Heinrich takes over as La Follette School head
Providing more support for graduate students, continuing to build a strong international program and preserving the vitality of the Wisconsin Idea are all high on Carolyn Heinrich’s list as she takes over as the new director of the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs.
“Our strength lies in our highly respected faculty who are leaders in their fields,” says Heinrich. “The challenges in supporting graduate students remain because the environment is much more competitive for attracting promising students to La Follette and the nation’s best public policy schools.”
Heinrich, a professor of public affairs and an affiliated professor of economics, says she plans to cultivate more sources of private funding that enable the school to continue to attract the best students. The school competes every year with other top national programs at institutions such as the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the University of Michigan and Duke University.
“It’s really an important goal for us to strengthen our base of private support so we can offer more generous fellowships to the very best students and keep a broader range of opportunities available to all students,” Heinrich says.
That support helps students gain research experience and the hands-on policy experience in Wisconsin, nationally and around the world. The school is well known for its emphasis on providing real-world experience in solving government and social problems.
“A couple of years ago, Gov. Jim Doyle spoke at commencement and mentioned that he had just come from an emergency meeting of his advisers, and he noted that of the six people at the table, three were La Follette School graduates,” Heinrich recalls.
Heinrich, who replaces former director Barbara Wolfe, joined the UW–Madison faculty in 2003. Her own resume reflects a wide range of work in the trenches of government at the local, state, federal and international levels.
She is collaborating with Milwaukee Public Schools in evaluating tutoring and other supplemental educational services in schools that did not meet the standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Heinrich is also working on a demonstration project in Racine County called Families Forward that provides incentives for non-custodial parents who are behind in their child support to resume making payments. She also is associate director of research and training for the campus’s Institute for Research on Poverty.
At the federal level, she is evaluating the Workforce Investment Act program and her research has also examined contracting and performance management in the state’s Wisconsin Works program. Internationally, she has worked with the governments of Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Honduras on social welfare and development programs.
Given that background, Heinrich is committed to continuing and broadening the school’s public service mission.
“Our outreach has continued to expand,” she says. “From what people once saw as a Midwest and state-focused program, ours has developed into a national and international program and that has been important to our school.”
Heinrich also plans to continue a push to strengthen the international programs at the school, which began granting a master of international public affairs in 2002.
“We have maintained the strength in our core area of social policy. While our international program is still fairly young, we are expanding, and we’ll be searching this year for a new faculty member in that area,” Heinrich says.
Looking to the future, Heinrich hopes that the school is able to “take the next natural step” and broaden its base of fellowships and graduate student support to a level that will enable it to offer a formal doctoral program.
She also anticipates working on raising funds for a new home for the school, which is now headquartered in a historic 19th century home atop Observatory Hill. The Campus Master Plan envisions a new facility being built on the west lawn of Ingraham Hall, facing Charter Street.
“That’s a longer-term plan, and we’re looking at having a new facility, at the earliest, by 2013,” she says. “Space is a continuing challenge for us. We don’t have offices for all of our faculty members, and others share offices here. And we don’t have a lot of space for our students. We need a place for them to congregate.”
Heinrich says despite the challenges, the success of the school’s graduates and quality of its faculty and staff show why its reputation for excellence has grown nationally.
“We have a demonstrated impact on the citizens of Wisconsin and their government, as well as the federal government and programs internationally. That’s what the Wisconsin Idea is all about,” she says.
For more information about the school, visit La Follette School of Public Affairs.
