Position Profile
The University of Texas at Austin
Dean, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
The University of Texas at Austin seeks nominations and applications for Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
Overview
The University of Texas at Austin seeks nominations and applications for the position of Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
The LBJ School of Public Affairs is a national leader in public policy research and education. It offers a highly rated Master of Public Affairs, Master of Global Policy Studies, and PhD in Public Policy degree for students from across the nation and around the globe.
The School’s mission is to develop leaders and ideas that will help our state, the nation and the international community address critical public policy challenges in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. Drawing upon a world-renowned, multidisciplinary faculty, a diverse and talented group of Master’s and PhD students and the resources of The University of Texas at Austin, one of the premier AAU research universities in the world, the LBJ School is well placed to help shape public policy for the 21st century.
After more than 38 years of education and service, the LBJ School has awarded over 3,017 Master of Public Affairs (MPAff) degrees and, since 1996, 37 doctorates. To equip professionals with the tools and knowledge necessary to be leaders in a contemporary global environment, the Master of Global Policy Studies (MGPS) was added to the School’s degree offerings in the fall of 2008.
Our alumni have made their marks in elective office and key policy and management positions, in government and in the private and nonprofit sectors, as well. They are leaders in our community, our state, our nation, and the international community.
The LBJ School offers a broad array of academic and research programs, including our policy and research centers, that have built our global reputation in health and social policy; international affairs and trade; technology policy; energy and environment; and public and nonprofit management. This success is directly attributable to forging strong relationships and partnerships with public policymakers, businesses, international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and governments at all levels. The most recent U.S. News national rankings of graduate public affairs programs rank the LBJ School number nine in both the information and technology management and social policy areas, and number ten in public policy analysis.
Austin is the center of Texas state government, and the home of a strong network of high-technology firms and nonprofit entities. Home to more than 800 semiconductor, energy, computer and software companies, Austin is a youthful, highly educated city with a thriving entrepreneurial economy as well as a civic-minded culture. Nick-named “Silicon Hills” (or “Silicon Gulch”), the Austin area hosts operations of many high-tech companies, including, the SEMATECH research consortium, Dell Computer, IBM, Freescale Semiconductor, Apple, H-P, AMD, Applied Materials, Cirrus Logic, Cisco, e-Bay/PayPal, Intel, National Instruments, Samsung, Silicon Laboratories, Sun Microsystems, and United Devices.
Austin is also home to Fortune 500 companies Temple-Inland and Whole Foods Market, and financial services companies such as Dimensional Fund Advisors.
Austin offers a dynamic environment in which to build collaborative relationships with the private and nonprofit sectors. It is the 16th largest city in the United States and in recent years, the third-fastest-growing city. Sporting a highly educated population, it often is ranked at the very top of lists of “Best Places to Live” and “Greenest Cities.” The State of Texas contains three of the nation’s ten largest cities (Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas) and six of the largest twenty-one (add Austin, Ft. Worth, and El Paso). Among American cities in which the headquarters of Fortune 500 companies are located, Houston ranks second, just behind New York City. Dallas ranks fourth and San Antonio is tied for fifteenth.
Dean's Role and Responsibilities
The Dean is the senior academic and administrative officer of the School. As such, he or she is responsible for:
- Providing leadership in advancing the school’s goal to be among the nation’s most highly regarded, premier public affairs graduate schools
- Ensuring that the school’s resources, both physical and intellectual, are employed efficiently and effectively;
- Providing leadership, and inspiring faculty to ensure continuous improvement of all research and teaching activities;
- Acting as an effective spokesperson for the school to its various constituencies, within the school, within the University and in the global community.
- Collaborating with faculty and administrators in other colleges and centers of the University to promote interdisciplinary research and interdisciplinary academic programs;
- Promoting and coordinating ongoing efforts to enhance the school’s financial resources;
- Furthering ties with universities and policymaking, public service institutions throughout the world.
Candidate Qualifications
The successful candidate will be expected to provide vision and leadership, administer and generate support for the School’s varied programs, build a sense of community within the school, and collaborate with other entities both within and outside the university. The successful candidate should be a distinguished scholar or practitioner of public policy, who has a strong commitment to educating public servants, a commitment to intellectual, teaching and professional excellence, and, a commitment to diversity in the faculty, staff, and student body.
Faculty
The LBJ School faculty is committed to both forward-looking research and high-quality teaching.
The faculty of the LBJ School combines excellent academic credentials with an impressive array of public service records. Their disciplinary diversity—ranging from American foreign policy and national security; the economy; global policy; leadership and public service; NGO/nonprofits; social policy; U.S. government/politics; technology and information policy; energy and environmental policy; Texas politics; law; engineering; and community and regional planning—supports the interdisciplinary character of the curriculum and creates a stimulating environment for learning and research. The faculty is considered among the most reputable and influential public policy faculties in the country.
