by Mike Craw, MPA Director

April 9, 2021

Hello and happy spring to you all!  Here in the Evergreen MPA program, we are fast approaching the end of another academic year. Students in second year core are completing their capstone projects, while our first year core students are nearing their halfway point through the MPA program. 

At the same time, the emergence of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines has meant that we are beginning our plans for a transition from fully on-line instruction to hybrid and some in-person instruction. For safety, Evergreen plans to remain fully on-line through Summer 2021, and to re-integrate in-person instruction for seminar-style and laboratory courses in Fall 2021. We have had a great experience with on-line instruction under the pandemic, but are looking forward to soon providing the in-person instruction that has been a hallmark of the Evergreen MPA program.

We are also excited to see some fantastic examples of equity-informed public service coming from our MPA alumni and students in recent months.  For example, MPA Students Arturo Avila, Ivy Ayers, and Bekah Guenther, under the guidance of MPA Faculty Member, Dr. Cali Ellis, presented their Analytic Techniques in Public Service project on mass incarceration, “Deserving of Punishment: How Race Informs Public Opinion of Suitable Incarceration Terms” at the annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration in April, 2021. In addition, MPA Alum and Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda is working with MPA Faculty Member, Dr. Amy Gould to evaluate Seattle’s Democracy Voucher initiative, about which Councilmember Mosqueda spoke to the first-year MPA core class in February 2021. And we are pleased to recognize MPA Alum Melody Rodriguez, who was honored by MENTOR with a lifetime achievement award in mentoring for her pioneering Proyecto MoLe in Tacoma.  We are so proud of these and the other accomplishments of our MPA alumni and students!

We are also happy to say that we are still accepting applications for our Fall 2021 MPA cohort, including our second-ever MPA cohort at Evergreen’s Tacoma campus. Colleagues, friends, or others you may know who are pursuing a career in public service can attend a virtual information session to learn more about our MPA programs in Olympia and Tacoma or they can test drive Evergreen’s MPA program as a non-matriculated student. Our third round application deadline is coming up on May 10th, 2021.

We thank you for your continued engagement with Evergreen’s MPA program and we wish you the best for the coming spring and summer months!

Sincerely,

Mike Craw, MPA Director