAA, 2019).
16. The center directors insisted on retaining control of graduate student funding decisions. At the same time, the school had limited graduate student funding options apart from the centers. Most of the external funding came through the centers, and since the school had no undergraduate programs, it had no teaching assistantships.
17. The policy was adopted because many federal sponsors were not providing tuition support in contracts and grants. In addition, the provision of matching graduate tuition support would provide an incentive to increase external funding and graduate student stipend support.
18. Raffel, “Founding,” 5.
19. Ibid. While most of the funding was from external sources, the total number of awards included some competitive university fellowships and minority graduate scholarships.
20. Callahan, “Urban Affairs” (1993), 1. Courtesy of UD Archives and Records Management.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Jeffrey Raffel, email message to author, May 20, 2019.
24. Quoted in College of Arts and Sciences, “School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy: Integrating Academic Excellence and Professional Experience” (unpublished, University of Delaware, 2012), 9.
25. Timothy K. Barnekov, email message to author, June 27, 2019. Barnekov reports that sometimes this meant that non-tenure track faculty had to do two jobs—one being the support of the externally and contract-funded work of the centers and the other being the teaching, academic supervision, and publishing associated with tenure track faculty.
26. Ibid. Barnekov reports that the expectation of increased external funding was rarely fulfilled. Tenure track faculty in these appointments, especially junior faculty, focused on generating publications to support promotion and tenure. Typically, they were uninterested in the project work of the centers or in generating external funds for their work.
27. Raffel, “Lessons Learned,” 83.
28. Quoted in the UD Messenger 13 (November 3, 2005). Stein was chair of the Department of Consumer Studies until the move of the Leadership program. She became program director of the undergraduate Leadership program in the school in 2005 and remained director through 2021.
29. Raffel, “Lessons Learned,” 88.
30. NASPAA later kept the acronym but changed its name to the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration, intended to denote a larger global scope. Raffel chaired the committee that recommended the name change.
31. Two faculty received prestigious NASPAA awards—Jerome Lewis received the Elmer B. Staats Public Service Award (1998) and Eric Jacobson (MPA 1981) received the Leslie A. Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award (2004).
32. The urban-grant designation was later dropped by the federal government.
33. Daniel Rich, “The University of Delaware as an Engaged University,” presentation to the Consortium of University Public Service Organizations, Newark, Delaware, March 15, 2006.
34. Although the overall level of state funding was relatively flat during the Roselle administration, CHEP and the new College of Health Sciences generated targeted support from the state that would otherwise not have been forthcoming.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION
1. Harker spent his entire academic career at the University of Pennsylvania, starting as an undergraduate, completing his doctoral degree in civic and environmental engineering, and rising to become the youngest faculty member to be awarded an endowed professorship in Wharton’s history. Prior to being appointed Wharton School dean in 2000, Harker was interim dean and deputy dean, as well as the chair of its operations and information management department.
2. As the DuPont company’s presence in Delaware contracted, the state’s role as the back-office credit card capital for the banking industry grew, resulting in partnerships between the university and leaders from that sector, initially MBNA.
3. George Irvine, “Whither Publicness? The Changing Public Identities of Research Universities” (PhD Diss., University of Delaware, 2018), 260.
4. AAU’s sixty-two research universities (thirty-six public/twenty-six private) earn the majority of the competitively awarded federal funding for research and are recognized as the “elite” among the nation’s institutions offering graduate and professional education. Membership is by invitation. Earning an invitation means demonstrating that the research and education profile of the university exceeds the median of current member institutions.
5. A premium was on the federal funding that qualified in the AAU membership requirements.
6. The Health Sciences Alliance was a partnership between UD, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia (which had a medical school with designated seats for Delawareans funded by the state), the Nemours Foundation (which supported a renowned hospital for children), and Christiana Care (Delaware’s largest health provider). The new research institutes, UDEI and DENIN, were designed to generate the capacity to compete for larger research grants.
7. Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “Recent Deep State Higher Education Cuts May Harm Students and the Economy for Years to Come” (2013). Retrieved from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3927.
8. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), “Historical Trends in Federal R&D” (2016). Retrieved from http://www.aaas.org/page/historical-trends-federal-rd.
9. Irvine, “Whither,” 294. By 2015, UD research obligations were slightly below their level in 2005, under $80 million. UD had a 33 percent decrease in federal research obligations between 2010 and 2015, a pattern similar to that of other research universities but more severe than most.
10. Ibid., 265. Irvine concluded that UD remained affordable and accessible to those families above the median household income mark. However, for those below the median, UD became increasingly less accessible unless they received tuition assistance of some kind.
11. F. Berry, “The Changing Climate for Public Affairs Education,” NASPAA presidential address, Washington, DC, October 1, 2010.
12. Ibid.
13. Public service faculty were non-tenure track (renamed continuing track) faculty. They were funded in part from state allocations to focus a significant portion of their workload on public service programs, applied research, and technical assistance to the state and its communities.
14. A CHEP priority was the reconfiguration of space and facilities so that most of the academic units would be in proximity to each other.
