Teaching Key Competencies in Liberal Arts Education

The study of the liberal arts provides an exemplary arena for students to become active learners. The complexity of modern society requires a broader understanding of societal problems rather than a specialized one. Real problems are multifaceted and demand multifaceted solutions. Engaging students in the study of the liberal arts can provide a basis for lifelong learning and civic involvement.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/34808/1/2_ftp.pd

Firing the Unproductive Employee: Will Civil Service Reform Make a Difference?

Civil service reform included a set of changes intended to facilitate the firing of consistently un productive employees. This article describes the background and logic of these changes, reviews the status of their implementation, and offers preliminary evidence on their consequences for per sonnel management in the federal government.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68633/2/10.1177_0734371X8200200208.pd

Needed: a National Strategy to Preserve Public Research Universities

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89045/1/2010_Chronicle_Commentary.pd

A Pre-Proposal - Summer Faculty Careers Institute for Ph.D. students, Postdoctoral Fellows, and Junior Faculty

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88564/1/2003_FIPSE_PFF_7.2.pd

How Does University Decision Making Shape the Faculty?

The authors discuss important institutional changes that they view as probably permanennt for reasons of cost and that may have far-reaching implications for the future of higher education.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/34804/1/120_ftp.pd

Preemptive and reactive spending in U.S. House races

This paper examines the spending behavior of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Particular attention is paid to the timing of receipts and expenditures over the complete 2-year election cycle. Incumbents raise and spend large amounts of money very early in the race, and this preemptive spending may have a great impact on the selection of challengers and therefore on electoral outcomes. In addition, a model of reactive spending is tested for the general election period. Incumbents' expenditures are a function of the underlying partisan division in the district, the strength of the challenge, and candidates' feelings of vulnerability. Incumbents are strategic actors who attempt to maximize their chances of reelection. Early in the term, they spend preemptively in an effort to influence the selection of their challengers. Later in the term, they spend in reaction to the strength of their challengers' campaign. The role of money in congressional campaigns is neither simple nor direct. More attention needs to be given to the strategic uses of money in the period leading up to the general election campaign as well as to the dynamics of receipts and expenditures over an entire election cycle.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45496/1/11109_2004_Article_BF00987590.pd

The three faces of evaluation

Program evaluation can be used for three purposes: to learn about a program's operations and effects, to control the behavior of those responsible for program implementation, and to influence the responses of outsiders in the program's political environment. Most agencies fail to take full advantage of all three faces of evaluation. They begin their evaluation programs too late; they assign evaluation responsibilities to staffs which lack the requisite skills; or they yield to temptations to distort or suppress evaluation findings. The case of the evaluation of civil service reform demonstrates how these multiple purposes can be pursued together with constructive results. It also suggests several lessons of more general relevance.

Edie Goldenberg (interviewed by Madeleine Kline)

Interview conducted with an MIT alumna as part of the Margaret MacVicar Memorial AMITA (Association of MIT Alumnae) Oral History Project. The purpose of the project is to document the life histories of women graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology