Philip Shapira* and and Richard Barke†

*Associate Professor, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA and Visiting Researcher, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Karlsruhe, Germany. Email: ps25@prism.gatech.edu; †Associate Professor, School of Public Policy, and Associate Dean, Ivan Allen College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA. Email: richard.barke@pubpolicy.gatech.edu. June 1999.  This paper is a revised version of a presentation given at the workshop "Innovationspolitik in globalisierten Arenen," University of Kassel, Germany, July 3, 1998.   Forthcoming in a volume on Innovationspolitik in globalisierten Arenen, edited by S. Kuhlmann and K. Grimmer (1999).

Increasingly, many of the global policy issues that face us have significant scientific and technological dimensions. It is not difficult to think of examples, from the challenges of world climate change and the spread of new strains of infectious disease to the promotion of innovation for international competitiveness or the implications of electronic monitoring technologies for personal privacy. Formidable challenges confront the development of effective policies to address such issues. Policy design and implementation has become more complex, involving multiple interests, varied bodies of knowledge and competing scientific and technological perspectives, and conflicting claims as to expertise.

In this environment, the role of policy professionals is not to take decisions, but to facilitate the process of decision-making, undertake policy-focused analyses of problems and opportunities, and draw attention to perspectives, options, or consequences that might otherwise be overlooked. This surely requires generic skills of analysis and process facilitation that are mostly interdisciplinary in character and, for issues with high science and technology content, expertise and experience in the specific fields involved.

This paper focuses on the approach and experiences of the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in educating graduate students in public policy with specializations in fields of science and technology policy. To provide context, we begin by briefly reviewing the growth of public policy as a domain of study in the United States and the place of science and technology policy within this broad field. We then examine in detail the development, structure, curriculum, and operation of the still relatively new Georgia Tech public policy school (it was founded in 1990) and explore some of the issues and challenges the school now faces. There is no assertion that the interdisciplinary approach we describe is the only way to train professionals for careers in science and technology policy fields. But the organization and structure of the program may present an interesting comparison for German universities that typically maintain strong disciplinary boundaries.

Public policy, as an organized field of study within universities in the United States, has a history that goes back at least to the early years of the twentieth century with the founding of schools of public administration to provide training for careers in government and public service. The concept of a "policy science" was first enunciated in the US by Harold Lasswell in 1951, but the development of the field waited another decade until specialists began to be trained in policy analysis, computers became available for empirical studies of large data sets, and the descriptive self-consciousness of social scientists yielded to a willingness to engage in substantive prescriptive studies (Lasswell 1951; McCool 1995). In the 1960s, growing political turbulence stimulated the development of new programs in public affairs that focused on major policy problems and the analysis of policy options in addition to traditional government administration. On such issues as the state of the nation’s cities, poverty, or civil rights, there was a sense that government had failed. The new public affairs programs responded by trying to promote broader thinking about these questions, to embrace greater public involvement in policy making, and to apply methods to aid improved decisions.

The growth of the field continued through the 1970s and 1980s, with schools playing particular attention to challenges of implementation. Continued emphasis was placed on developing analytical methods, although with the recognition – gained from hard experience in the 1960s – that more sophisticated methods by themselves do not automatically result in better decisions or more successful implementation. There was also an expansion in specialty fields such as urban policy, transportation, health, environment, and science and technology.

Now, in the 1990s, there are more than 220 public policy and public administration programs in the United States, according to the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA). (See http://cid.unomaha.edu/~wwwpa/nashome.html.) Some of these are in schools of public administration, business or planning, while many are in freestanding schools of public policy. Mostly, these schools offer two-year masters’ degrees, which is the accepted professional qualification in the US. Many public policy schools also run doctoral programs, and a few offer undergraduate degrees.

While there are numerous detailed differences among schools, there are a series of important common elements in mainstream master’s programs. Generally, these public policy programs mix theory with applied work in an interdisciplinary framework. Students are trained to research, analyze and evaluate public policy problems, to use applied methods, and to understand the challenges of implementation and management. These programs typically have a set of "core" courses that students are required to take. Usually, the elements of the core include analysis of the policy process, microeconomics, quantitative and qualitative methods, organizational theory, management, and ethics and values. Some schools require public finance or law in their core curriculum. In addition to the required core, students have discretion to take elective courses in their areas of interest. Students can usually take elective courses across the university, in addition to electives in their home school, to put together a program that matches their interests and objectives.