Faculty members routinely serve as editors, editorial board members and contributors to leading journals, and hold leadership positions in their academic societies and in national policy networks. Moreover, their opinions and insights can be found on the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week and heard on both mainstream and business-oriented radio and television news programs.
The School’s academic programs are considered exceptionally innovative and serve as models for others throughout the world. Several members of the LBJ School faculty are the authors of the leading textbooks in their academic specialties
Programs
The LBJ School of Public Affairs offers a two-year Master of Public Affairs (MPAff) program and a mid-career MPAff program, which along with 15 additional joint degree programs (called dual degree programs) offer MPAff students an increasingly wider range of study options. A PhD in Public Policy was introduced in 1992 and a Master of Global Policy Studies (MGPS) was launched in the fall of 2008, offering six dual degree programs.
Master of Public Affairs (MPAff)
The Master of Public Affairs program at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs is designed to prepare leaders with the skills and knowledge to effect meaningful change in government agencies, businesses, and nonprofit organizations.
Program Structure
The MPAff program is organized so that formal coursework in theory and relevant analytical skills is reinforced with ongoing opportunities for practical application.
A required internship between the first and second years provides direct contact with the operating realities of government, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations. Students may follow a general program of study or may choose to declare a specialization by focusing the scope of their second-year studies in one of seven policy areas. Additionally, the LBJ School has partnered with programs and departments throughout The University of Texas to develop fifteen dual degree programs. These programs give LBJ students the option to pair a second complementary master’s degree with the MPAff degree and complete both master’s degree programs in less time than would be required if they were pursued independently. A Mid-Career MPAff program is offered for students with substantial (typically 10 years) of policy-level experience in public affairs.
Master of Global Policy Studies (MGPS)
The Master of Global Policy Studies (MGPS) degree at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs is a path-breaking program designed to equip professionals with the tools and knowledge necessary to be leaders in an increasingly interdependent world. The MGPS degree goes beyond traditional international affairs programs to offer a multidisciplinary approach to the complex economic, political, technological, and social issues of the 21st century and considers the full range of influences on contemporary global policy – governments, private industry, and nongovernmental organizations. Graduates will become leaders in government, business and international organizations by acquiring core professional skills and expertise tailored to the contemporary global environment.
Program structure
Core MGPS coursework explains contemporary globalization and the global policy process and builds analytical and professional communications skills. The program reinforces the core with ongoing opportunities for practical application, including a required second-year project in which groups of students work with a faculty mentor on a real-world policy research project. Students also complete a required internship that provides direct contact with the operating realities of government, multinational business, or nongovernmental organizations. Students declare one of seven specializations so that the MGPS program combines a broad view of global policy with substantial depth in a particular policy area. Additionally, the LBJ School and six partners across the university have developed dual degree programs to give LBJ students the option to pair a second complementary master’s degree with the MGPS degree, completing both master’s degree programs in less time than would be required if they were pursued independently.
PhD in Public Policy
The PhD program is an advanced research training experience that focuses on the methods, craftsmanship, and intellectual context of conducting policy research. Its mission is to prepare individuals possessing substantive knowledge in a policy area to become researchers capable of conducting independent scholarly research. Therefore the program is structured around the dissertation research of each student.
Program Structure
Each PhD student follows a program of coursework tailored to his or her individual needs and aims. Students are expected to participate full time in the program for at least the first two years. During that time they take courses in the LBJ School PhD core sequence and in their area of specialization and complete qualifying exams. After successfully completing these requirements, students form supervising committees for their PhD dissertations and devote the remainder of their time in the program to conducting research and writing the dissertation.
Research Centers
The LBJ School of Public Affairs has a nationally recognized program of policy research that is dedicated to finding practical, innovative solutions to public problems and to deepening our understanding of the public policy process throughout the full spectrum of communities including local, state, regional, national and global. Many of the School's centers also sponsor a range of other activities, including conferences, workshops, and publications to further inform 21st century policy making across an array of disciplines. The success of the research enterprise at the LBJ School can be judged by the significant number of research grants awarded to its faculty, including in the last year, for example, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Defense Department “Minerva Initiative,” and other major grants.