15. Initiatives to develop joint programs failed, including a proposal for a doctoral-level leadership program to build upon and expand the Doctor of Education (EdD) program. The new degree program would combine the expertise of the School of Education faculty and the MPA faculty in the school with some contributions from other CHEP units. The proposed program would fill a gap at UD since there was no professionally oriented doctoral program in business administration or public administration. The new program was expected to attract senior professionals from all sectors and generate additional graduate tuition revenue.
16. Jeffrey A. Raffel, “Founding,” 3.
17. Apple earned his doctorate in physical chemistry at UD in 1982. In 1991, he joined the faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and served as chemistry department chair from 1997 until 2001. He became dean of graduate education in 2001 and vice provost in 2002. Apple joined UD in July 2005 as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of chemistry.
18. At a Faculty Senate-sponsored hearing, many school faculty expressed concern that independent status would not be supported by the administration.
19. Maria Aristigueta started her career as an evaluator for the U.S. Accounting Office and served as a senior management analyst for the Florida cities of Orlando and Miami. She joined the UD faculty in 1997 after receiving her doctorate from the University of Southern California and teaching at the University of Central Florida.
20. This included the Institute for Public Administration, Center for Community Research and Service, Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research, and Center for Historic Architecture and Design.
21. In three years, CEEP and ENEP moved to the College of Arts and Sciences, with the ENEP program rejoining the school.
22. Quoted in Dan Rich, “The School of Public Policy and Administration Celebrates 50 Years,” CONNECT 4, no. 1 (2012), 3.
23. Quoted in School of Public Policy and Administration: 50 Years (Newark: University of Delaware Office of Communications and Marketing, 2012), 11.
24. Between 2014 and 2016, they switched roles, enabling Aristigueta to serve as president of the American Society of Public Administration.
25. The members of the initial Board of Advisors were Tony Allen (PhD, UAPP 2001), Bank of America communications executive and UD Trustee; Raina Harper Allen (MA, UAPP 2001), Director, Community Engagement and Programs to Lieutenant Governor Matt Denn; Kenneth Becker (MA, UAPP 1976), president of Becker Capital and finance and managing partner, EcogySolar; Walter Broadnax, SPPA Messick Fellow and distinguished professor, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University; The Hon. Jeffrey W. Bullock, Delaware Secretary of State; Robert Denhardt, Charles P. Messick Professor Emeritus, and former dean and professor, Arizona State University; Kim Gomes (MPA 2004), vice president, The Byrd Group; G. Arno Loessner, UD professor emeritus (chair); Renosi Mokate (MA, UAPP 1983 and PhD, UAPP 1986), executive director (Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa) of the World Bank Group; Paul Posner, professor of public administration, George Mason University, and former president of ASPA; John H. Taylor, Jr., senior vice president and executive director, Delaware Public Policy Institute; Sibusiso Vil-Nkomo (MA, UAPP 1983 and PhD, UAPP 1995), 2011–12 J. William Fulbright Research Scholar at Fordham University and research professor at the University of Pretoria; and Jane Vincent (MPA 1995), U.S. Housing and Urban Development regional administrator for the mid-Atlantic.
26. The Delaware Public Policy Institute and the Institute for Public Administration cosponsored conferences focused on key state and national policy issues.
27. Pierce joined the school faculty in 2011 after having worked on public policy issues at the Brookings Institution and with the White House Council on Environmental Policy.
28. In 2014, the school had 252 undergraduate majors (149 in OCL and 103 in PP) and 290 minors (108 in OCL, 33 in PP, and 149 in PH).
29. School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, “Academic Program Review Self-Study,” (unpublished, University of Delaware, April 2014), 24. From the author’s collection of documents.
30. A former Delaware Secretary of State, Freel was a senior advisor to U.S. Senator Thomas Carper. The Washington Fellows program became a full-semester option in the spring of 2016.
31. The DISA program was approved by the Faculty Senate in April 2009 and obtained seed funding from a $400,000 grant from the Unidel Foundation. The first students entered the program in the fall of 2010. The program was given permanent status in 2016.
32. DRC support came from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Other funding sources have included the NOAA Sea Grant Program, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, Public Entity Risk Institute, and U.S. Geological Survey.
33. From 2009 to 2014, the school’s faculty maintained a very high level of scholarly productivity that included publishing 121 refereed journal articles, seventeen books, forty-two book chapters, and dozens of technical reports, book reviews, conference papers, and proceedings.
34. SUAPP, “Academic Program Review Self-Study,” 77.
35. Princeton had among the most expensive programs in the nation but was discounting its graduate tuition rate by 90 percent.
36. As of 2013–14, the cost of the UD MPA was $63,546, higher than all national competitors, public or private.
37. The program provided a 50 percent graduate tuition scholarship for Delawareans, a 35 percent scholarship for U.S. nationals, and a 10 percent scholarship for international students.
38. The additional challenge for the school’s MPA program (and, to a lesser extent, other master’s level programs) is that the university is not located in a large urban area enabling it to draw significant numbers of part-time applicants. As a result, the MPA program was designed for full-time students, who must pay full tuition. The basis for the Delaware Model was having such full-time students who could devote significant time to public service projects, as well as classes and applied research.
39. As a faculty member and chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Pika had developed many close connections with colleagues in the school.