Although American universities have a considerable degree of flexibility in designing their own curricula, this is balanced by a measure of standardization introduced through national and regional accreditation bodies. In the public policy and administration field, NASPAA is a major accreditation influence, organized (as is common in US academic accreditation) as a self-governing association of member schools. Not all public policy and administration programs belong to NASPAA, but most do. To be accredited by NASPAA, a master’s degree program must include instruction in three major areas. The first is "understanding of the public policy and organizational environment," attained through courses in political and legal institutions and processes, economic and social institutions and processes, and organization and management concepts and behavior. The second is "application of quantitative and qualitative techniques of analysis," attained through instruction in policy and program formulation, implementation and evaluation, and decision-making and problem solving. The third area is "management of public service organizations," which requires course content in human resources, budgeting and financial processes, and information, including computer literacy and applications. Compared with programs in public policy, those in public administration programs tend to give greater emphasis on the last category of topics.

Another frequent element of most policy programs is a policy internship, aimed at offering a real world situation where students can understand practice and get new insights on the applicability (or otherwise) of concepts taught in the classroom. In a two-year masters program, the internship usually occurs in the summer between the first and second years. This allows students mid-way through their training to gain experience and then return to their final year of studies. It is also a way in which students gain work experience and contacts that will help them get jobs after they graduate.

While many public policy schools at universities have roots in public administration, political science, or management education, in the Georgia Tech case there has been a somewhat different developmental path. Georgia Tech is a technological university, traditionally dominated by engineering teaching and research. In recent years, the university has sought to broaden its programs. The reasons why, and the strategies taken, fundamentally influenced the evolution of the Georgia Tech public policy school.

Georgia Tech was established in Atlanta in 1888 as part of an effort by elite decision-makers to expand the technological and industrial capabilities of the post-Civil War state (McMath et. al. 1985). Business and political communities aimed to shift the state from a mostly rural, agricultural, post-plantation economy to a more innovative, industrially capable region. A strong technical institute was seen as a key element in facilitating this shift. Since then, Georgia Tech has grown significantly. But the aim of being an institution which links research and teaching in technological fields with economic and regional development has been maintained. A series of major new state-funded investments have been placed at Georgia Tech aimed at enhancing high-technology development in Georgia.

Not surprisingly, most of the emphasis on education and research at Georgia Tech has been in engineering; other than relatively small programs in architecture, management, and the sciences, for most of the Institute’s first one hundred years it was dominated by a mission of training undergraduates to become practicing engineers. But in the past two decades, a new vision of the university has emerged with a strong emphasis on graduate education and faculty research that has been crucial in the growing national and international recognition of the strength of Georgia Tech’s engineering programs (recently ranked third in the US). The path by which the current School of Public Policy emerged reflects another significant change in the full meaning of "Institute of Technology," and not just a "school of engineering."

One of the fundamental changes at Georgia Tech is its emergence as a major research performer. Under President Joseph Pettit in the 1980s, Georgia Tech greatly expanded its research funding, growing from about $5 million in the 1970s to over $235 m of externally sponsored government and industrial research in 1999. Indeed, research has now become the leading business of the university, with Georgia Tech the sixth biggest recipient of private industrial research among US universities. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the research side of the university grew, another President - John Crecine – took the opportunity to reinvigorate Georgia Tech’s academic programs. Crecine (who is notable as the first, and so far only, non-engineer to head Georgia Tech) pursued a vision to transform Georgia Tech into a fully-fledged technological university. This involved developing a broader array of degree programs and teaching units, and also training engineers, scientists, managers, and other graduates in different ways to reflect the new competencies needed in an increasingly complex and global work environment. A central element of Crecine’s plan was the expansion of policy-related fields at Georgia Tech. At the same time, and most important, groups of faculty in social sciences, engineering, and planning were also keen to develop new interdisciplinary and policy-relevant educational programs at the institute.

These expansion plans did not begin with an entirely clean slate. The first general survey courses in social sciences were added to the Georgia Tech curriculum in 1934. In 1948 the Department of Social Sciences was created, but the first social science-related degree program – a one-year Master of Science in Technology and Science Policy (TASP) – was not approved until 1980. The creation of the TASP program had been the subject of some controversy inasmuch as it was the first degree program in the social sciences or humanities at Georgia Tech. Some of the engineering faculty expressed their opposition to such a curriculum at the technical institution. Nevertheless, the program was supported by the president, provost, deans, and most of the faculty and proved to be successful. Taught within the School of Social Sciences, which was comprised of historians, political scientists, philosophers, and sociologists, TASP graduated more than 50 students, many of whom moved into important policy-related positions in government and industry.

