Baruch’s School of Public Affairs (SPA) has cause to celebrate as it marks its 20th anniversary during the coming academic year: SPA is ranked among the best in the country, and it has attracted to a single campus the largest—and most diverse—student body in the field. Against the backdrop of SPA’s two decades of success is a less-well-known history: Baruch College and its predecessors pioneered public administration education.
Founded in 1919, City College’s School of Business and Civic Administration—what became today’s Baruch—was among the first to offer public administration course work. Fast forward to its location at 17 Lexington Avenue and identity as “City College Downtown,” the school awarded its first graduate-level degree, the Master of Public Administration (MPA), in 1953.
Other Milestones
Other milestones include being the first institution to teach nonprofit management in the 1970s and the second in the nation to launch an Executive MPA (XMPA) degree in the 1980s. Groundbreaking, too, was a partnership with National Urban Fellows to offer a national MPA program for women and people of color that featured mentorships with senior government and nonprofit leaders.
The proven track record of Baruch’s Department of Public Administration inspired a daring move in the mid-1990s: under the leadership of then–College President Matthew Goldstein, the department became the School of Public Affairs in 1994. CUNY was financially strapped, remembers Frederick Lane, one of a dozen professors teaching public administration at the time. Nonetheless, Goldstein more than doubled the Public Affairs faculty in the first year.
Why Has SPA Flourished?
Rapid expansion, however, doesn’t guarantee success, let alone excellence. So why has SPA flourished?
The answer for Shoshanna Sofaer, a health policy expert who arrived in 1998, is the emphasis on research and teaching. “Before Baruch, I taught at a university that criticized faculty who were good teachers because it was assumed your research suffered,” says the Robert P. Luciano Chair of Health Care Policy. “SPA demands both from faculty, and we bring our research into the classroom.”
SPA has also struck a synergistic balance between theory and practice, says New York Cares Executive Director Gary Bagley (XMPA ’05). In addition to academic experts, “SPA has a wonderful advantage in the number of highly capable practitioners on the faculty.”
SPA’s students are also central to its reputation. Baruch recognized early the value of diversity, says Lane, now professor emeritus. Today, three in five SPA students are minority group members; many are first-generation Americans. Alumna Amy Hagedorn (’58) recently made her second $1 million gift supporting scholarships and internships precisely because of the kind of students SPA attracts.
The factors contributing to SPA’s success, believes its dean, David Birdsell, are part of a larger philosophy that took root in 1919 and has grown impressively during the past two decades. He rattles off a list of programs with breathless pride that includes orientations for newly elected City Council members, free expert consultations for nonprofits, and creative approaches to giving students an essential international perspective.
“We lead the nation in speaking to and improving communities of service,” says Birdsell, emphasizing SPA’s importance in a city where more than a million residents work in government and the nonprofit sector. “Faculty and students choose us because we have impact.”
—Brian Kell