40. Ralph J. Begleiter, “The Joseph R. and Jill T. Biden Delaware Institute Project Summary, Status and Analysis: A Report for the College of Arts and Sciences and the University of Delaware” (Center for Political Communication, University of Delaware, 2016), 3.
41. Ralph Begleiter, email message to author, March 25, 2020.
42. Begleiter, “Project Summary,” appendix, 1.
43. Begleiter reports no actual engagement with Biden on his senatorial papers until much later. Negotiations between UD and Biden’s attorney over his papers began in early 2011, and the formal agreement was signed in late 2011 (email message to author, June 15, 2020).
44. Ibid.
45. Ralph Begleiter, email message to author, June 28, 2020.
46. Plouffe and Schmidt did not receive their UD degrees until 2010 and 2013, respectively.
47. Cited in Begleiter, “Project Summary,” 5.
48. Ralph Begleiter, email message to author, March 25, 2020.
49. The Center for Political Communication adopted the phrase “epicenter of politics” as its catch line (Begleiter, “Project Summary,” 5).
50. This change in designation happened because, at UD, “Institute” is the designation that has been used for a university-wide unit, while “Center” is used for a college unit.
51. Biden Papers Gift Agreement, 2011, cited in Begleiter, “Project Summary,” 13.
52. A college-based team that included Pika, Begleiter, and CAS Dean Watson examined social science buildings at other universities as potential models.
53. Ralph Begleiter, email message to author, June 15, 2020.
54. Joseph Pika, email message to author, June 16, 2020.
55. Joseph Pika, email message to author, March 25, 2020.
56. Quoted in Ann Mansur, “Vice President Biden Speaks, Donates Papers,” UDaily, September 16, 2011.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Andrea Boyle Tippett, “Biden Papers Arrive,” UDaily, June 11, 2012.
60. David Wilson was professor of Political Science and International Relations at UD. He would become dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, in July 2021.
61. The Center for Political Communication and the proposed Biden Institute would be in the new building. It remained undecided which other social science units and programs would be in the building.
62. Ralph Begleiter, email message to author, June 15, 2020.
63. Between 2010 and 2014, CAS undergraduate full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment as a percentage of total UD enrollment decreased from 45.1 to 40.5 percent. At the same time, CAS externally sponsored activity declined from 26 percent of the university total to 20.3 percent. “CAS Report to Chairs and Directors from Dean George Watson,” March 5, 2015. Courtesy of Maria Aristigueta. In the Responsibility-Based Budgeting system, these changes translated into reduced allocated revenue and less opportunity to address the needs of the school and other academic units.
CHAPTER SIX: SHAPING PUBLIC POLICY
1. Thomas Birkland, David Dill, Meredith Newman, Bahira Sherif Trask, Kenneth Wong, “School of Public Policy and Administration Report to Deputy Provost Nancy Brick-house,” October 14, 2014, 1–2. From the author’s collection of documents. Unless otherwise noted, primary source materials cited throughout the chapter were obtained from the author’s documents.
2. The external review was commissioned by the University Faculty Senate as part of the academic review process for all academic units. See Chapter Five.
3. Birkland, et al., “School of Public Policy and Administration Report,” 1–2.
4. State line-item support for programs in the school and its centers decreased from $1,395,600 in 2009 to $1,068,800 in 2013. SUAPP, “Academic Program Review Self-Study,” 106–724.
5. Ibid., 107. External funding was $3,915,727 in 2009 and $3,823,730 in 2013. Data through FY20 are from the Biden School transition report “The Biden School’s Transition to a Free-Standing Professional School: A Report to the University Faculty Senate,” February 10, 2020, 4. Courtesy of the Dean’s Office, Biden School of Public Policy and Administration.
6. SUAPP, “Academic Program Review Self-Study,” 70–71, and “The Biden School’s Transition,” 6.
7. The centers provided stipends to sixty-five graduate students each year from 2009 to 2013, at an annual funding level of $750,000. SUAPP, “Academic Program Review Self-Study,” 70–71.
8. When Byrne rejoined the school’s faculty, CEEP reported to the Dean’s Office in the College of Arts and Sciences until the school became a freestanding unit in 2020.
9. Steven Peuquet and Jerome Lewis, “Community Engagement Activities of the Research and Public Service Units of the School of Public Policy and Administration, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Delaware, July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012” (unpublished, 2012).
10. The overall impact was to strengthen the nonprofit sector’s capacity, particularly benefiting smaller institutions that otherwise would not have had access to professional development opportunities.
11. The Blueprint Communities Delaware program was the first in the nation to include a university component. CCRS provided training, technical assistance, coaching, and financial support to residents to help them develop a strategic plan for their community’s future.
12. Data from Christina Morrow, Director, Public Allies Delaware, email message to the author, October 11, 2021.
13. Elizabeth Lockman, quoted by Christina Morrow, email message to the author, October 11, 2021.
14. The work was funded by grants and contracts and informed public policies on such issues as reducing excessive use of emergency room services by better connecting clients to appropriate sources of primary care.
