La Follette Notes
Fall 2014 / www.lafollette.wisc.edu
News for Alumni & Friends of The Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
Kikkoman establishes public affairs scholarship to honor Lucey
T
he Kikkoman Foods Foundation has
donated $50,000 to the La Follette
School of Public Affairs for student scholarships in the name of former Governor Patrick Lucey.
The donation to establish the Patrick
J. Lucey Memorial Scholarship Fund was
announced September 14 at a memorial
service in the Wisconsin Capitol for Lucey,
who died this year at age 96.
“The La Follette School thanks Kikkoman Foods for this gift which will provide a
lasting legacy for our good friend, Governor
To Donate
Go online: www.lafollette.wisc.edu/giving
Email: giving@lafollette.wisc.edu
Call: 608-263-7657
Patrick J. Lucey,” says Professor Susan Webb
Yackee, director of the La Follette School.
“With this donation protected in perpetuity,
we expect to be able to give a $3,000 scholarship each year to a deserving student to
study public policy. As others contribute, we
will be able to do more.”
High research rankings
showcase degrees’ value
Bobs bike
the barns
From left: Anna
Halverson, alum
Claire Boyce,
Molly Simis and
alum Brett Halverson participated in
the Madison area’s
Bike the Barns,
a fund-raising for
FairShare Community Supported
Agriculture Coalition in September.
More on page 3.
T
he international attention La Follette
School faculty is receiving for the high
quality of their research is good news for
all of our alumni and our current students.
Two new rankings affirm that the La Follette School provides cutting-edge public
affairs training that prepares our students
to serve in the public, private and nonprofit
sectors. The work our alumni do around the
world as city budget analysts, state program
evaluators, federal management officers and
international consultants is further proof of
the quality of our academic program.
Two recent international studies have
given the University of
Wisconsin–Madison
high marks for the quality of its faculty research
in public administraFrom the Director tion.
Susan Yackee
The first, published
in the Journal of Public Affairs Education, ranks the university
fourth in the world for public administration research. When the overall index is broken down, we rank third for quality, fourth
for impact and sixth for productivity.
A second study ranks us second for the
See Director on page 3
Since Lucey recruited Kikkoman to Walworth, Wisconsin, in 1972, the company
has grown into the world’s largest naturally
brewed soy sauce plant.
Lucey had a long career of public service.
He served one term in the Wisconsin Assembly from 1949-1951, then was lieutenant
governor from 1965-1967. He was governor
of Wisconsin from 1971-1977, when President Jimmy Carter appointed him ambassador to Mexico. In 1980, he ran unsuccessfully for the vice presidency with independent
presidential candidate John Anderson. w
Skills help clients, prompt donations
A
s a broker between a client and a tax
authority, 1977 alum Jon Skavlem
draws on his master’s degree in public administration as he ensures businesses know
they are paying their fair share of taxes.
“My knowledge of public policy and how
legislative intent works helps me represent
my client without sacrificing fairness,” says
Skavlem, director of local and state taxes for
Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP, the 12th
largest U.S. public accounting firm.
The critical thinking and communication skills Skavlem learned at the Center
for the Study of Public Policy and Administration have stood him in good stead.
“That critical thinking, that sifting through
concepts and information and synthesizing, meant I graduated with good reading and research skills applicable to the tax
consulting area,” Skavlem says. “Writing an
opinion letter, communicating to auditors,
clients or others, or synthesizing financial
data and presenting it—my ability to use a
blended liberal arts and public policy writing style and way of thinking, a lot of that
came out of my early graduate days with the
public policy center.”
Because of those skills he gained and
See Skavlem on page 2
2 / La Follette Notes
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Moynihan honored with national award
P
rofessor Donald Moynihan has been recognized with a prestigious award for his
research, the David N. Kershaw Award from
the Association for Public Policy Analysis
and Management.
The $10,000 Kershaw award honors a
scholar younger than 40 who has made a
distinguished contribution to public policy
analysis and management. The award is
made once every two years and is determined by the president of Mathematica Policy Research, the president of APPAM, and
the dean of the Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton University.
“The La Follette School is extremely fortunate to have world-class faculty who care
about providing excellent classroom teaching, as well as path-breaking research,” says
school Director Susan Yackee. “Don Moynihan exemplifies this tradition.”
Past winners include
University of
Wisconsin–Madison
Chancellor Rebecca
Blank and former La
Follette School professor Carolyn Heinrich.
Moynihan’s research
examines
the applicaDonald
tion
of
organization
theMoynihan
ory to public management issues such as performance, budgeting,
homeland security, election administration
and employee behavior. Currently, Moynihan is exploring administrative burden, the
barriers between people and the government
services they seek to access.
