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FEATURES |
AU is a thread that runs bright and strong through the fabric of the nation’s capital. It connects the Smithsonian to the State Department, Capitol Hill to NASA, AU’s campus to the District’s public schools. A long list of Washington institutions share a common bond through the faculty, students, and alumni who are leading them into the future. At least 40,000 AU alumni make their homes and make a difference in the Washington metropolitan region. Add that to the nearly 13,000 students, faculty, and staff at AU—the city’s eighth largest employer—and the university’s impact is enormous. A single day finds the AU community volunteering 175 hours to make Washington a better place. A single year finds 37 graduate and law students selected as Presidential Management Fellows, and 79 government reports, books, and monographs written by faculty. And that’s just the beginning of the numbers behind AU’s contribution to Washington. For this issue, we consulted AU’s database and focused on several D.C. institutions and five individuals to highlight the university’s capital presence. Let’s continue the search. If there are five or more AU alumni working for your D.C.-area organization, let us know. We hope to fill this map in coming issues with numbers and stories and organizations where AU alumni are making a contribution.
Public Schools Ninety percent of the District of Columbia Public Schools, or 135 schools, now have one or more AU-trained teachers. So do many of the city’s public charter schools. More than 800 teachers have honed their skills at AU, including many who changed careers to make a difference as teachers. At least 38 alumni are here, including Lonnie Bunch ’74, 76, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will be built on the National Mall.
Lonnie Bunch, CAS/BA ’74, MA ’76 To bring a museum to life is a historic challenge, particularly when it will be part of the Smithsonian and will grace the last available spot on the National Mall. That’s the task of Lonnie Bunch ’74, ’76, founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The renowned educator and historian is spearheading everything from raising $500 million to selecting an architect to creating a collection virtually from scratch. The museum won’t be on the Mall for years, but it will soon be traveling around the country in a program called Save Our African American Treasures: A National Collections Initiative. Experts will encourage people around the nation to look in attics and closets for heirlooms and find out how to preserve and protect them. The best may even end up in the Smithsonian, along with finds that include two slave cabins and a fighter plane flown by World War II’s famed Tuskegee Airmen. The museum is also collecting history in the form of memories. A “virtual Memory Book” allows online visitors to add and view memories in a just-launched, interactive Web site http://nmaahc.si.edu/ Bunch’s biggest challenge: “How do we create an institution worthy of the Smithsonian? Even more important, how can we create an institution worthy of the African American experience? If we can do that, that’s success.”—SA 3. John A. Wilson Building (City Hall) Among the most prominent of many alumni in city government is Tonya Vidal Kinlow ’05, the city’s first education ombudsman and a key player on the mayor’s team.
Tonya Vidal Kinlow, SPA/MPA ’05 Washington, D.C., mayor Adrian Fenty has pledged to improve the city’s schools. And he’s found a key person to help him do it: Tonya Vidal Kinlow ’05. The former D.C. Board of Education member is talking in the cavernous hallway of a city administration building, as people wave and give their congratulations. Kinlow has just been named the final member of Fenty’s education team. She will become the city’s first ombudsman of public education. If parents see a problem at a local school and feel that nobody has been able to solve it, they can turn to Kinlow. If a student needs help and isn’t getting it, Kinlow will know what resources the city can marshal to make a difference. As the Mayor’s Office puts it, she will be “the city’s face of customer service for education.” “It’s an incredible opportunity,” she says, “and it shows to me the commitment of this government to really fix the public schools.” Kinlow arrived in Washington, D.C., like many young people, as an intern on Capitol Hill. The Louisiana native loved the city, ended up staying, and made a career as a government relations executive for several prominent medical organizations. On her own time, she worked for a better education for D.C.’s children. The resident of Southwest Washington’s Bellevue community was elected to the District Board of Education in 1996, served on the board of the education advocacy group D.C. Voice, and was appointed to the State Board of Education early this year. In the meantime, she crystallized the knowledge gained in the field by pursuing a master’s degree in public administration at AU’s School of Public Affairs. Many years of experience led her to her current position, but AU was an important piece. “My AU experience will be critical in helping me with this new role, particularly since I’m starting this office from the ground up,” she says. “If I’m successful, it will really show the success of my AU education.” —SA AU’s Kathryn Montgomery has submitted a report to this agency urging it to regulate digital marketing that targets children.