15. Quoted in “Medicaid Research Partnership,” CONNECT 8, no. 1 (2016): 26.
16. For example, Kathryn Gifford (PhD, UAPP 2016) used Medicaid data for her dissertation and subsequently joined CCRS as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a member of the professional staff to support the expanding research under the new partnership.
17. The center sponsored an area of specialization in the MA in Urban Affairs and Public Policy that later became a graduate certificate program focused on working with faculty and staff on applied projects. In 2010, CHAD proposed a new MA in Historic Preservation, which was offered on a probationary basis but not approved as a separate degree because of resource limitations.
18. CHAD documented two byways—one is in Western Sussex County that lies in the watershed of the Chesapeake Bay, and the second, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, traces the Underground Railroad route through Delaware.
19. Kenneth Becker was president of Becker Capital and Finance. Byrne also worked closely on the development of Delaware’s SEU with State Senator Harris McDowell, who described it as one of the great legislative challenges of his long tenure that ultimately gained almost unanimous legislative support.
20. The Better Buildings Challenge is a collaboration of the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to encourage companies and manufacturers, school districts and universities, and state and local governments to adopt efficient building technologies to reduce the wasting of energy.
21. IPA developed online toolboxes of resources that enabled local governments to create comprehensive community plans.
22. The University of Delaware Energy Institute and the Delaware Environmental Institute were both launched at IPA policy forums.
23. Kathleen Murphy also served as associate director of IPA.
24. Gerald Kaufman, “White Paper: U.S. Water and Climate Change Policy” (unpublished, Newark, DE, March 17, 2021), 17.
25. Some of the earliest projects of the Division of Urban Affairs were related to the changing demands on the public education system resulting from shifting demographics and the impacts of federal court-ordered desegregation. Professor Jeffrey Raffel became the chief analyst of the desegregation process. The Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research conducted most of the demographic and enrollment projections for Delaware school districts and conducted periodic surveys on public opinion about education issues. The Center for Community Research and Service worked with community organizations that provided services to schools and offered supplemental, after-school programs for students and their families. During the period in which the school was a part of CHEP, all of its centers and institutes broadened their engagement on public education issues.
26. The nineteen-member council included early childhood service providers and advocates, state agency representatives, community members, and parents.
27. The adoption of best practices often required additional resources, but state funding of early childhood services was the same regardless of whether those practices were adopted.
28. John Laznick from CADSR was a major contributor to the needs assessment.
29. UD also was one of the only universities in the nation to sponsor an early head start program, New Directions Early Head Start. UD offered direct services through a model Early Learning Center in Newark and an early childhood facility in one of Wilmington’s poorest areas.
30. The plan, “Sustaining Early Success: Delaware’s Strategic Plan for a Comprehensive Early Childhood System,” was developed through a statewide process of engagement, administered by IPA on behalf of DECC, that solicited input from hundreds of families, providers, advocates, and other stakeholders, in addition to early childhood experts and dozens of community partners.
31. Tony Allen spent several years working for U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden as a speech-writer and special assistant. He became the founding president of the Metropolitan Urban League. He then became executive vice president with MBNA and later communications executive for Bank of America. He was appointed to the University of Delaware Board of Trustees. After serving as provost and executive vice president, on January 1, 2020, Allen became the twelfth president of Delaware State University (DSU). He retained appointments as a senior policy fellow in the Biden School and was a member of the school’s Board of Advisors.
32. The website for the commission, subsequently adopted by the Redding Consortium, became the repository for the accumulated research reports, policy briefs, and other analytic resources generated by IPA’s staff (www.solutionsfordelawareschools.com).
33. Students were coauthors of all publications, including two books and various policy briefs and reports; some developed their master’s and doctoral research around issues of educational equity. Three of the students, Elizabeth Burland (MA, UAPP 2015), Kelsey Mensch (MPA 2018), and Haley Qaissaunee (MPA 2017), were subsequently hired by IPA to continue their work as professional staff.
34. In 2018, a coalition of organizations that included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Delawareans for Educational Opportunity sued the State of Delaware for failing to provide adequate resources to educate all students effectively. Some of the data and empirical analysis underpinning their claims were based on the research conducted by IPA on behalf of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission. The main case was settled in fall 2020, leading the state to incorporate funding for low-income students and English learners starting with the FY2022 budget and to make additional adjustments to strengthen support for disadvantaged students.
35. The lead person from Delaware State University was Jason Bourke (PhD, UAPP 2018).
36. SUAPP, “Academic Program Review Self-Study,” 3.
37. Ibid., 6–7.
38. The external team included: Thomas Birkland, Professor, School of Public Policy and International Affairs, North Carolina State University; David Dill, Professor of Public Policy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Meredith Newman, Professor of Public Administration, Florida International University; and Kenneth Wong, Professor of Educational Policy and Public Policy, Brown University. Dr. Bahira Sherif Trask from the Department of Human Development and Family Studies was appointed by the UD Faculty Senate as the internal member.
39. Birkland, et al., “School of Public Policy and Administration Report,” 1–2.
40. “Planning for the Next Generation of SPPA Scholars: A Response to the APR Review Team’s Report,” School of Public Policy and Administration, November 12, 2014.
