“He wears his brilliance well,” says Joe Mareane ’79 M.P.A., chief fiscal officer for Onondaga County and former student of Professor Bernard Jump, who is retiring. “He is patient, calm, reassuring, and responsive. Dr. Jump had a wonderful knack for reassuring a bunch of polisci majors that the complexities of public finance are within their reach, and a teaching style that fulfills that promise.”

As John Liu sees it, the fundamental objective of science is to generate knowledge to help solve real-world problems. “As a research university, we need to align ourselves with major societal challenges,” says Syracuse University’s vice president for research.

Supporting and improving public service has been a major focus of Paul Volcker, former chair of the Federal Reserve, for decades. From Volcker’s perspective, Maxwell is an exception to the general trend among universities of paying less and less attention to training future civil servants in how to implement public policy effectively and efficiently.

This is a boom time for undergraduates at the Maxwell School—new majors, expanded research programs, diverse experiential opportunities, enhanced advising, and more. It all builds on a tradition of undergraduate education that goes back to Maxwell’s beginning. There has never not been a “Maxwell undergrad.”

Ghanaian physician Laud Boateng will use his MPA/IR to improve health policy worldwide.

A new program helps veterans convert their sense of community investment to civic engagement and political office.

As undergraduate programs have become more visible, Maxwell donors—many of them alumni of the undergraduate majors themselves—have grown more eager to support those programs.

The nonprofit A Tiny Home for Good, founded by Andrew Lunetta ’14 M.P.A., has constructed roughly a dozen tiny homes in Syracuse for occupants at risk of homelessness. Onondaga County recently granted $235,000 to Lunetta’s organization to fund seven new tiny homes.

Bob Watson heads a company using technology to prepare organizations for risk and emergencies. Watsons company helps a broad range of organizations and communities plan for emergencies,  helping minimize risk across the board.

At AARP, policy chief Debra Whitman serves the needs of a 50-plus cohort while studying how everyone ages.

Old Testament scholar Yolanda Norton ’04 BA (PSc) reinterprets scripture through the lens of African-American women.

Sarah Stegeman, a doctoral candidate in history, is embarking on dissertation research on the role of African-American women in colonizing Liberia. “There’s a large gap in the historiography of Liberia,” she says, “where women have not been part of the historical narrative.”

The drive to fund a new scholarship reminds us there is an alumni community bound in the ways of Bill Coplin.

“There’s been an explosion in the quantity and forms of data available to support organizational decision making,” says Robert Bifulco, chair of public administration and international affairs. Assistant Professor Matthew M. Young asserts that soon, all public administration employees will be expected to have data analysis skills.

Theoretical Archaeology Group, an annual conference, held its event at Syracuse University, drawing double the expected attendance and an array of artists who responded to the conference's call for artwork. The theme of this year's TAG was "Slow Archaeology," which highlights the importance of long-term commitments to projects, relationships with descendants and other stakeholders, and collaboration.

“I was raised with Islamic ideals of giving back and helping those in need. That was instilled in me as a central value of my identity,” says Marshall Scholar Dina Eldawy of her passion for education and youth development. Eldawy’s accomplishments as a student have earned her an extraordinary string of honors, including Coronat and Remembrance scholarships from the University and a national Truman scholarship.

The profound price we pay for shutdowns and other dysfunction in government might be the young professionals who opt to go elsewhere.

James Ajello ’76 M.P.A. is the recently retired executive vice president and CFO of Hawaiian Electric Industries. He recently made a $250,000 gift to create a professorship and support interdisciplinary research in energy and environmental policy at the Maxwell School.