Kathryn Montgomery Concerned about American adolescents’ expanding waistlines, Kathryn Montgomery is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to fight junk food marketers who target tech-savvy youngsters. “This very well could be the first generation that doesn’t live as long as their parents, and that’s frightening,” says the School of Communication professor. In May, Montgomery and her husband, Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, released a study detailing how high-calorie, low-nutrient foods are being marketed, using everything from avatars to video games, to kids, 17 percent of whom are overweight, according to the Center for Health and Health Care in School. The report, which they submitted to the FTC, urges the regulatory organization to establish ground rules to govern the new “marketing ecosystem” that encompasses cell phones, mobile music players, instant messaging, and other digital technologies. Montgomery and Chester, whose efforts in the 1990s led to the passage of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, are calling for investigation into the data collection and marketing practices of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, along with an investigation of the companies cited in their report, including industry giants McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, and Burger King. Montgomery’s testimony before the FTC in November also played a key role in Facebooks’s decision to give its 55 million users greater control over whether or not to participate in a program that circulates sensitive information about their online activities. “We’re working for government regulation, but we also hope to foster public debate,” says Montgomery. “This is new territory. As policy makers, health care providers, and parents, we need to decide what’s ethical in this new media culture.” According to studies by Online Media Daily and the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 70 percent of 8- to 11-year-olds go online from home, and 93 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds surf the Internet. And while Montgomery doesn’t think children and teens should be “off limits” to food marketers, she says “there does need to be a clear discussion about where we draw the line.” —AF 5. Nuclear Regulatory Commission When AU’s Robert Tobias surveyed the best places to work in the federal government, this agency topped the list of best large agencies.
Robert Tobias TV news cameras don’t flock to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) headquarters every time a midlevel engineer files a thoroughly clean report evaluating the operational experience at a licensed facility. There’s no Rose Garden ceremony when an IRS accountant double checks a tax return to ensure its accuracy. Yet those everyday happenings are key to the effective implementation of public policy. Robert Tobias knows this better than most. As president of the National Treasury Employees Union from 1983 to 1999, he had a front row seat for the daily federal bureaucracy drama. With an eye toward changing the government’s culture, the SPA professor founded AU’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation (ISPPI) in 2000. “I believe that much of the public focus in this town is on public policy creation—what laws are created; what regulations are created—because that’s sexy,” Tobias says. “But the vast majority of people who are federal employees are engaged in public policy implementation, not creation. There is no real forum that brings together political appointees, career executives, consultants, academics, and union leaders in one place at one time to talk about public policy implementation. That’s what the institute does.” Through a series of forums, leadership training, and its alliance with the Partnership for Public Service in the Best Places to Work rankings, ISPPI contributes to the effectiveness of hundreds of federal agencies. The leadership forum meetings gather key public policy stakeholders: members of Congress, political appointees, career executives, union and association presidents, members of consulting and technology firms, and academics. The idea, Tobias says, “is to bring together provocative speakers, create a learning environment, and challenge people at the end of every session—what did you learn, what will you apply?” —MU 6. Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC) At least 17 officers and two assistant chiefs, including Josh Ederheimer ’95, are AU alums.
Joshua Ederheimer, SPA/BA ’95 When Washington’s new police chief, Cathy Lanier, reorganized the Metropolitan Police Department in September, she needed an assistant chief seasoned enough to oversee recruiting, training, criminal intelligence, and the construction of a new DNA lab. Enter Joshua Ederheimer ’95. With more than two decades of policing behind him, the justice grad makes guarding the nation’s capital sound like just another day at the office. A recent day began at 7:30 a.m. with a conference call detailing President Bush’s itinerary, last night’s major local crimes, and terrorist chatter from around the world. Before lunch, Ederheimer meets with the architect of the city’s planned forensics lab, testifies before the city council on a proposal to expand the cadet corps, and pours over data in the criminal intelligence center to help plan officer deployment. Back at his desk around noon, he tries to make a dent in an inbox overflowing with 250 daily e-mails, but there are human resources papers to sign, questions to answer from division commanders, and a meeting with the director of training on a new online education initiative to help current officers stay on the beat as they learn new skills. The path toward these hectic days opened for Ederheimer 25 years ago in an AU class, Policing in America. “You can blame Dick Bennett for me being where I am today,” he says. “I took his class, and . . . I was hooked.” After a hasty lunch Ederheimer, who has previously commanded the force’s police academy, environmental crimes unit, and civil rights and force investigation division, rushes to responsibilities that stretch into the night. From a press conference on a police shooting, to a sit-down with city administrators on youth crime, to a neighborhood council meeting on community policing, there’s no time to think about why he does this every day. It’s only when he’s driving home watching his headlights carve a path through the darkness that Ederheimer has time to reflect. His career in law enforcement is studded with numerous awards, but it’s something simpler he recalls when he thinks about why he’s missing another dinner with his family. “It’s the small things that stay with you,” he says. “I always think about this elderly woman I helped 10 years ago. She was getting scammed out of her car, and I helped her get it back. It was simple, but it just felt great. That’s what I love about this job. You can really help people. And that’s the best feeling there is.” —MG More than 25 alumni on staff. Gannett’s flagship paper even held its 25th anniversary celebration at AU.
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