Chicago Harris celebrates its 2013 graduates

Be bold, be open to diverse viewpoints and prove the cynics wrong—no matter the field or profession you will pursue, speakers told graduates of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy at the school’s spring diploma and hooding ceremony.

Some 141 graduating Chicago Harris students, along with friends, family and Chicago Harris faculty, packed Mandel Hall for the ceremony on June 15. Graduates included 125 students from the two-year Master of Public Policy program, as well as two Masters of Science in Environmental Science Policy, eight Masters of Arts and six PhDs.

Welcomed by Dean of Students Kathi Marshall, the audience heard an enthusiastic testimonial on the value of developing sound and sustainable public policy from Chicago’s Deputy Mayor for Education Beth Foley Swanson (MPP’02). The event culminated with Chicago Harris Dean Colm O’Muircheartaigh presenting the graduates with their diplomas and delivering closing remarks.

“All I can say is, you did it! Were there ever any doubts?” Marshall told the graduates, which included 51 international students from 15 countries.. “But you made it…and please don’t ever lose any of the passion you brought to Harris.”

Making the world a better place

Introduced by Marshall as someone dedicated to public service, Swanson – who also held leadership posts at Chicago Public Schools and the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation before joining Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s staff – quickly articulated the importance of public policy work: Policy, she said, is not merely a simple recitation of facts and figures, but is about understanding the people who will be impacted and their communities of interest.

“Every policy field is different, but each requires convincing people without a policy background to share your view,” she said. “Your insights and analysis will only be as strong as your ability to communicate them and bring others on board to support and implement them.”

Swanson said her experience at Chicago Harris provided her with the additional tools she needed beyond what she had garnered through her earlier work experiences.

“Before coming to the Harris School I had worked across the education spectrum,” she said. “But I knew I needed to develop the quantitative skills to take those experiences further, explain them, understand them more deeply and ultimately improve education policy. And I could not have been better served from what I learned at the Harris School.”

While the “numbers side” of policy is important, policy “has to work for people.” And, she added, involving divergent voices when formulating policy is essential.

“It is rare a public policy will deliver a perfect solution. In fact, good policy involves imperfect solutions. That is because good public policies are only developed after many voices have been heard and different options have been analyzed.”

Dean O’Muircheartaigh added to the day’s overriding themes by pointing out that a “common thread in all of our students is that they want to make the world a better place.”

“Our ambition is to train you to go out and do the things we do not do – to change the world,” he said, noting with pride two of the peer-led groups in which Chicago Harris students are deeply involved: the Micro-Finance Conference, which began as a social impact project by students from Chicago Harris and Chicago Booth School of Business, and Latin America(n) Matters, which he described as a “most dynamic student group.”

Prepared for impactful futures

Graduates from diverse interest areas and backgrounds praised their time at Chicago Harris for providing them with essential tools and perspectives as they prepared to begin or resume their professional lives.

Matthew Smith, who earned a joint MPP/MBA with the Booth School, said he decided to go to graduate school after working for Fidelity Investments in Boston. He said he decided to come to the University of Chicago after doing volunteer work in New Orleans and realizing he was interested in the “social good.”

Smith, who is joining the Boston Consulting Group office in Chicago, said his graduate school experiences allow him to “understand how business, policy, government and non-profits work together.” Attending Chicago Harris, he said, gave him a “sense of community” among students, faculty and administration that he believes he can call upon as he pursues his long-term goals.

Gillian Kindel worked in advertising before coming to Chicago Harris. She said she had “lofty expectations” when she applied for the MPP program – and that Harris had met those expectations and provided her with an outstanding opportunity to pursue a career in healthcare.

Kindel received the George Bugbee Program Advocacy Award recognizing her outstanding commitment to the Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy, a certificate program she pursued through the School of Social Service Administration as part of her degree from Chicago Harris.

After graduating, Kindel will build upon an internship last year at University of Chicago Medicine by beginning a one-year fellowship there that will further her interest in hospital and health issues. She said the Chicago Harris core curriculum taught her how to “think critically about large data sets, how to interpret them, how to ask the right questions.” With these tools, she hopes to affect change that will ultimately “improve experiences for patients.”

Helen Ning, a native of Taiwan, worked as an organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) before starting the Chicago Harris MPP program. With plans to work at the American Hospital Association as a data analyst post-graduation, she considers the network of friends and associations she made over the past two years a valuable byproduct of her time at Harris.

“These are the people I will be working with long term,” she said.

-- Franklin R. Shuftan