- 09/22/2009
Six Wagner grads publish case studies in Prof. Kovner's 'Health Services Management'
The critically praised new edition of the casebook Health Services Management: Cases, Readings, and Commentary (9th ed.,Health Administration Press: 2009) includes essays by six graduates of NYU Wagner and Anthony R. Kovner, professor of public health and management at Wagner and co-editor of the volume. The revised volume provides a distinctive overview of management and organizational behavior theory. The book's essays are organized into six parts: The Role of the Manager; Control; Organizational Design; and Professional Integration; Adaptation; and Accountability. The Wagner contributors are former students of public administration and health management who have gone on to work as leaders in the healthcare field. For example, Claudia Caine (MPA '84), in an essay co-written with Professor Kovner, drew on her experiences as Chief Operating Officer at Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklyn, N.Y. Their case study reveals how quality control moves significantly reduced patients' average wait time at an inner-city hospital's emergency room, from 90 minutes to between 30 and 35 minutes, door to doctor. Professor Kovner is also co-author of a newly published textbook, Evidence-Based Management in Health Care, the result of work by he and other distinguished management experts to foster more reliable, evidence-based decision making education and practice widely in the healthcare industry.
- 06/23/2009
U.S. Health and Human Services Taps Former Wagner Adjunct for Senior Post
NYU Wagner has a high-caliber cadre of adjunct professors, including many seasoned practitioners who work on critical public problems in and across a variety of fields and sectors.
Now, David A. Hansell, who was a Wagner adunct assistant professor from 2000 to 2006, has been named to a senior post in children's services for the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services.
His new title, which was effective on June 29, 2009, is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Children and Families.
- 06/16/2009
NYU Wagner Adjunct Professor Writes Handbook on 'Leading Change'
Leading change is a topic of paramount importance. But a missing ingredient for many leaders has been how to translate concepts into actions, continuous improvements and sustainable results.
Now, the Wallace Foundation has published NYU Wagner Adjunct Professor of Public Administration Dr. Jody Spiro's "Leading Change Handbook: Concepts and Tools."
This toolkit by Dr. Spiro, who is the Wallace Senior Education Program Officer, was developed to help leaders address several key areas of the change process: assessing and improving participants' readiness; engaging stakeholders; planning "early wins"; minimizing resistance; using collaborative planning methods; and developing ways to bring initiatives to scale and sustain them over time.
The handbook is available for free downloading or posting.
- 06/15/2009
U.S. Labor Department Names Wagner Professor Sewin Chan to Advisory Panel on Pensions
Sewin Chan, Associate Professor of Public Policy at NYU Wagner, has been sworn in as a member of the U.S. Department of Labor's Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Plans. The panel was established under the ERISA Act, and Professor Chan will be one of 15 members on a three-year term. Her specific role is to represent the general public in advising Secretary Hilda Solis on issues relating to pension and health plans. Others on the council represent various industry groups and unions.
Professor Chan teaches courses in microeconomics, public finance, and health economics. Her research is concerned with the well-being of individuals and households and how it is shaped by the interaction of economic behavior, market institutions and government policies. Professor Chan's current focus is on the economics of aging and retirement. Her recent projects include the impact of job loss on older workers, individual responsiveness to financial retirement incentives, and the well-being of caregiving grandparents. Professor Chan has also worked on the economics of the residential housing market, examining the inherent risks of homeownership and designing innovative financial instruments for controlling those risks. Professor Chan has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, and the Center for Retirement Research. Her research has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Urban Economics. She holds an M.A. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.
- 05/26/2009
Network applauds Sotomayor pick for high court
This morning, Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat that will be left empty by David Souter. She has more experience than any other current member of the court at the time of their nomination and is said to be most in touch with what's happening in the lives of ordinary citizens. She is also the first Latino and if confirmed would be only the third woman to serve as Justice.