Moynihan, 38, has won many national
awards for his research. He was elected to
the National Academy of Public Administration in 2011. w
Fall 2014
Thompson gives Offner talk
F
ormer Wisconsin Gov. Tommy
Thompson gave the 2014 Paul
Offner Lecture to a standing room
crowd of students, faculty, former gubernatorial staff members and longtime friends in Madison in September. He gave examples of bipartisan
collaboration during his terms as an
assemblyman, governor and secretary
of the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services.
“The Wisconsin Idea came to life
for our students in a very personal
and meaningful way,” says Susan
Yackee, director of the La Follette
School, which sponsors the lecture
with the Urban Institute, where Offner, a longtime public servant was a
consultant at the time of his death
in 2004. w
Skavlem continued from page 1
because he received a fellowship that covered
many of his graduate school expenses, Skavlem contributes financially to the La Follette School via the University of Wisconsin
Foundation. “I received a fellowship when
I was at a crossroads in my undergraduate
career,” Skavlem says. “I was thinking about
law school, so I sought out a professor for advice, and he directed me to the Center for the
Study of Public Policy and Administration.”
Skavlem also gives to the school because
he believes skilled people need to work in the
public sector. “I feel that if they could, everyone should have some exposure to the public
sector to understand how it works,” he says.
“If my contributions help keep the public affairs program going and support good bright
people as they move into government jobs,
we need that. There are enough people going
into accounting, financial services and marketing, but we need smart, motivated people
to go into the public sector.”
“I was grateful for the fellowship money
I received,” Skavlem adds. “The center
steered me into an internship with the DOR
(Wisconsin Department of Revenue), which
sharpened my interest in tax policy, which
got me to where I am now. I also interned
with the Wisconsin Department of Administration. I loved the people I worked with
and met. It’s been a great career path, and
the center and the fellowship started it.”
“If my contributions
help keep the public
affairs program going
and support good bright
people as they move
into government jobs, we
need that.”
Jon Skavlem
After eight years with DOR, Skavlem
joined the Arthur Andersen accounting firm,
then Price Waterhouse when the firm asked
if he would be interested in opening up a
Milwaukee-based state and local consulting
practice. Six and a half years later, he joined
Virchow Krause, a regional accounting firm
based in Madison. As the firm grew, it added
the Baker Tilly International brand name to
extend the regional firm’s national and international reach. Baker Tilly International
is now the world’s eighth largest network of
accounting firms, with 125 member firms
that operate in 110 countries.
“We assist our clients as they manage and
plan for their taxes and related issues at the
state and local level,” Skavlem says. “As more
companies project themselves across multiple states, their taxes, especially their business income taxes, become more complex.”
With this increasing complexity, many
To Donate
Go online: www.lafollette.wisc.edu/giving
Email: giving@lafollette.wisc.edu
Call: 608-263-7657
businesses do not have a good handle on
how to manage their taxes or comply with
the filing requirements. “Our role is to help
them resolve tax issues,” Skavlem says. “We
are here to help them find out the right tax.
When we represent a client, we work with
the tax agency to work out what is fair and
apply the tax law in the right way. If the client made a mistake, we are willing to concede the client should pay the tax. On the
other hand, the client should not be penalized by complex laws or a rule or regulation
that should not have been interpreted
a certain way.”
In all his interactions with clients and tax
experts he meets at international conferences, Skavlem says, he applies his public policy
training to be a voice of clarity in the complex
tax world. “In the day-to-day world with hard
and fast tax issues, I have not forgotten what
I learned about tax policy analysis and what
makes good policy,” Skavlem says. “Taxes are
more than numbers stuck in a form.” w
Fall 2014
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Fletcher named editor, receives $92,730 grant
L
a Follette School professor Jason M. Fletcher has been named managing editor of the Journal of
Policy Analysis and Management, the leading journal
in the field of public policy and public management.
In addition, Fletcher has received a $92,730
grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to analyze
three school-based longitudinal datasets from the
past three decades to assess educational mobility.
“I will focus on the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status and how these effects
vary over time and across states,” Fletcher says.
“Rising levels of economic inequality since the early
1970s raise many questions about the intergenerational transmission of advantage and the effects of
rising inequality on social mobility.”
In other research published in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, Fletcher found that
partners in a spousal relationship share a greater degree of genetic similarity than do randomly selected,
non-coupled pairs of individuals. “The results suggest that couples may seek mates who share a similar
level of education and are more genetically similar
to themselves than individuals selected randomly,”
Fletcher says. w
Share your news
Update your contact info
articles university faculty published in the four “top”
public administration journals for 2009 to 2013.
This study is forthcoming in the International Public
Management Journal.
The top four journals in the second ranking are
Public Administration Review, Public Administration,
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory,
and the Journal of Public Analysis and Management.
The ranking of second is based on the number of
articles found in the Web of Science’s Social Science Citation Index. Only the University of Georgia
ranked ahead of UW–Madison.
In both studies, UW–Madison (La Follette
School) ranks consistently higher than rivals such as
Harvard University (Kennedy School), University of
Michigan (Ford School), and University of California, Berkeley (Goldman School).
