In the video, “Food for the Summer,” School of Government and MPA faculty members Maureen Berner and Margaret Henderson highlight how one mayor convened local government and community organizations to expand efforts to feed hungry kids during the summer. Over several years, Berner has documented food insecurity in North Carolina through research into the chain of services necessary to feed hungry kids and families, from the farms that donate crops to the non-profit, volunteer-run food banks that distribute the food in communities. For more information about this research, visit www.sog.unc.edu/resources/tools/hunger-research.

Faculty member Charles A. Szypszak is teaching two courses at Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) Faculty of Law and Administration in Poznań, Poland, from May 22 to June 10. One course, for law students, is Learning Law Through Analytical Dialog. It will enable students to enhance their analytical thinking and expression through legal analysis and engaged dialog. The second isTeaching Law Through Analytical Dialog for doctoral students who teach law subjects and are preparing for careers as law teachers. It is aimed at giving teachers an opportunity to participate in Socratic exchanges, see demonstrations of how such exchanges are most effectively done, consider the advantages and limitations of this method, and experience its use in leading discussions.

AMU is one of the largest academic institutions in Poland. Its faculty are involved in public administration and ourts throughout Poland and the European Union. Szypszak will be collaborating with Hanna Suchocka, the chair of the AMU faculty, who was legal advisor to Solidarity and Poland’s first woman prime minister. Other faculty are known throughout Europe for their work in constitutional reform, human rights, the courts, and other fundamental law and public policy subjects.

In 2015, Szypszak was a visiting professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where he led a doctoral seminar called “Learning Law Through Analytical Dialog” for students in law who plan to be teachers. And in 2014, he was awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant to teach seminars for graduate students and faculty at the University of Wrocław. He also taught a course on current issues in real estate for Polish and international law students.

In the MPA program, Szypszak teaches an introduction to law course and an elective on military leadership and public administration. He also teaches an introduction to legal thinking course in UNC’s undergraduate curriculum. He provides counsel to state, national, and interntional institutions, organizations, and public officials on real property registration and conveyance laws.

UNC President Margaret Spellings will deliver the 2017 Deil S. Wright Lecture on March 31 at the School of Government. The event is free and open to the public. Nationally known as an education thought leader and public policy expert, Spellings most recently served as president of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. Spellings previously served as president and CEO of Margaret Spellings & Company, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, US secretary of education, and chief domestic policy advisor for President George W. Bush. Spellings is a graduate of the University of Houston, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science. She also received an honorary doctorate and Distinguished Alumna Award from the university in 2006.

The Deil S. Wright Lecture Series is hosted by the Master of Public Administration program at UNC-Chapel Hill and sponsored by Fidelity Investments and the MPA Alumni Association.

In a blog post for the Harvard Law and Policy Review, faculty member Maureen Berner proposes innovative ideas for reframing food insecurity as an economic development issue.

Faculty member Kimberly Nelson has been appointed to the editorial board for Public Administration Review, a journal dedicated to the theory and practice in public administration. She will serve for a three-year term.

Faculty member Michele Hoyman, together with MPA alum Jamie McCall ’06, published an article in Economic Development Quarterly on the connection between social capital and economic development in U.S. counties.

Faculty member Willow Jacobson with co-author Jessica Sowa published an article in State and Local Government Review on workforce-related challenges municipal governments faced during the great recession and human resource-related innovations that were developed to respond.

Faculty member David Ammons will serve as keynote speaker at the national Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Conference on September 22, 2016. His address is titled, “So, Who Will ACTUALLY Do Performance Management in Your Government?” The conference is hosted by Rutgers University-Newark.

The new, sixth edition of faculty member Maureen Berner’s popular textbook, Research Methods for Public Administration, is now available from Routledge.

Alice Rivlin, former director of the Office Management and Budget and founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, will deliver the 2018 Deil S. Wright Lecture at 3:15 p.m. on Friday, April 6 at the UNC School of Government.  An expert in monetary and fiscal policy, Rivlin currently serves as a senior fellow in Economic Studies and the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution and is a visiting professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown. The title of Rivlin’s lecture is “Fixing Our Broken Policy Process: The Case for Bipartisan Consensus on Economic Policy.”

In 2002, the MPA Alumni Association honored Professor Deil Wright for his 34 years of teaching MPA students by creating the Deil S. Wright Lecture in Public Administration. Each year, a distinguished professional from the field of public administration enriches the educational experience of students, alumni, faculty, and interested members of the community.

Rivlin served as director of the Office Management and Budget (OMB) in the first Clinton Administration (1993-96) and served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board (1996-1999). She was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-83) and served as chair of the District of Columbia Financial Management and Assistance Authority (1998-2001). She was director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings (1983-87). She also served at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation (1968-69).

In 2010, Rivlin was named by President Barack Obama to the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and co-chaired, with former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Debt Reduction.

The Deil S. Wright Lecture Series is hosted by the Master of Public Administration program at UNC-Chapel Hill and sponsored by Fidelity Investments and the MPA Alumni Association.