In 1988, Crecine proposed a major reorganization, particularly the merging of the old College of Management into a new college that would include the social sciences and humanities (which had been part of a College of Sciences and Liberal Studies). In 1990, new Schools of Public Policy, International Affairs (INTA), and History, Technology, and Society (HTS) were created out of the former School of Social Sciences. These Schools joined the School of Management, the School of Economics, a new School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC), and the Department of Modern Languages, to form the Ivan Allen College of Management, Policy, and International Affairs (IAC). Existing faculty were reassigned into the IAC’s new schools, many additional faculty were hired, and a series of new degree programs got underway. The new Ivan Allen College (named after a former mayor of Atlanta) with its new interdisciplinary schools reflected the changing vision of the university. There was also a growth in interdisciplinary programs elsewhere on the campus, exposing engineers and scientists to a wider array of other disciplines. An example was the Management of Technology program, which brought together engineers, scientists, and others with technical backgrounds to provide interdisciplinary education in understanding and managing processes of technological innovation.

Today, Georgia Tech has about 14,000 students (see Table 1). Some 8,500 students are in various branches of the college of engineering. Overall enrollments in the engineering college have been stable during the 1990s. A further 2,100 students are in the college of architecture and planning and the college of sciences. These two colleges have each seen some declines in enrollments since 1992. The biggest growth area of students has been in computing and information technology in the college of computing, followed by the management college and the IAC. All told, the Institute has grown in total student body, with the consequence that the share of engineering students fell from 66 percent in 1992 to 61 percent in 1998.

The reorganization and expansion of new programs in public policy and other areas at Georgia Tech was facilitated by the "entrepreneurial" character that has emerged as a major feature of the university. For example, faculty are encouraged to extend their research to applications (for example, their employment contracts permit one day per week to be devoted entirely to consulting), and many faculty have formed companies to commercialize their discoveries. Entrepreneurship is also supported in organizational terms. Of course, as in most large institutions, inertia and conservatism (dressed up as "tradition") exists. Yet, perhaps surprisingly in the light of this, new programs can be established without the need to overcome enormous obstacles. Nearly one hundred research centers have been created to serve as focal points for faculty and students working in key interdisciplinary areas. New degree programs, including joint programs between departments and with other institutions, can be established relatively speedily. (One recent example is a new Georgia Tech/Emory University Department of Biomedical Engineering – a unique joint program between a public university and private university.) Faculty can propose new sub-degree programs ("minors" and "certificates") for student specializations with relatively little formal red tape.

Nonetheless, the creation of the School of Public Policy and the other units of the Ivan Allen College did not occur without controversy. Most of the leaders of the university, from the president and provost to most deans and department chairs, supported the reorganization of the Institute. Here, lofty academic goals of interdisciplinary learning and breadth of educational opportunity were joined by practical concerns. For example, there was increasing pressure from the engineering accrediting board to broaden the education of engineering majors to include more social sciences, humanities, and communications skills. Another interest was to provide students with a reason to remain at Georgia Tech if they decided partway through their undergraduate programs that engineering was not their preferred career. However, in a repetition (although at a larger scale) of controversies seen in the TASP, some faculty, particularly in the engineering departments, and a few alumni saw the new programs as threats to the traditional identity of the Institute and the role of engineering within the university. These fears were overblown. As the student numbers indicate, there has been a slight fall in the relative share of engineering enrollments, but engineering is still predominant in the university and the current external standing of the Institute has never been higher. Regardless, the friction generated as a by-product of Crecine’s institutional re-engineering led, in part, to his departure as President of the Institute. Additionally, in 1998, the management school left the IAC and re-established itself as the Dupree College of Management.

Yet, despite these turns, the IAC and its component schools have taken root. After less than a decade, the new programs in the Ivan Allen College have generally been very successful, attracting new types of students to Georgia Tech, broadening the educational options for traditional students, and gaining recognition for innovative curricula. The current Georgia Tech president, Wayne Clough, has supported the new units and degree programs and has embraced the expertise in science and technology policy found within the School of Public Policy as a resource to be used in the guidance of not only university policy, but also policy at the state and national level.

On its founding in 1990, the School of Public Policy inherited the TASP degree and expanded it into a two-year Master of Science in Public Policy (MSPP). The first MSPP class was admitted in 1991 and graduated in 1993. During its first seven years the MSPP program has graduated almost seventy students. The MSPP program now takes in around 20 new students a year, with efforts underway to expand enrollment.

In 1996 the School created a Ph.D. program. This currently has about 10 enrolled students, with around 4 or 5 new students admitted annually. 1997 saw the addition of a joint Ph.D. program with nearby Georgia State University. Georgia State has units and expertise dealing with public policy, but with particular strengths in areas of social policy, economics, fiscal policy. At the same time, Georgia Tech has strengths in science and technology policy and related areas. The result is a joint doctoral program that offers expanded opportunities to students, using existing resources, in a collaborative inter-institutional framework.

