By Ellen Mathia
Since 1987, a mere 16 years after it was created, the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) has ranked as one of the top three schools of public affairs in the country, along with venerable Syracuse and Harvard universities.
That a young Midwestern school, situated a thousand miles from the seat of federal government, could reach the same level of influence and standing as prestigious institutions more advantageously located, is an accomplishment of remarkable proportions. It is what makes this year's observance of the school's 25th anniversary more than an exercise in nostalgia.
In the opinion of those who know the state-wide school, SPEA has succeeded so impressively because its focus is "real world" -- comprehensively relevant to the needs of government at all levels and responsive to emerging issues and broader areas of public involvement, including the private and nonprofit sectors.
That may be why the anniversary observances this year are taking place not only in Indiana, but in Washington, D.C., and Europe, and involve not only administrators, faculty and alumni, but government officials and opinion makers from around the world. And in the best tradition of this still young school, the events are grounded in serious, communal examinations of problems with which governments, leaders and citizens internationally are struggling.
Tuesday (Feb. 25), the school will hold a Statehouse Colloquium Series, bringing in state officials and agency directors to discuss Indiana's problems in juvenile justice, environmental protection, Medicare reform, government finance and declining federal resources for urban needs. But examining problems is only part of the goal. Possible solutions are always on SPEA's agenda.
The same holds true of the European conference SPEA is planning for late May in Paris, which offers nothing less than "Proposals for the U.S./European Agenda for the 21st Century" in the areas of world trade and security. Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, diplomats and foreign policy officials will be among those meeting to push international relations to the next level.
SPEA's unique emphasis on education and research applicable to existing and looming global and community concerns, and the success such pragmatism has reaped, can be credited in part to the vision of two professors.
Caldwell
Two IU Bloomington emeriti professors of political science, York Willbern and Lynton K. Caldwell, were among the first to realize the potential of IU for providing new approaches to a government and society desperately in need of them. This was in the turbulent '60s, when higher education was alternately attacked as irrelevant or touted as the only hope for the country's future.
As director of the Bureau of Government Research and a consultant to the State Department's Agency for International Development, Willbern's work was already becoming more global. Caldwell, from the time of his arrival on campus in 1956, was among the first academicians asking hard, serious questions about the environment. "He was nothing less than a revolutionary in a time when few were considering the environmental impact of public policy," SPEA Dean A. James Barnes recalls of the early Caldwell years. The professor's work on the groundbreaking 1969 National Environmental Policy Act earned IU, and later SPEA, national recognition.
Wilbern
The dialogue between the environmentalist and the government consultant increasingly centered on how public institutions of higher education could address the problems of society. In 1971, an IU report documenting the lack of training in Indiana for youth interested in government and public administration careers decried the "journey to the East or West coasts" required for such an education. By then, Willbern and Caldwell's discussions were increasingly focused on the creation of a new school that would encompass both public and environmental affairs from a professional, problem-solving perspective.
Ryan
The proposal quickly gained the support of then-IU President John Ryan, who said such a school should exist on all IU campuses.
The proposal to create the school, passed by both the University Faculty Council and the Trustees of IU in 1971, gave the new school authority to function in five areas: academic, research, research applications, professional and technical assistance, and placement.
Curriculum development and assembling a faculty was placed in the hands of the school's first dean, Charles Bonser, who had been serving as associate dean of the School of Business, manager of that school's international programs and a member of the Indiana Tax and Finance Commission.
Bonser
Instead of organizing along conventional academic lines, the school set up six faculties, reflecting an aggressive, multidisciplinary emphasis and utilizing professors and courses from other departments as well as new hires.
For undergraduates, Bonser identified the goal of "liberal education with a professional orientation." SPEA's graduate program, he believed, would be the key to its long-term success, so master's degrees in public administration and environmental science formed the early backbone of the school.
Willbern and Caldwell had apparently been right about the demand for the resources a school of public and environmental affairs could meet. Before the first students even enrolled in 1972 -- indeed, even before the Indiana Commission on Higher Education approved the creation of the school -- state government officials were knocking at the door, seeking SPEA's help in complying with new federal legislation.
In 1972, the first students enrolled at IU's SPEA program, in Bloomington, in Indianapolis, South Bend, Gary and Fort Wayne. They began their education from a faculty which outside the classroom was already in demand from governments of states, cities and towns trying to cope with changes in environment, housing, transportation and social services. Intergovernmental relations and social conventions were everywhere in flux.
Soon after the program began, SPEA received a federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant to educate Gary's municipal employees. After IPFW's first graduation, dozens of SPEA alumni could be found in government offices in Fort Wayne. HUD gave the South Bend division a grant to open an "urban observatory" to tackle projects in finance, neighborhood policy and juvenile crime.
And as the school evolved, the criminal justice and urban affairs programs grew in popularity. In the early 1970s, hundreds of recipients of the associate's degree in criminal justice went to work in police departments and law enforcement agencies in the Gary, South Bend and Fort Wayne communities. The establishment of the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment and a master of planning degree first offered in 1992 at IUPUI focused the school's attention on the problems facing cities.
At Northwest, a bachelor's degree program in health services management, begun in 1995, offered health care professionals the chance to move from the clinical to
the management side of medicine.
Internationally, SPEA's outreach continues to grow, including one of the school's longest running exchange programs, at the Jean Monnet School of Law, University of Paris South, and the school's largest exchange program, based at SPEA's "sister schools" in the Netherlands, Leiden and Erasmus universities. A Thai program in development administration and a parliamentary internship program in Australia are other offerings.
The school also continues a commitment to contributing to the post-Cold War world through a program in Ukraine. SPEA is helping the newly independent nation structure its parliament toward a democratic model and a free market economy.
Related Link:
http://www.indiana.edu/~speaweb/index.html
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