PPA Newsletter

Happy summer! Even if you're at the thesis stage, we're hoping you're enjoying at least a few days of relaxing by the pool, etc. But thesis writers: don't take this as a justification for a sudden, unquenchable interest in gardening, jogging, family history, or any of the other innumerable ways of completely avoiding working on you-know-what (many of which I invented myself while ostensibly working on my Ph. D. dissertation, by the way).

Let me extend our apologies for the gap between departmental newsletters. In our defense, we just completed an extraordinarily busy academic year. Among other things, we hired Miguel Ceja and Mary Kirlin as full-time faculty members, established the new PPA undergraduate minor, developed new courses in the areas of collaborative decision making and higher education, substantially revised the student handbook and placed it on our web site, and collaborated in the development of a new inter-disciplinary master's program in the area of urban land development. While our level of activity will continue to be high, we should be able to return to offering the newsletter on a monthly basis.

Speaking of our new faculty members, at the end of summer we will provide an opportunity for you to meet Dr. Ceja (and the rest of us) at a social gathering; watch for further details. You may recall that Dr. Kirlin will not be joining us until the 2003-04 academic year (although we're already finding ways to rope her into some departmental work).

For those of you taking PPA courses in the coming academic year, let me reiterate a few key points we've made in recent e-mail messages distributed through our list serv. First, responding to student desires to keep classes sizes small, we're running double sections of most graduate core classes. Therefore if the class night is important to you it's especially crucial to register on time. Second, Miguel Ceja's new course on higher education policy, PPA 296I, will be offered on Thursdays, 6:00-8:50 p.m. Even though it does not appear on the published class schedule (because University approval for the course was obtained after the deadline for that schedule), it is listed in the web schedule. Third, for the coming academic year only I will offer one section of PPA 205 in the fall and one section in the spring (thereby allowing me to teach a section of PPA 200 in the fall). Fourth, we will offer a single group thesis/project in the coming year. Nancy Shulock will lead this study of graduate-level education in California's colleges and universities and the adequacy of program content and size in relation to the workforce needs of the California economy.

I'm available most of the summer if you want to discuss course plans or other topics. Please try me by e-mail (tedl@csus.edu) first since I'm often working at home or at assorted cafes-- indeed (surprise, surprise) I'm writing this column from Peet's Coffee in Davis!

Best wishes.

COMMUNICATOR