The Bachelor of Science in Public Policy was originally designed and approved in 1995, but for several reasons, including the announcement of a conversion from a quarter system to semesters and the interruptions caused by the 1996 Summer Olympics (for which the Georgia Tech campus was the Olympic Village), the implementation of the BSPP was postponed. In 1998 the School accepted its first majors into the undergraduate BSPP program.

The School contributes to other programs and units at Georgia Tech. First, the School offers elective courses open to graduate students across the university. More than half the enrollments in public policy courses at the Masters’ level are students from other programs, especially engineering, computing, management, and city planning. Second, the School contributes to certificates (clusters of courses in specialized areas). Most significant for S&T policy is the Management of Technology certificate program offered by the units in Management, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Public Policy. There is a shared curriculum to give students with technical backgrounds or industrial experience a broader interdisciplinary exposure to the management of technology. Finally, faculty members also conduct a significant amount of service teaching in required courses in government for undergraduates across the university and make a leading contribution to an undergraduate minor in the philosophy of science and technology. Of particular importance is the expanded effort to provide education in ethics to most of the engineering students at Georgia Tech.

The research and teaching interests of the faculty are diverse within the field of science and technology broadly defined – to include research management, innovation, technology transfer, technology assessment, telecommunications, information, risk communication, analytical methods, environmental policy, regional development, and evaluation. The School’s faculty is also explicitly interdisciplinary. Among the School’s 18 full-time faculty are individuals trained in political science, economics, philosophy, planning, law, organizational theory, and public administration. The School also has seven joint appointments, including civil engineers, planners, industrial engineers, psychologists, and atmospheric chemists. This is worth some comment. One of the strategies of the school is to have joint appointments with other units across the university. These are not honorary or symbolic positions. As far as possible, these are "hard" joint appointments where the School pays a portion of the salary of the faculty member, and as a result they have clear responsibilities (and voting rights) with the School. The School also has a number of adjunct faculty – experts in other units of the university or from outside organizations that are associated with the school and who may offer special courses in their areas of expertise (such as environmental engineering, government affairs, and telecommunications). Many faculty members have extensive public or private organizational and policy experience, as well as academic expertise. Furthermore, many of the School’s faculty with doctoral degrees in social sciences or humanities obtained their undergraduate or masters’ degrees in the sciences and engineering.

The formal mission statement of the School of Public Policy calls for it to provide students with "instruction and research experience that will equip them to perform at their maximum potential in a society with a technological base." This parallels the Strategic Plan of Georgia Tech, which emphasizes "education in engineering, architecture, computing, management, science, and the technology-oriented aspects of the humanities and social sciences." Georgia Tech joins about twenty other public policy schools in the US that have significant capabilities in the science and technology policy area. What is the rationale for offering a specialty in science and technology policy within the field of public policy?

Science and technology (S&T) is of growing importance across an array of issues and arenas of human activity. S&T is clearly important to economic globalization and international competitiveness, and to the development and commercialization of innovation. But the growing relevance of science and technology goes beyond purely economic concerns. For example, there are immense challenges related to the human impact on environment and ecology or the future of energy supplies. The list can be extended, but the main point is that many of the major issues that confront us today are ones that involve science and technology in significant ways. It is also true that decision making about these issues with science and technology content has become more complex. The days when science could be left to the scientists or policy to the politicians have gone. Decision-making and implementation now occurs in more complex, multi-actor arenas (see Kuhlmann 1998).

These developments underlie the case for public policy training with an emphasis in science and technology in two specific ways. First, society requires professionals trained in policy sciences who have some expertise in science and technology, so that they can work in a serious and substantive way in these policy areas with high levels of science and technological content. Second, there is also another element – one that is particularly important for universities with strong engineering and science schools – which is that engineers and scientists, in today’s world, need a better understanding of public policy processes. Engineers and scientists, as they advance through their careers, need to have an understanding of the political and social dimensions of their inventions, discoveries, and activities, including a critical perspective on technological solutions to social challenges. In recent years the centrality of the topics addressed by School of Public Policy to the mission of Georgia Tech has been reinforced by the criteria of the US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. The Board requires that engineering education include "a sensitivity to the socially-related technical problems which confront the profession [and] an understanding of the ethical characteristics of the engineering profession and practice." (See <http://www.abet.org/eac/EAC_99-00_Criteria.htm>.)

An example of this new thinking is Georgia Tech’s decision in the 1990s to move to the forefront of engineering schools with a major initiative to integrate concepts of sustainability into the engineering curriculum, beginning with the freshman year and continuing throughout the undergraduates’ programs. Public policy faculty with expertise in environmental ethics, environmental economics, public participation, science shops, and philosophy of technology have participated in the formation of course content, pursuit of external funding, and development of a campus-wide vision statement for sustainability.