CHAPTER SEVEN: RISING EXPECTATIONS
1. He also served as vice president for the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Before joining Stony Brook University, Dr. Assanis had a distinguished career at the University of Michigan for seventeen years. He was the Jon R. and Beverly S. Holt Professor of Engineering and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, as well as director of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute, founding director of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center for Clean Vehicles, and director of the Walter E. Lay Automotive Laboratory. He also served as the founding director of the interdisciplinary graduate program in automotive engineering (1996–2002), chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (2002–2007), director of the Automotive Research Center (2002–2009), and founding codirector of the General Motors-University of Michigan Collaborative Research Laboratory for Advanced Engine Systems (2002–2011). Assanis started his academic career as an assistant and associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
2. His commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry also helped him decide to replace the Responsibility-Based Budgeting system, which he recognized as discouraging interdisciplinary collaborations.
3. Daniel Rich and David Wilson, “White Paper: The Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration” (unpublished, University of Delaware, June 17, 2016). Obtained from the author’s collection of documents. The 2016 white paper was circulated to other members of the UD administration in the fall of 2016. Unless otherwise noted, all primary source documents cited in this chapter are from the author’s own collection.
4. Ibid., 1.
5. Ibid.
6. Most national rankings depend primarily on reputational assessments made by the heads of academic programs.
7. The school’s faculty subsequently identified four areas for priority in faculty hiring: urban and social policy, health policy and management, energy and environmental policy, and disaster science and management.
8. Quoted in “Biden Institute Announced,” UDaily, February 7, 2017.
9. Biden also would work at the main Penn campus in Philadelphia.
10. Quoted in Ann Manser, “Biden is Back,” UDaily, April 7, 2017.
11. Catherine McLaughlin, Biden School website, undated, www.bidenschool.udel.edu.
12. In addition to serving as vice chair of the Biden Institute, she also served as vice chair of the Biden Foundation. The Biden Foundation works to advance issues that Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden have worked on throughout their careers, including violence against women, the well-being of military families, equal rights, and affordable education.
13. Quoted in Carlett Spike, “2019 Women of Promise Honored,” UDaily, March 29, 2019.
14. Rich and Wilson, “White Paper,” 2.
15. In 2015, the original task force evolved into the Community Engagement Commission, which studied models and best practices at other institutions to recommend a structure best suited for sustaining and expanding UD’s community-based efforts.
16. Maria Aristigueta, email message to author, July 17, 2020.
17. Campus Compact maintained a national posting of the plans submitted. Responsibility for developing the Civic Action Plan rested with CEI.
18. Dennis Assanis, “President’s Message,” Civic Action Plan: The University of Delaware’s Strategic Vision for Strengthening Community Engagement (Community Engagement Initiative, December 2017). As the Civic Action Plan was approved, UD joined forty top research universities as part of a subsection of Campus Compact called The Research Universities Community Engagement Network (TRUCEN). The premise underpinning TRUCEN is that one of the measures of every great research university in the twenty-first century is the extent to which the knowledge it generates enriches the quality of life in the communities it serves.
19. The Civic Action Plan presented five overarching goals: enhance university-wide capacity to support community engagement; increase support for engaged scholarship; expand opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students; create new knowledge-based partnerships addressing critical societal challenges; and increase UD’s recognition as an engaged research university. CEI was responsible for carrying out the Civic Action Plan. It relied on continuing and substantial support from SPPA to accomplish that task.
20. The Community Engagement Council included representatives from all UD colleges and thirty-seven centers and institutes. In December 2019, Provost Morgan and Executive Vice President John Long created the UD Sustainability Council based on a proposal submitted by CEI leadership and sustainability advocates across campus. The goal was to help align university activities and priorities with its commitment to the environment.
21. The award recipients were Roberta Golinkoff, Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Chair in the School of Education, for her work on early learning, and April Veness, associate professor of geography and Latin American and Iberian studies, for her work with communities in the City of Newark and Sussex County.
22. Kalyn McDonough (PhD, UAPP 2020) from the Biden School received an award for her contributions to the Partnership for Healthy Communities and her work in youth rehabilitation; she also was among the first students to complete the Engaged Scholarship graduate certificate program. In 2021, Biden School doctoral student Dianna Ruberto received an award for her work with the Partnership for Arts and Culture. She also was among the first graduate students to earn a certificate in Engaged Scholarship and taught the introductory course in the Community Engagement Scholars course of study.
23. In 2015, Tony Allen, then a UD trustee, and Dan Rich had encouraged the UD administration to play a more central role in supporting the improvement of Delaware K–12 education.
24. The Partnership for Healthy Communities played a key community support role during the COVID-19 crisis. PHC engaged in forty strategic initiatives to improve the health of Delawareans, including Healthy Communities Delaware, a broad alliance of institutions to support community-led approaches to building healthy and prosperous places.
25. In 2021, Leann Moore (MPA 2014), a professional staff member in the Institute for Public Administration, was appointed TNP’s first full-time executive director. TNP also launched the Sustainable Newark Initiative to enhance energy and resource conservation and promote environmental quality practices. The initiative was a partnership between TNP, the City of Newark, the UD Sustainability Council, and business and nonprofit institutions. The TNP received a three-year grant from Chemours to support the Sustainable Newark Initiative.
