Graduate Quarterly - Winter 2008 - UCLA Graduate Division

City Hall
Alittle more than a
decade ago, a new
Department of Public
Policy was teamed
with existing programs in urban planning
and social welfare, establishing
what was then called the School of
Public Policy and Social Research
under Founding Dean Archie Kleingartner,
professor of management. It
was a rather controversial reconfiguration
at the time.
Today, “most people think it was a
good thing,” says former Chancellor
Charles Young, who implemented the
change. The sense is that everyone
has benefited “from being brought
into this new entity,” now called the
School of Public Affairs, under Dean
Barbara J. Nelson.
In that regard, nothing diffuses
controversy, perhaps, more effectively
than success. Although the public
policy program “is small relative
to the size of its peers—Harvard
and Princeton and Berkeley—and
underfunded relative to them,” Dr.
Young says, “it’s now one of the best
programs in the country. It has come
of age.”
This article looks at the underpinnings
of that achievement.
Greg Spotts
BA, political science, Yale University
Final project: develop quantitative metrics to evaluate Los Angeles’s environmental performance
Previous experience: writer and producer of American Jobs, a documentary about people who were
connections and relationships locally.”
Winter 2008 GRADUATE QUARTERLY
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