The degree programs in the School of Public Policy are designed to provide an education that combines strong analytical skills with a solid understanding of the political, social, and economic forces that shape public policies. Students are expected to master a range of methodological tools, but also to use them in awareness of the ethical implications of how policy questions are asked and answered. They also acquire in-depth knowledge of at least one specific area of public policy. This learning occurs mostly in small classes, in seminars, or in actual policy research conducted in student groups or with faculty.

The School's teaching curriculum offers a mixture of technical, analytical, and values-based courses. It prepares students for multiple work environments and complex, non-linear careers. This of course includes government, but many students find employment in the private sector. Students are also placed in non-profit organizations. In this sense, the School has a variety of "end users" and possible job placements for graduates.

The masters’ curriculum has a core of required courses that occupy about one-half of student time in the program (see Figure 1). A graduate policy seminar introduces students to the field. In subsequent core courses, students learn about policy processes, the actors and institutions that shape the formulation and implementation of policy, how organizations operate, and the challenges of making policy in democratic governance systems in a technologically and socially complex world. Emphasis is given to the vital role of ethical frameworks in establishing the criteria by which policies should be evaluated, and attention is paid to the implications of different forms of logical inquiry used in policy analysis. Courses in microeconomics and public finance acquaint students with tools for understanding and analyzing the economic behavior of individuals and institutions. Methodological courses in research design and statistics offer extensive training in how to construct and implement policy analyses and research designs that asks the right questions and allows confidence in the results. An integrative case- and exercise-based course in public policy analysis allows students to address addresses tangible policy issues and various approaches to analyzing them. Generally, these core courses differ from equivalents taught in traditional discipline-based departments in their greater use of policy examples and cases (particularly in S&T fields) and their emphasis on issues and methods of prescription as well as analysis.

Students can then choose electives from an array of courses in the School of Public Policy and from other courses offered at Georgia Tech. Students can also pursue electives elsewhere, and do so – particularly at Georgia State University. Initially, the School of Public Policy had four concentrations: science and technology policy, environmental policy, economic development, and telecommunications and information policy. Recently the School has added new elective areas in policy evaluation and public management. Students also have the option of designing their own course of elective study. As a capstone activity, students can chose between a professional paper (which is a professionally-focused paper designed around a real-world problem for a client) or a more academic masters’ thesis. A public policy internship usually occurs between the first and second years, while many students also have assignments as graduate research assistants with faculty research projects.

It has been said that "societies have problems, but universities have departments," so an important objective of the program is to provide students with an understanding of the challenges of combining various disciplinary approaches to solve real policy problems. Students develop their interdisciplinary skills through the variety of courses, their internship and project experiences, and the capstone research paper or thesis that allows students to demonstrate their professional and intellectual skills in an individual or group policy analysis, often conducted for a public or nonprofit agency. Many students also pursue certificates, minors, or double majors in fields such as pre-law, management of technology, economics, history, international affairs, management, the sciences, or engineering, reflecting their multiple interests and skills. Finally, there are many opportunities for learning outside the classroom – guest speakers, seminars, workshops, conferences, research assistantships, internships, coops (a curricular program where students attend courses and work in relevant organizations in alternating terms), etc. – that expose students to wider intellectual and career opportunities.

Students in the graduate masters program are diverse. Some students come with private sector experience or are mid-career students who plan to return to the private sector. About one half have backgrounds in science and engineering. The median age of students is relatively high – at 28. There are many mid-career students.

The alumni of the School of Public Policy have met with success in finding professional positions that match their skills and interests. Graduates of the Masters program have been hired by federal agencies and the US Congress, state and regional agencies, universities, business associations, consulting firms, and private companies. Although the label of "public policy" as the field of expertise sometimes requires explanation that it extends beyond government service, the MS students take into the job market analytic and problem-solving skills that are sought by diverse employers, mainly in public, non-profit, and consulting spheres, but also including private corporations. Several MS students have gone on to pursue Ph.D. degrees.

The new School of Public Policy quickly established a clear reputation as a leader in science and technology policy. In 1998, the School was ranked among the top three graduate schools in the US for programs in "technology and information policy" (US News and World Report 1998).

Sponsored research has increased substantially during the short history of the School of Public Policy. During the past four years, sponsored research has moved from about $150,000 annually to more than $1,000,000, which is especially striking given that many of the School’s faculty, particularly those in philosophy and political science, are in fields that traditionally are not likely to draw external support. Currently, there are more than 30 externally funded projects in the School. Research grants and contracts have come from three principal sources. First, public agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Economic Development Administration, the US Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control, and the Army Environmental Policy Institute. Second, non-profit organizations and foundations, including Resources for the Future and the Aspen Institute. Third, private companies, such as Eastman Kodak. This success in generating external sponsors of research has permitted extensive research and publication activity and, just as significantly, has permitted the School to provide research assistantships to virtually all of its full-time students. It also is extremely important in the School’s educational mission by allowing students to participate in research projects and by bringing practical policy research methods and problems into the classroom.