- 05/18/2009
NYU Wagner congratulates the Class of 2009, and celebrates Convocation at BAM
In a Convocation speech to Wagner's Class of 2009, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan said he attended the 1977 World Series game when sports commentator Howard Cosell, observing a column of rising smoke in the vicinity of Yankee Stadium, told a national television audience, "Ladies and gentleman, the Bronx is burning." The wave of arson, crime, and abandonment afflicting much of New York City less than two years after the city government had narrowly avoided municipal bankruptcy captured Donovan's attention even then, as an 11 year old baseball enthusiast. And it's probably no accident that as someone who came of age in the 1970s and '80s in New York, he went on to devote his education and distinguished public career to understanding and innovating policy steps that helped rescue and transform New York and many other American cities in the wake of that "urban catastrophe."
Donovan quoted former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton in addressing the proud and excited graduates and their families gathered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 15: "Public service is not just a way of life, it is a way to live life fully."
According to Donovan, the rise of New York and the restoration of its once-strained civic bonds show that public-sector work - his own path-has enormous potential value, even though the challenges were amply demonstrated by the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Citing President Obama's call to service, as well as his recently signed national service bill, Donovan said the mission of public employees and others embarked on public service work of all kinds is to give us "a reason to believe in public service again" in our neighborhoods and across the nation and world.
"Wagner Class of 2009," Donovan said, "we need you to make it possible to believe again!...Together, we can put our shoulder up against the wheel and change the course of history."
Dean Ellen Schall enumerated the impressive accomplishments of the graduating students and faculty members, including Professors of the Year Shanna Rose and Anthony Kovner.She contended that the work of public service requires more than technical and analytical capabilities, as critical as those are, but also "artistry," saying, "Public service is as much about art as about science." Artistry is what is required to find bold new answers to problems that resist technical solutions, whether those are ending poverty, overcoming racism, ensuring equal health outcomes for all, creating public school systems that work, or building cities that are sustainable.
The dean told the graduates that she wrote an essay for the Convocation as if she were applying for admission to the school. She based her thoughts on a photograph she selected from a catalogue of visual images, just as many Wagner applicants are asked to do. The image she selected was that of a person bringing a pot to life on a pottery wheel, as it reminded her of an introduction to pottery class she took last fall.
"I showed up every Monday night from 6-9, much the way you showed up for a class," she told the graduates. "And it was very hard. It was the worst in the class, a fact clear to me and to everyone else. Yet I stayed and kept on trying. I knew there was learning in the trying, in sticking with what didn't come easily. I never actually cracked the code or became a potter. Yet at the end, I have these small little pieces of ‘pottery' in my house and the odd thing is, I display them...and they make me smile when I walk in. They remind me to take myself seriously, but not too seriously, to stretch even in the face of initial resistance, mine or others, to find pleasure in small wins."
She referred to the image on a large screen on the BAM stage.
"This captures a simple visual image that I wish for each of you as you go forth. That you embrace the boldness of seeing yourself as artists, as creators and change makers, as people who bring passion and the fullness of yourselves to the critically important challenges of public service. And that you have the discipline and energy and commitment to keep on going, even if you don't get it right the first time around, that you learn from what works as well as what doesn't, and that you find joy in small things as well as big moves."
- 05/12/2009
Wagner Student Delivers NYU Commencement Speech at Yankee Stadium
Kate Otto, NYU Wagner student and Reynolds scholar, was the NYU Commencement Speaker at the newly opened Yankee Stadium on May 13. In past years, the University has selected two student commencement speakers, one to represent undergrads and the other for graduates. There was one student speaker this year, which made Otto the perfect choice: she's graduating from Wagner's dual degree BA/MPA program.
The spirited day under sunny skies was highlighted by a Commencement speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She was introduced by Wagner Dean Ellen Schall, who described her as "the chief architect of American foreign policy...[and] a luminous star in the crucial constellation of human rights defenders."
Otto, who hails from Rhode Island, worked during high school at a hospice for people with HIV/AIDS. She went on to attend NYU's College of Arts and Science and work on public health education programs in West Africa. She enrolled in Wagner classes during her senior year. This year, she completed the requirements for an MPA in Health Policy and Management from Wagner.