These rankings demonstrate that our faculty are
productive and placing their work in the very best
journals. This productivity means our students are
at the vanguard of the technical skills and theory
they learn in our classrooms as our faculty integrate
their findings into their lectures and assignments.
When our students join our alumni in the field,
they take these skills and theories with them and
help to carry on the La Follette School’s mission to
improve the design, implementation and evaluation of public policy and the practice of governance
worldwide. w
Speckhard leads
Lutheran World Relief
1982 alum Daniel Speckhard
became president and chief
executive officer of Lutheran
World Relief in July. After
retiring as a career diplomat
he became a senior advisor
at Palantir Technologies and
a non-resident senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution. Earlier, he served in
high-level diplomatic roles
in Republican and Democratic administrations, most
recently, U.S. ambassador to
Greece from 2007 to 2010.
w
Email alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu
or call 608-263-7657
Director continued from page 1
La Follette Notes / 3
Alum honored for
developing influence
2011 alum has second daughter
Santosh Lamichhane, 2011, reports the birth of
his second daughter, Arya, in September. “She
was 6 pounds, 8 ounces, and 19 inches tall at
birth,” says Lamichhane, who is a senior analyst
at DNV GL in Madison. “Both mom and baby are
doing well, and the whole family is happy!”
Bobs bike the barns
2
011 alum Erika Jones organizes the annual Bike
the Barns, a fall Madison-area fund-raiser for FairShare Community Supported Agriculture Coalition,
where she is program director. Her classmate Jonny
Hunter, founder of the Underground Food Collective, started the bicycle tour that features local farms
and local food.
Student Services Coordinator Mary Treleven volunteered at the September event, while 2014 alumni
Claire Boyce and Brett Halverson, Professor Rob
Meyer, and students Sara Eskrich and Drew McDermott rode their bikes
“This event not only raises critical funds to support sustainable agriculture, local food and farms,
and increasing access to CSA (community-supported
agriculture) for low income households, it brings together a wide range of supporters to increase awareness about community supported agriculture,” Jones
says. “It is wonderful that the ‘Bobs’ came out to enjoy the ride and show their support!” w
2000 alum Carole Schaeffer
is one of the 25 most influential people in the greater
Madison area, local web site
IBMadison.com announced in
July. Her role in the Madison
Common Council’s decision
to liberalize its tax increment
financing policy won her the
designation. She is executive director of Smart Growth
Greater Madison and owns a
consulting firm.
w
’12 grad running
health clinic in Belize
Alum Carly Hood is now clinic
and public health director at a
clinic in southern Belize. After
completing degrees in public
affairs and public health in
2012, Hood held a Wisconsin
Population Health Service
Fellowship.
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
Paid
Madison WI
Permit No. 658
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison WI 53706
4 / La Follette Notes
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Fall 2014
Alumni discuss policy, career options with students
S
tudents are hearing from alumni in a
series of career development seminars
and networking events this fall semester.
Topic have ranged from the Presidential Management Fellowship program to the
Clean Power Plan to public sector consulting.
2004 alum and PMF recruiter Chad
Ruppel talked about the fellowship and how
students can prepare for the application process. Based in Madison, he is a program analyst with the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development’s Milwaukee office.
2014 grad Malika Taalbi talked about her
fellowship with the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Environmental Protection Agency
Save the date
If you will be in Madison,
please join us
Thursday, February 5, 2015,
for the annual reception at
Inn on the Park, 4:30-7 p.m.
administrator Susan Hedman, a 1979 alum,
traveled up from Chicago to discuss the
Clean Power Plan and other proposed
climate change regulations.
Four alumni spoke about their careers
as part of the Professional Development
Workshop: Alison Bergum, 2005, associate
researcher/evidence lead with the university’s Population Health Institute; Tamarine
Cornelius, 1999, research analyst with the
Wisconsin Council on Children and Families; Erinn Monroe-Nye, 2005, director of
market transformation for Chicago Bridge
and Iron Company; and Bob Nikolay, 1989,
administrator with the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
In from Washington, D.C., 2008 alum
Andria Hayes-Birchler was to speak with
students in November about her work for
the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a
U.S. international aid agency.
For the La Follette School’s after-work
networking series, 2006 alum Christian Moran, a budget and policy analyst with the
Wisconsin Department of Health Services,
spoke in September. At press time, 2003
grad Lisa Ellinger, an administrator with the
Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust
Funds, was to speak in November.
Others are helping with mentoring,
mock interviews, speed networking and the
La Follette in Chicago program. w
La Follette Notes (vol. 18, no. 1) is printed twice a year for La Follette School alumni and friends.
Online news is published continuously.
Information:
alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu / 608-263-7657
© 2014 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. The University of Wisconsin–Madison is an equal
opportunity and affirmative-action educator and employer. We promote excellence through diversity in all programs.