Many faculty are research associates of interdisciplinary centers located in the School of Public Policy, including the State Data and Research Center, the Technology Policy and Assessment Center, and the Center for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (a joint program with Columbia University, based in Washington, D.C.). Faculty also collaborate with other Georgia Tech centers, such as the Georgia Tech Economic Development Institute, the Center for International Business, Education, and Research, and the University of Georgia European Union Center, and are engaged other research centers and policy institutes at national and international levels.

In addition to external funding of research, the School of Public Policy has been very successful at connecting with policymakers in other ways. Because public policy is not a traditional academic discipline, research and teaching in the field requires interaction with practitioners. It is of direct benefit to the research and educational missions of the School that its faculty have served as consultants to the EPA Science Advisory Board, the Hastings Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, the Governor’s Commission on Effectiveness and Economy in Government, the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, the Department of Energy’s Waste Education Research Consortium, the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology, the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the European Union, OECD, and the World Bank. In recent years the School’s faculty have been invited to participate in research projects, advisory panels, and presentations in many countries around the world.

The School of Public Policy faces the usual budgetary and logistical issues, but of particular interest are the strategic concerns related to the substance of what is taught and how the School is positioned in a US educational environment in which there are many choices offered to potential student recruits. The position of the School within the university and the challenges of managing in an interdisciplinary environment also offer valuable insights.

There has been ongoing discussion in the School about its focus on science and technology policy, the brand footprint that this projects, and its attractiveness to potential students. Concerns have been expressed that science and technology policy is not as recognized as a business degree or even a general public policy degree. Indeed, it is often necessary to explain what is meant by "public policy," what is taught to students and the degree of rigor in the field, and what value the education of public policy students offers to potential employers. This is a challenge likely to grow with the development of the School’s teaching at the undergraduate level, where the BS in Public Policy will compete with numerous other more well known fields of study in attracting students.

Related to this, once students have entered the School, they have sometimes defined themselves too narrowly. For example, there have been master’s students wishing to pursue special interests in environmental conservation policy for forest lands, but if they take all of their elective courses around this, they may find when they graduate that it is not easy to find a job. The faculty have discussed how much to support students to pursue highly specialized interests versus encouraging them to gain more breadth, for example to be able to work in multiple areas of environment policy rather than a single one. In practice, many students have found very successful careers in policy fields different than the substantive area on which they focused in their studies, indicating that the curriculum provides a flexible education to the graduate students.

Thus, the School continues to debate whether to be a school specializing in science and technology policy and related areas, or whether it should grow to be a broader public policy school – for example, by adding more emphasis on other areas of policy such as housing or social policy. The majority of the faculty see an advantage to continuing to focus on S&T, recognizing that as a new program in a technological university this is a field within which it can be especially competitive. While there are resource issues here (e.g. comparisons with general public policy schools in other universities with far more resources), the nub of the issue is about the best way to focus the School’s contribution and the nature of institutional context in a technological university.

In fact, the strength of the School’s research portfolio, the quality of students in the degree programs, and their success on the job market together indicate that the niche of S&T policy is not so narrow that it will constrain the growth of the School. The range of issues that can relate to the intersection of science, technology, and policy can be extended into areas that would not normally be considered relevant to S&T policy. For example, consider the challenges to policymakers of an aging population: programs such as public housing and transportation will need to be adjusted as the demographic disruption of the aging "baby boom" cohort requires technological adjustments to current designs for buildings, buses and subways, and other public amenities. Biotechnology is presenting enormous challenges and opportunities for policymakers, and the mission of Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy can be naturally extended into this domain. The School already is developing stronger connections with practising attorneys with an interest in technology and law. Numerous other extensions are possible, so the identification of the School as a center for "science and technology policy" is more of an opportunity than a limitation.

A very fundamental question is on the position of the School relative to the larger body of engineers and scientists around the university. There is a risk that the School, and the field of policy studies, could become a "policy appendage" to the technical projects that attract the most funding. Many US granting agencies now require applicant scientists and engineers to explicitly describe how the social, environmental, or economic impacts of a proposed research project will be considered, but some comply with this requirement by attaching a rather short policy component to the end of their proposals without thoroughly addressing the actual policy implications of their work. The faculty of the School could devote a large proportion of their time to being the "token policy conscience" that adds legitimacy to the work of others, but it is important that it undertake the more challenging task of educating engineers about the centrality of policy-related issues and the applicability and rigor of policy methodologies for what have traditionally been conceived as "pure" engineering questions.