26. Robin Morgan had been dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences. She joined the UD faculty in 1985 in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences.
27. Overby had been one of the architects of the Civic Action Plan.
28. Quoted in “Joe Biden Calls for Action,” CONNECT 9, No.1 (2017), 3.
29. Described by Maria Aristigueta, personal communication to the author, November 13, 2019.
30. Papers from the Biden Challenge conference were subsequently published in the Public Administration Review 79, No. 5 (September 2019): 621–802.
31. The delay in naming the school was a product of many circumstances. UD had only one named college or school, the Lerner College of Business and Economics, and that naming was accompanied by a sizable endowment. There was no endowment for the naming of the school for Biden. What was never in doubt was Assanis’s intention to proceed and make the school’s naming a major part of his overall strategy for the university’s growth and recognition.
32. Pelesko was appointed as interim dean in September 2018 and then confirmed as the dean by Provost Morgan effective July 1, 2019.
33. Archibald pointed out, for example, that Aristigueta, who held the position of director, was not invited to the periodic meetings of the deans of the leading public affairs schools.
34. The naming of the school was announced without a prior vote of the faculty. Faculty votes endorsing the action were taken in February at the start of the upcoming spring semester.
35. Quoted in Peter Bothum, “New Name, Familiar Face,” UDaily, December 11, 2018.
36. Ibid.
37. The conversation between Biden and Meacham was preceded by a series of concurrent discussions among policymakers, government officials, business and nonprofit leaders, community members, and UD faculty and students on five areas of importance to the Biden School: American politics and democracy; disaster science and management; energy and the environment; health care; and the middle class and urban affairs.
38. UD was active in politics in other notable ways but without a partisan orientation. For example, the Center for Political Communication sponsored debates among candidates for state office.
39. On February 24, 2019, two months before Biden announced his candidacy, UD Vice President and General Counsel Laure Bachich Ergin circulated a detailed memorandum to the senior administration confirming the legal restrictions on partisan political activities of the university imposed by its charter and by its status as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. She wrote that UD is prohibited from participating or intervening in any political campaign or acting on behalf or in opposition to any political candidate.
40. The university’s charter expressly forbids the university as an institution from showing favoritism or preference among political parties. The university also required that the Biden Institute’s employees and consultants sign an acknowledgment that they understand those policies and would comply with them. The acknowledgement stipulated that “[m]embers of the University community are free to express their political opinions and engage in political activities on their own time and in their private capacity as voting citizens, but they must not do so on university time, using university resources, in such a fashion that the university incurs any expenses, or in a manner that gives the impression that they are speaking or acting on behalf of the university” (Biden Domestic Policy Institute, Political Activity Policy Acknowledgement, UD Office of the Vice President and General Counsel).
41. The 2020 presidential campaign was the first of her brother’s political campaigns that Valerie Biden Owens did not lead. While Donilon remained at the Biden Institute during the early period of the campaign, he later moved full-time to Biden’s campaign staff.
42. A conservative nonprofit (Judicial Watch) and a news website co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson (Daily Caller News Foundation) called upon the University of Delaware to release the Biden senatorial papers. At the same time, UD was targeted by the Republican National Committee in an ad campaign that chastised the university for not releasing the papers. The call for the release of the papers also came from other media, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.
43. Biden’s explanation for not authorizing the release of the papers was that they did not include personnel documents, such as the ones alleged to exist by the former staff member. If any personnel documents existed, he claimed, they would be in the National Archives. Biden urged the National Archives to release any such documents and requested the U.S. Senate release any records pertaining to the alleged documents. He also indicated that the request to open all the senatorial papers spanning 1973 to 2009 (consisting of 1,800 cartons of papers and 415 gigabytes of electronic records), many of which were not yet curated by the university, would disclose sensitive information, including transcripts of private conversations with world leaders and communications with his staff. Taken out of context, some of this information could damage his campaign.
44. Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation filed a combined Notice of Appeal on the opinions of the Office of the Delaware Attorney General.
45. In fall 2021, the Superior Court’s decision was appealed to the Delaware State Supreme Court, whose decision is pending as of the writing of this book.
46. Stephanie Feldman, who had served as policy director at the Biden Institute, became deputy assistant to President Biden and senior policy advisor to the director of the Domestic Policy Council. Bruce Reed, who taught as visiting faculty at the institute, was appointed deputy chief of staff. Louisa Terrell, who also taught as a visiting faculty member, became director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.
47.Martinez was co-founder and executive director of the Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy (CEED) in 2011. She helped shape the Equitable and Just Climate Platform in 2018, a collaboration of CEED with the Center for American Progress and the Natural Resources Defense Council that focused on environmental and climate policies. An advocate for environmental justice and efforts to address environmental racism, Martinez championed the rights of Native Americans to have access to clean air and water. Martinez was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2020.
48. The vote was 34–0 with one abstention.
49. Consistent with Article 3 of the Board of Trustees bylaws, the faculty, ordinarily acting through the University Faculty Senate, had the responsibility to consider and make recommendations for proposed changes in the university’s organization. However, the final decision on such changes was with the Board of Trustees, as recommended by the president of the university.
