What is the overall mission of the [Frank] Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy?
The mission is to prepare people for public service. It’s a professional school, although it will have a bachelor’s degree major, which will be more in the liberal arts tradition. But the graduate programs are professionally oriented toward ... public service, although that’s broadly defined to include not just government activity, but non-profit activity and even private activity. The donor’s goal, I think, was to inspire younger people to become innovative leaders in their communities, and he’s very concerned about the desire to see young people very much committed to the public good in whatever career tracks that may advance them. The leadership piece has to do with that emphasis on innovation and new ideas. He wants to see people who engage their communities and advance them.
What are your goals for the Batten School in the coming years?
We’re in the second year of the one academic program that we have going, which was actually developed prior to the gift. Right now, I guess, until the founding dean is hired, which will be shortly, our emphasis has been in mounting this new program and learning from the experience, doing it as well as we can, and preparing it to be one of the foundation stones of the new school.
In what ways will the new dean help to achieve these goals?
It’s [both] an enormous challenge and opportunity for the new dean. He will need to, number one, begin hiring a faculty. There will be joint appointments to be hired with other departments in the University. There will be additional staff members that will have to be brought in. And there will need to be new programs developed. We will, in addition to the current program, we will have a free-standing two-year [Masters in Public Policy] plan.
We have a rather small, selective, undergraduate major to develop. We have courses that are planned for offering to undergraduates that won’t lead to a degree in the Batten School but we want to make available a series of courses students can take where they are open-enrollment courses. And we’ve also talked about an emphasis in ... foreign affairs and perhaps down the road a mid-career program. The dean will also need to begin developing research agendas, perhaps picking out three or four particular areas that we want to identify the Batten School with in a research capacity. There’s also public relations work to do and external relations. So, it’s a big job, and the dean will come in to as close to a blank slate as possible. So, that person will have a lot of latitude in shaping the school.
How are you working to promote the school and recruit students?
The current program is limited exclusively to U.Va. students. For example, we [had] representatives at the [Professional and Graduate School Fair]. We have a session Oct. 22, [at 7 p.m.] ... where we invited any first-, second- or third-year [students], and we will have some of our students there and make a brief presentation and outline the process of application. We’re working with the admissions office. We’re working with the Office of African-American Affairs. We’re doing everything we can. Every year we do a little more. And, of course, we have a little more word of mouth now. It’s building very nicely.
How are you recruiting faculty to the Batten School?
The current faculty [is] drawn primarily from the current University departments. Then we have a couple of faculty members who are working at this point just for the Batten School on a course-by-course basis.
What are some classes that will be available to students at Batten?
[In the fifth-year program], there’s a policy history course that I think is quite popular right now. There’s a course that [Law School lecturer] Fred Hitz is teaching that really is a look a leadership through a historical lens. [Religious Studies Prof.] Jim Childress and [Law School Prof.] Richard Bonnie are going to teach a course second semester on ethical issues in policy and leadership.
When do you plan to open the school and what still needs to be completed in order for it to be ready on that date?
Well we had hoped that five years might be enough. That still may work, but things are going a little bit slower than our original view of it. I would guess that once the dean is here — and I’m guessing we will have a dean in place next summer — I would guess the school would be close to its full capacity [five years after the dean is hired].
Where do you see the Batten School in five years? In 10? In 25?
Well I guess two aspirations we have for it within the complement of comparable schools of public policy ... we hope to see it among the very top schools of its class. Secondly, I think the hope is that [the leadership facet of the school’s curriculum] will become a distinguishing feature. We will be seen not only as a school that turns out technically trained people but also people who will actually be real leaders in the public domain and in the communities where they work and live.
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