Bloomington and SPEA- A Parternship for The Urban Forest

SPEA is well known for its involvement in the Bloomington community. One great example of this partnership is taking place this semester with Burney Fischer’s Urban Forest Management Course, for which I am a Teaching Assistant. The class is composed of both undergraduate and graduate students who are involved in Environmental Science, Management, and Policy. [...]

SPEA’s New Dean

This academic year began with Prof. C. Kurt Zorn serving as the interim dean of SPEA, since former dean Astrid Merget left to become the provost and executive vice president of Louisiana State University in 2007. Thus, an arduous search for a new dean began. Led by Charles Bantz, chancellor of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, [...]

SPEA’s Experience Day and the Student Professional Enrichment Auction

The last week of March here at SPEA was nothing less than crazy! The week consisted of our Prospective Student Visit Day or “Experience Day,” as well as the Third Annual Spring Student Professional Enrichment Auction (S.P.E.A.). These are both exciting events at SPEA in which current students, faculty and staff are truly engaged in [...]

Taiwan Night

The evening of  March 19, 2008 marked the debut of Taiwan Night, a student-organized cultural event which aimed to introduce the country of Taiwan to the SPEA community. A group of enthusiastic Taiwanese students prepared a selection of authentic Taiwanese dishes, including pot-stickers, stir-fried rice noodles, Taiwanese hamburgers, and many other delicious options that are [...]

Practical learning

In almost all of the classes I have taken at SPEA, there have been several exercises or projects that are “hands-on real-world” work experiences. Not only do we learn the theory and read the literature, but we then apply these lessons directly to an experience that you are likely to walk out of the classroom [...]

SPEA and the Indiana Sustainability Alliance

Tonight, I took advantage of a great opportunity in Indianapolis that I learned about through SPEA. A few weeks ago, an email circulated on the Graduate Student email list regarding a meeting of the Indiana Sustainability Alliance (INSA), a new organization meant to bring together various Indiana institutions and individuals working on sustainability initiatives. My [...]

Vernon Jordan is coming to IU!!

Since Fall 2007, the Neal Marshall Planning Committee  has been planning a special event for the Public Policy Lecture Series in the following spring. Every spring, a speaker is invited to be the Spring Neal-Marshall Public Policy Lecturer, which is a lecture hosted by both SPEA and the Neal-Marshall Alumni Club. This year, SPEA and the [...]

Internship vs. Thesis

Speons seem to get into the momentum of SPEA’s academic life without hesitation every spring semester. I am no exception. Apart from having become more familiar with a graduate student’s lifestyle, the need to plan for the upcoming summer is another source of motivation.
One of the reasons why I chose SPEA is the flexibility its [...]

The New Public Affairs Workshop Series at SPEA!

During my career at SPEA, I’ve worked as a Graduate Assistant (GA) in the Graduate Program Office (GPO). My current projects include one that I am very excited about—I have been working on a series of professional development workshops that the GPO offers free to masters students! The whole concept came from Dr. Mikesell, the [...]

Peace Corps Fellows Program Inspection at SPEA

Recently, we had an inspection of our Peace Corps Fellows/USA program by Peace Corps headquarters in Washington DC. Julie Driver, the Peace Corps Fellows USA program director, got to look at the various aspects of the program here and had a lot of positive things to say. Each university structures their Fellows program [...]