50. There had not been a freestanding school at UD since the trustees determined in 1964 that all the schools at that time would become colleges.
51. The vote was 15–0–8, with the abstentions reflecting on the general issues of university organization and the timetable for action rather than on the substantive merits of the Biden School proposal.
52. Robinson reported that, across the country, university professional programs are typically designated as schools led by deans. These programs offer graduate degrees in such fields as medicine, law, dentistry, public health, architecture, public policy, and education. The accreditation of these programs requires that they be independent units led by an administrator who reports directly to the president or provost.
53. “The Biden School’s Transition to a Free-Standing Professional School: A Report to the University Faculty Senate,” February 10, 2020, 4. Courtesy of the Dean’s Office, Biden School of Public Policy and Administration.
54. The final Senate vote was 53 to 8.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BIDEN SCHOOL
1. The two affiliated units had faculty directors with appointments in the Biden School.
2. Sarah Bruch, a sociologist, focuses on the intersections of education and social policy. Gregory Dobler, a physicist, uses techniques from astrophysics to study the dynamics of urban systems that connect people with their natural and built environments. Katie Fitzpatrick, an economist, studies how consumer financial protection, food policy, and health policy can improve well-being. Kimberley Isett, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, studies institutional pressures in delivering services to vulnerable populations. Minion K. C. Morrison, a nationally renowned political science scholar, focuses on comparative politics and administration, racial politics in the Americas, and political leadership. Kalim Shah, a policy analyst, studies sustainable development in island states. A. R. Siders, a lawyer, studies climate change adaptation policies focusing on managed relocation of people and assets away from areas of risk. Daniel L. Smith, an expert in financial management and public administration, studies options to improve financial management in government, health, and nonprofit institutions. Jessica Sowa, a public administration scholar, studies public and nonprofit management issues, emphasizing human resources management in public and nonprofit organizations. Casey Taylor, a public policy scholar, studies natural resources policy and management. Harvey White, a past president of the American Society for Public Administration, focuses on nonprofit leadership, organizational management, and performance evaluation.
3. Danilo Yanich, for example, was conducting research on media and public policy, focused on the influence of money and politics on local television news. See Danilo Yanich, Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money, and Local Television News (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020). Another example is Jonathan Justice, a faculty member since 2003, who, together with Daniel Smith strengthened the school’s scholarly identity in public budgeting and financial management.
4. Maria Aristigueta, email message to author, July 17, 2020.
5. Karen Stein was director of the Organizational and Community Leadership undergraduate program, 2014–21. Breck Robinson led the Public Policy undergraduate program, 2016–21.
6. In 2019, a new option was approved to enable students majoring in English and minoring in public policy to join the 4+1 master’s programs.
7. The conversion of instruction to online formats in a few weeks required a herculean effort. By March 29, 2020, the end of the extended spring break, 6,400 sections of classes were converted to online formats. Before the pandemic, about 3 percent of all UD courses had been offered online.
8. There would be no reduction in the funding of students.
9. Some of the fiscal impacts of the pandemic were later alleviated by the provision of additional federal funding approved early in 2021.
10. The announcement of her appointment was concurrent with the announcement of Louis Rossi as the dean of the Graduate College and Michael Chajes as dean of the Honors College.
11. Isett joined the Biden School in the fall of 2019 after serving on the faculty at Georgia Tech, Columbia University, and Texas A&M.
12. The Biden Institute experienced a 35 percent budget cut and was expected to generate most of its future support from external fundraising.
13. The subsequent restructuring of the Board of Advisors included the appointment of Edward E. (Ted) Kaufman as chair of the board. Kaufman served as Joe Biden’s chief of staff during most of his tenure as U.S. Senator. He was appointed to fill out Biden’s term as U.S. Senator when Biden became vice president. Sandra Archibald was appointed vice chair of the board. Archibald was emeritus dean of the Evans School at the University of Washington and had been a key advisor during the Biden School’s transition.
14. The dialogue was conducted through meetings held on Zoom because of restrictions on in-person campus activities during the pandemic.
15. Aristigueta appointed four co-chairs: Sarah Bruch and Ismat Shah from the faculty, Leann Moore from the professional staff, and Jennifer Daniels, a PhD student.
16. David, an architect and urban planner, was a school faculty member since 2012 and focused her research on land-use planning, growth management, and collaborative governance.
17. The faculty standing committee had been active for decades in supporting the school’s leadership role in promoting diversity. Over the previous decade, however, it was less active than it had been earlier.
18. Despite the budget challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis, President Assanis and Provost Morgan committed start-up funding to support the work of the Anti-Racism Initiative. In October 2020, Assanis took another critical step by appointing Fatimah Conley, who served as Associate General Counsel, as Interim Chief Diversity Officer, reporting directly to him and responsible for overall coordination of DEI efforts.
19. The Biden School proposal was one of many submitted to the university administration for possible inclusion in a funding request to the Unidel Foundation. The Unidel Foundation did provide funding for the university-wide anti-racism initiative, which was designated by the UD administration as a top priority.