Students in the program are deliberately chosen from different undergraduate backgrounds, bringing diverse questions and perspectives to the courses, but presenting a particular challenge to the masters program: with only two years to train a mixture of engineers, scientists, social scientists, philosophers, and even journalists, the design of the masters curriculum requires constant reevaluation. One great tension in an interdisciplinary program is that individual faculty may forcefully argue that their own specialty, be it economics, political science, policy analysis, methods, ethics, or another subject area, must be taught in the core. The danger is that this will result in an over-extended core and inadequate integration of subjects with one another. The School had some experience with this phenomenon during a recent university conversion from quarter-based academic system (with ten-week terms) to semesters (fifteen-week terms). As a result, some faculty sense a need to reduce the current core to allow students more time to pursue electives. The process of doing this will likely rekindle debates about the orientation of the School as a general or specialized program. Notwithstanding this particular issue, there is in any case an ongoing need to re-examine the content of the core curriculum taught to public policy students to ensure the centrality and integration of required topics. Such re-examinations need to be as much about approach and method as they are about balance and integration of disciplines. For example, attention needs to be paid to the balance between quantitative and qualitative approaches, the role of case study and practice-based teaching methods, and the degree to which students acquire broad professional analytical and presentation skills versus in-depth research capabilities.

In part, the refinement and integration of teaching in the School will be stimulated by external review and benchmarking. The School’s own external advisory panel, comprised of prominent academics, policy analysts, and government representatives contributes here. But, beyond this, the process by which all colleges and universities are accredited increasingly requires formal procedures for assessment of educational programs. In most cases this entails the explicit description of educational objectives and the establishment of routinized processes for measuring learning outcomes (such as exit interviews with graduating students or surveys of post-employment alumni). For the School of Public Policy this formalization of evaluation presents several challenges, principally because of its extreme multidisciplinarity: with the exception of the core curriculum, there is not a standard body of knowledge that graduate students are expected to master. Students who focus on research evaluation will emphasize different methodological skills and policy knowledge than those who concentrate on environmental ethics. The formal assessment requirements are forcing the faculty of the School to address the commonalities and differences across the disciplines they represent.

This process will expose one of the inherent weaknesses in an interdisciplinary program: depending on the breadth of the range of disciplines, faculty must often agree to not disagree. What is an appropriate research question, technique, or criterion in one profession may differ widely from those in another field equally relevant to public policy: consider, for example, a methodological discussion between a philosopher of science with interests in the historical development of scientific disciplines and an economist trained in the application of geographic information systems. Although very interesting ideas may emerge from this discussion, there is also likely to be a lack of a common body of knowledge or a shared mode of discourse and analysis. In this case, the colleagues will most likely defer to the unknown but presumably respectable criteria of each other’s discipline as apparently judged by each other’s peers in their field. The result for faculty is a series of stimulating discussions (and some challenges in assessing performance for promotion, tenure, and salary increases). Recent faculty discussions indicate that progress can be made on these issues by focusing not so much on specific disciplines that should be highlighted above others, but on the core values that the School should promote in its teaching, research, and service. Nonetheless, the challenge for students is to weave a cloth with a meaningful pattern from the various brightly-colored threads of ideas with which the faculty equip them.

The formation of the Public Policy school was prompted, at least in part, by institutional desires to respond to new demands and needs in a more complex and globalized society. Yet, while internationalization and globalization present many opportunities to the Public Policy school, it also presents important challenges. One challenge is about the balance between focusing on state and local concerns versus issues broader afield (albeit that many local issues often have far broader dimensions). Globalization notwithstanding, the university remains a state institution and the state needs to see some direct relevance from what the faculty and students in public policy are doing, particularly in applying an developing tools of science and technology policy to aid state and local decision-making and evaluation. School faculty already have many close links at the state and local levels. It continues to be a priority to continue to strengthen these relationships.

Like all scholarly public policy programs, Georgia Tech’s policy school will confront occasional political sensitivities, particularly as its analyses touch on issues of direct relevance to the state government and its political leaders. As a state institution, receiving substantial financial support from state lawmakers, Georgia Tech has a mission to support state policies, especially in economic development. With the state’s current emphasis on high-technology economic growth, a possibility exists that policy analyses conducted by the School regarding S&T policy and economic development issues will occasionally contradict the policy preferences of institutional leaders or elected officials. Similarly, in practicing the philosophy of drawing attention to perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked, faculty and even students are likely to be involved with analyses and public interest groups whose recommendations differ from those favored by powerful political and business interests. Although political realism will inevitably influence how the School manages any resulting strains, the School will best serve the institute and the state through robustly ensuring not only scholarly independence and informed dialogue, but also high-quality and policy-relevant analyses and recommendations.