In addition, she has been working for Keep A Child Alive, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based organization where she began as an intern. The group supports the care and treatment of children worldwide afflicted with HIV/AIDS. There, Otto sparked the creation of a network that now includes 315 campus chapters. She is now looking to expand this network into middle and high schools, houses of worship, athletic teams, and more.
Otto has been awarded a Luce Scholarship, and will spend the next academic year in Indonesia working with an HIV/AIDS organization.
"Communities," she says, noting the global economic downturn, "are the most important thing we all can be building right now."
- 04/24/2009
NYU Wagner Forum with Leading Public Officials Explores President Obama's First 100 Days
New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter, and White House senior economic adviser Jason Furman were among leading public service officials, business leaders, journalists, and professors who took part in an original, lively, and thought-provoking NYU Wagner forum April 24 entitled "President Obama's First 100 Days: Implications for Urban America."
NYU Wagner Dean Ellen Schall welcomed 100 public service and business leaders and others to the Fifth Avenue Ballroom, where the daylong conference also featured the author/historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Wagner Professor Paul C. Light, and Robert M. Shrum, the noted political strategist and a Wagner senior fellow.
Contributing to the event's four panel conversations were New York Times chief national political correspondent Adam Nagourney, NBC News Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris, and New York 1 political reporter Dominic Carter.
The conversations and audience questions focused on the President's unparalleled attempts -- except for, perhaps, the first 100 days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency in the grip of the Great Depression -- to stabilize a reeling national economy, his evolving leadership, the enormous public support his actions have elicited, and the immediate and long-range challenges facing cash-pressed cities and states.
"The most important thing that he has has done," said Governor Corzine, referring to President Obama, "is he has restored repect and confidence in the office of the presidency."
Philadelphia's Mayor Nutter, in response to a question from Mark Whitaker, gave the new commander-in-chief a "B-plus/A-minus" -- ticking off a list of the President's accomplishments and the many initiatives in healthcare and alternative energy investment that may come - and he added that the President and his administration have been strikingly accessible and sensitive to the concerns of big-city mayors such as himself.
"They know where cities are," Nutter said.
- 04/20/2009
Obama Gets Gender Right in First 100 Days
As the 100th day approaches, it is time to take stock of what the Obama Presidency has meant so far for women. Dating back to FDR, the first 100 days of a new Administration have been a kind of preview of what is to come over the next four years. In George W. Bush's first 100 days, he blocked funding for international family planning clinics, signed an order stating that women receiving Medicaid benefits could not use funds to pay for the emergency contraceptive, RU-486 and shut down the White House Office on Women's Issues-- a friend to progressive women's issue he was not.
What about Obama? Is he friend or foe to women? If the first 100 days are any indication, Obama is off to a great start and the next four years will bring great strides toward women's equality and progress in the United States.
- 04/07/2009
Mayor Bloomberg Announces Help for Nonprofits at NYU Wagner Event
Speaking before about 300 public service leaders at New York University's Kimmel Center, Mayor Michael Bloomberg on April 6, 2009, announced a series of new initiatives to help more than 40,000 nonprofit cultural, health and social service organizations in New York City weather the economic downturn. The event was sponsored by the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, with welcoming words offered by NYU President John Sexton, and with the Mayor introduced and the economic challenges confronting the nonprofit sector framed in opening remarks delivered by NYU Wagner Dean Ellen Schall.
"Almost half a million New Yorkers who make up our nonprofit workforce contribute profoundly to the heartbeat of our city by helping residents across the five boroughs -- particularly during these trying times," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Whether by training people for jobs, providing access to arts and culture, or building affordable housing, the nonprofit sector is a vital part of the City and our economy. As nonprofits face increasing challenges due to the economic downturn, it's critical that the City take concrete steps to strengthen the sector and help it thrive."