20. Notably, the school’s faculty had challenged the GRE exam in earlier decades. Those challenges were unsuccessful since the university retained the GRE as a requirement for graduate admission.
21. Quoted in the proposal for Biden Hall prepared by the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, 2021.
22. “Biden Hall Naming Opportunities,” Biden School of Public Policy and Administration (unpublished, University of Delaware, December 2020), 1.
23. Quoted in Ann Manser, “Joe Biden & John Kasich, Bridging the Divides,” UDaily, October 17, 2017.
24. Freel recalls that Biden was “extremely supportive” and that “one session in 2008 lasted for over an hour during which he was asked if they were sitting with the next vice president of the United States. He explained why that was not likely.” Ed Freel, email message to author, September 3, 2020.
25. The program gives undergraduate students the opportunity to live in the heart of Washington, DC, for the spring semester while interning in a placement of their choice. The students earn six credit hours for the internship and another six credits for two public affairs classes.
26. Quoted in Chris Kelly, “Delaware Summit on Civics Education,” a report posted on the news page of the Biden School website (www.bidenschool.udel.edu), February 7, 2019.
27. Ibid.
28. Timothy Shaffer was appointed as the first Stavros Niarchos Chair of Civil Discourse, effective fall 2022. He was director of civic engagement and deliberative democracy with the National Institute for Civic Discourse at the University of Arizona and served as an associate professor and director of the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University.
29. As a freestanding professional school, the Biden School was able to set its own breadth requirements for undergraduate majors. Previously, those requirements were set by the College of Arts and Sciences.
30. Philip Barnes, email message to the author, September 23, 2021.
CHAPTER NINE: LEGACIES AND POSSIBILITIES
1. Quoted in School of Public Policy and Administration: 50 Years, 16.
2. Danilo Yanich, email message to author, June 8, 2020.
3. The long-serving professional staff includes Lisa Moreland Allred, Signe Bell, William Decoursey, Rebecca Gross, Andrew Homsey, John Laznick, Mary Joan McDuffie, Nicole Minni, Troy Mix, Martha Narvaez, Julia O’Hanlon, David Racca, and Kelly Sherretz.
4. Quoted in School of Public Policy and Administration: 50 Years, 4.
5. Two good examples are the summer Public Policy Fellows program for undergraduates and the selection of undergraduates as Legislative Fellows.
6. The recipients were Elizabeth Quartararo (2015), Mark Rucci (2015), Linda Halfacre (2017), Zachary Sexton (2018), Nicholas Konzelman (2019), and Bianca Mers (2020).
7. Kristin Fretz and Neil Kirschling, “Government Service is an Honorable Career Aspiration,” The News Journal [Wilmington, DE], March 15, 2012, 13.
8. Quoted in School of Public Policy and Administration: 50 Years, 5.
9. The State’s Water Resource Agency is a part of the Institute of Public Administration. The Center for Community Research and Service is the federally approved repository for Delaware Medicaid data and analysis.
10. Quoted in School of Public Policy and Administration: 50 Years, 5.
11. Quoted in Connect (Newark: School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware, 2016), 16.
12. Quoted in School of Public Policy and Administration: 50 Years, 12.
13. The knowledge-based conference series was launched in 2008. The creation of the Delaware Energy Institute was announced at the first knowledge-based partnership conference. The series continued through the next decade and became the public platform for launching the two community engagement partnerships from the 2017 Civic Action Plan, the Partnership for Public Education, and the Partnership for Healthy Communities.
14. Carney’s first job in public service came as a member of the inaugural class of the Institute for Public Administration’s Legislative Fellows Program. He was secretary of finance under then-governor Thomas Carper. He was twice elected lieutenant governor of Delaware. From 2011 to 2016, he served as Delaware’s representative in the United States House of Representatives. Carney was sworn in as governor of Delaware on January 17, 2017.
15. Lisa Blunt Rochester received her MA in Urban Affairs and Public Policy in 2002. She began her career as a caseworker for then-Congressman (and subsequently Governor and U.S. Senator) Thomas Carper. She served in the cabinets of two Delaware governors as the first African American woman to be secretary of labor, the first African American deputy secretary of health and social services, and state personnel director. She has also served as CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League.
16. The Delaware General Assembly includes Senator Elizabeth (Tizzy) Lockman (MA, UAPP 2015), Representative Michael Smith (MPA 2013), Representative David Bentz (MPA 2011), and Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton (MPA 2021).
17. School alumna Jane Vincent (MPA 1995) is a good example. She received her degree as a mid-career student. Vincent continued to collaborate with the school through the next quarter-century while serving as senior vice president for development at the Delaware Community Foundation, regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the mid-Atlantic states, and president of Delaware Public Media. She continued to teach at the school and collaborate on research and public service projects with CCRS. She also was a member of the school’s advisory board.
18. Quoted in “Bold Vision: Biden Institute’s Vision to Tackle Nation’s Difficult Domestic Problems,” March 28, 2017, accessed at the Biden School website, https://www.bidenschool.udel.edu/news/Pages/Biden-Institute-at-UD-Launched.aspx.
19. Biden School Mission Statement, 2021. Obtained from the Biden School website, www.bidenschool.udel.edu.