A second challenge related to globalization relates to the content and orientation of the School’s curriculum. The research and policy experience of School faculty extends widely, to include developed, developing, and post-communist societies in Europe, Asia and the Pacific Rim, Latin America, and Africa. Drawing on this experience, faculty have opportunities to incorporate into their courses the particular circumstances facing these different societies, particularly in multiple areas of science and technology policy. Yet, even in a globalized world, location does matter – and the School, being located in an advanced technological institute in the southern United States, inevitably is dominated by the environment of values and experiences within which it finds itself. Particularly in the core curriculum, there remains a tendency to focus on US (and to a much lesser extent, European) policy processes, perspectives, and strategies. The challenge of systematically internationalizing the curriculum remains, although significant progress has been made as a result of a growing number of international students, visiting faculty, international exchanges, and projects, and cross-national distance teaching collaborations. As it continues to find appropriate partnering relationships with programs in other countries, the international breadth of the School of Public Policy will be enhanced.

In terms of where the School will go in the in the future, there are several likely directions. The School is already pushing for tighter institutional links with other parts of Georgia Tech in terms of collaboration with campus research centers. Collaboration with units of other universities is also a thrust, for example to develop joint programs and joint research centers; one possibility is a center for the study of biotechnology ethics and law, connected to the new joint graduate program in biomedical engineering between Georgia Tech and nearby Emory University. The School also plans to extend its teaching in new ways, particularly in continuing education, executive seminars and courses, and distance learning such as internet-based courses. Research efforts will continue to deepen, probably with a shift from individual faculty projects to team-based research projects often on a multi-institutional basis and with a growing number of international collaborations. In the high technology community that is emerging in the state, at the national level, and internationally, the School is well positioned to extend its role in building up the field of science and technology policy.

The still evolving experience of the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy presents several insights. The case illustrates the importance of institutional context in prompting the founding and direction of the School, especially in its focus on science and technology policy. The entrepreneurial framework found at the university encouraged the development of new interdisciplinary programs. Also critical were institutional leadership, faculty direction and involvement, and integration with related educational programs. The School’s experience validates the real value of broad interdisciplinary approaches to public policy teaching, yet also the need for specialized areas of expertise to offer a series of science and technology policy concentrations. But with an interdisciplinary approach, there are also many challenges and debates in ongoing efforts to balance curriculum and manage growth. Finally, the increasingly global nature of the field and its subject matter raises issues related to state and local needs, institutional tensions, and curriculum content. We have tried to describe the nature of these issues, and how we have tried to address them.

Science and technology policy is a small, yet established field of study in the US in terms of programs and students. Yet, it is a field whose objects of inquiry are large in scale, scope, and importance. American industry and government will spend more than $200 billion on research and development in 2000, and expertise is needed to analyze and recommend the design and evaluation of those efforts. Furthermore, S&T policy has direct connections with a very wide range of other policy issues, including not only those with obvious technological connections (such as environmental, defense, energy, and transportation policy), but, increasingly nearly all other areas of policy (including employment, education, and criminal justice).

The significance of the field and its links with other domains provides many potential opportunities for growth. Perhaps the greatest challenge to programs such as the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy is not how it should broaden itself, but how it can retain a sharp focus on the specialized questions and methodologies of S&T policy while finding new applications for these tools in non-traditional policy areas. In its actual institutional environment this will require a major effort at educating the leaders of the university, state policymakers, and students about the central position of science and technology policy within the larger universe of diverse policy issues. Much progress has been made in the past few years toward achieving this task, in large part because of the strength of the School’s faculty and the hard work of its students. As part of a modern university that will continue to evolve at a faster pace, keeping up with the changes in educational technologies, new demographic patterns and employment practices, and its fluid strategic position within the larger institutional environment, the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech will undoubtedly have an exciting future.

Kuhlmann, Stefan (1998), "Moderation of Policy-Making. Science and Technology Policy Evaluation Beyond Impact Measurement - The Case of Germany," Evaluation, 4:2, pp. 130-148

Lasswell, Harold (1951), "The Policy Orientation," in The Policy Sciences, pp. 3-15. Edited by Daniel Lerner and Harold Lasswell, Stanford, CA.

McCool, Daniel (1995), Public Policy Theories, Models, and Concepts, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

McMath, Robert C., Jr., et al. (1985), Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech, 1885-1895, Athens, GA.

US News and World Report (1998), US Graduate Schools Ranking, US News Online, February.

* includes School of Public Policy

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