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law
The recently formed Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law is a nonpartisan research center dedicated to promoting policy-relevant scholarship on the problems and opportunities created by our increasingly globalized and interconnected world. The Center is dedicated to emulating the core values Ambassador Robert Strauss demonstrated during his long and distinguished career: civility, innovation, and leadership. A joint enterprise with the School of Law and the College of Liberal Arts, the Strauss Center has already distinguished itself by attracting a cross-disciplinary core of nationally known researchers and experts and won significant and highly competitive external research grants.
Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources
The Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources (RMC) is committed to focusing its research on the problems of minorities, women, youth, welfare recipients, the unemployed and others having difficulties finding jobs, earning a living wage, and sharing in America’s prosperity. Founded at The University of Texas at Austin in 1970, the Center continues to expand its national and international presence in human resource development issues by conducting objective research and by designing innovative and effective service strategies.
Center for Politics and Governance
The Center for Politics and Governance (CPG) is the leading institution at the University of Texas committed to analyzing and improving the political process and governance in ways that are practical and comprehensible to students, candidates, office holders, the media, and the public. The Center is committed to developing new approaches to political institutions that will foster creative policymaking. The Center’s areas of focus are the effect of campaign politics on policy, the changing demographics of the American electorate, ethical leadership, and the role of the media and emerging technologies.
Center for Health and Social Policy
The Center for Health and Social Policy (CHASP) addresses health and social policy concerns by conducting policy research, educating students and practitioners to become future leaders, and providing a forum for debate and dialogue among today’s foremost policy makers and scholars about critical health and social policy issues.
Center for Ethical Leadership
The Center for Ethical Leadership promotes the development of leadership potential among our students and other constituents through education, research, and service to the community. The Center is committed to preparing graduates for leadership positions in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and for the ethical challenges they will encounter throughout their careers. The Center serves as a teaching, research, and information focal point for students and educators from all disciplines as well as for practitioners and other interested parties.
RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service
The RGK Center’s mission is to build knowledge about nonprofit organizations, philanthropy and volunteerism and to prepare students and practitioners to make effective contributions to their communities and countries through education, research and outreach. The RGK Center is dedicated to contributing to national and international debates about the future of the sector while emphasizing collaborative approaches and international perspectives in order to foster research and dialogue across fields and across borders.
Opportunities for Further Accomplishment
Despite its strong reputation and accomplishments to date, the LBJ School has set for itself an ambitious and aggressive agenda for its future, the culmination of which will be recognition as among the world’s premier public affairs graduate schools. The school expects to play a leadership role in defining the key issues facing the world’s population and in formulating policies in response to those issues. Further, the LBJ School plans to be internationally recognized for training leaders for the future to meet the public policy challenges of an increasingly globalized world.
$18 million School renovation completion set for Winter 2010
The LBJ School is currently undergoing a revitalizing “makeover” designed to create a “next generation” school and workspace that better reflects the LBJ School’s dynamism. From the beginning, the goal for renovating the School went far beyond mere cosmetic changes. The idea was to revolutionize the space to create a rejuvenated flow of people and technologies that better reflects the School’s educational and research dynamic.
The new building design will have a much stronger sense of place, with an eye to maximizing academic performance, and expanding programmatic initiatives as well as student services. The core concept for the design focused on the functionality of the School’s research and policy centers, allowing people of common interests and function to interact more easily and draw dynamic energy through discussion, collaboration, and collegiality. Increasing classroom spaces and sizes while upgrading instructional technologies were all fundamental demands of the new building design Public affairs and policy work relies heavily on cooperation and teamwork. The new building design includes a tremendous amount of collaborative study spaces of varying sizes to allow undisturbed group and individual study.
The newly renovated LBJ Auditorium, a state-of-the-art events center in the LBJ School and Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum complex, played host to a capacity crowd of 1,000 for “An Evening with Tom Brokaw” this past April.
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum – A Partner in Education and Research
One of eleven presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum houses forty-five million pages of historical documents, which include the papers from the entire public career of Lyndon Baines Johnson and also from those of close associates. These papers and the vast administrative files from the presidency are used primarily by scholars. Located adjacent to the LBJ School, the LBJ Library and Museum is a center of intellectual activity and community leadership, providing support for LBJ School symposia and conferences, special exhibitions in the Museum, research grants-in-aid for scholars, and a series of “Evening With” programs that bring distinguished and prominent lecturers to the Library each year.
The University of Texas at Austin and Collaboration with Other Campus Units
The University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest and most comprehensive research universities in the world, with highly ranked departments and programs spread across campus. A recent ranking placed seven UT doctoral programs in the top ten in the nation and 22 departments in the top 25. The Times of London recently rated UT the second-best public university in the U.S. and the eighteenth-best university in the world.
The UT campus houses more than ninety research units. The quantity and quality of UT programs offer an extraordinary opportunity for collaboration that the LBJ School has thus far only begun to exploit.
Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy
The Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy is a dedicated policy center in one of the University’s longstanding areas of leadership, energy and its confluence with the environment. The Center is committed to joining the scientific and engineering capabilities of the University’s Jackson School of Geosciences and the College of Engineering with the LBJ School of Public Affairs. The Center will provide an institutionalized ability to critique, explore, and develop national and international energy policy options with emphasis on the technical perspective.
The Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
The Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) is a multidisciplinary institute under the umbrella of UT’s College of Liberal Arts. LLILAS was established 70 years ago and integrates more than 30 academic departments at UT. It sponsors six research centers and hosts the world’s foremost electronic gateway to Latin American research, which receives 4 – 5 million hits per month. LLILAS sponsors the Benson Latin American Collection, the largest university research library for Latin American materials in the United States in number of volumes.
The Jackson School of Geosciences
The Jackson School of Geosciences (JSG) recently received a $300 million gift, which should allow the JSG to seriously pursue its goal of becoming the preeminent geosciences program in the United States. Over the next five years, JSG, which includes the Institute for Geophysics and the Bureau of Economic Geology, will hire 30-35 new faculty and scientists in order to realize its vision of making a lasting impact on the geosciences. The Jackson School has already reached out to the LBJ School for purposes of pursuing shared interests in sustainability and environmental policies.
The University of Texas School of Law
Like the LBJ School, the UT School of Law provides quality education to a large number of students. Its research faculty consistently ranks among the top 10 law school faculties in the nation. Their interests in such topics as corporate governance and finance, the regulatory environment of business, intellectual property, and energy and environmental issues make collaboration between the two schools a natural fit. Thus far, the schools have made several joint appointments, and professors from both schools have worked together on numerous research projects. The new Dean, however, will have the opportunity to facilitate many more such strategic collaborative efforts.
The McCombs School of Business
One of the largest and most distinguished business schools in the country, the McCombs School of Business is dedicated to educating the business leaders of tomorrow while creating knowledge of critical significance for industry and society. McCombs educates more than 6,000 students each year, creating one of the largest cumulative impacts of any business school in the world. Industry, government, education and nonprofit organizations around the world bear the indelible mark of the McCombs Business School. Thus far, the Schools have collaborated on many fronts that have included faculty seminars and research projects in addition to co-hosting business/policy related initiatives/events.
The AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center
Located in the heart of the University campus, The AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, which opened in August 2008, is among the premier facilities of its kind. Featuring state-of-the-art classroom and conference rooms, it also includes 297 hotel rooms, a variety of dining facilities, an 800-seat divisible ballroom, and a 300-seat tiered amphitheatre. Under a 25-year partnership agreement, AT&T has equipped the Center with the latest innovations in voice, broadband, wireless and television services. The Center, coupled with the School’s recently completed special events facility, will provide the opportunity for the LBJ School to significantly expand its ability to offer comprehensive, first-class programs to corporations and business leaders from across the globe.
A Solid Future: The University Endowment Campaign
The University is fortunate to have loyal supporters, especially among its alumni and friends. In its last capital campaign, the University raised $1.63 billion for student scholarships, research facilities, professorships, campus improvements, expansion of faculty, and the like.
The LBJ School of Public Affairs will soon be enjoying the fruits of UT’s next major capital campaign, which was launched in 2009, with a goal of raising more than $2 billion. The LBJ School will share in both the challenges of raising these funds, and the benefits that will flow from them.
For additional information about the University of Texas at Austin and its community, visit The University of Texas at Austin Web site at http://www.utexas.edu, and the Austin Chamber of Commerce Web site at http://www.austinchamber.com/.
Application/ Nomination Process
Nominations and applications should be submitted immediately, although the Consultative Committee will continue to review nominations and applications until the position is filled. All correspondence, such as Curriculum vitae/resumes, should be sent electronically (Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF files preferred) to:
Dr. Ilene H. Nagel
Leader, Higher Education Practice
Russell Reynolds Associates
utspadean@russellreynolds.com
(805) 325- 2052
The appointment date is open. To ensure full consideration, materials should be received as soon as possible. Review of nominations and applications for the position will commence immediately and continue until the position is filled. All submitted materials should be received as soon as possible. This search will be conducted with full confidentiality of all candidate information. References will not be contacted without the prior knowledge and approval of the candidate. All candidate information will be held in strict confidence until the final stage of the search at which time the express permission of finalists will be obtained before making their candidacy public. Candidates are urged to review all information and documents posted on the search web site, http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/deansearch
The University of Texas is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer
Women and minorities are encouraged to apply
