Message from the Executive Director

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

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It's Almost POLC Time

GSPM used the run the annual Politics Online Conference alone, but in the past two years we have cosponsored POLC with Campaigns & Elections' Politics Magazine. This year they have taken the lead in managing the conference. This year’s conference promises to be another good show. POLC is ten years old and remains one of the most interesting venues for seeing how technology is changing electoral politics and advocacy.

You can find the agenda for the conference at http://polc2010.com/agenda and it is worth a look. The program follows four tracks based on your level of connection new technology, and is organized very clearly for you to take full advantage of the right presentations for you.

So mark your calendars for 19-20 April and take part if you can. GSPM learns things every year and we roll that into the classroom with new offerings every year.

Congratulations to the Latin American Team

USAID has just awarded the GSPM and the National Democratic Institute funding over five years to offer a democratic leadership training program in Nicaragua. USAID funding is tough to get and we should all be very proud that our team was selected to produce this leadership program for local leaders in Nicaragua. Well done!

More news on Latin America soon – we are making good progress with the Spanish-language certificate proposal and with other initiatives that promise to see the GSPM’s presence in the region grow over the next few years.

GSPM in Latin America

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¡GSPM – con sabor!

In the last week I have had the chance to work with two great partners of the GSPM: the Universidad Catolica de Santiago de Guayaquil (Ecuador) and the Facultad de Comunicacion at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain). GSPM has been working hard in Latin America for nine years, and in Spain for five. Our programs with partners in both regions give the School a global reach.

GSPM in Latin America

We operate in Latin America in three main ways. We work with a network of universities in the region on a program called “Governance and Political Management” which is sponsored by a grant from the Corporacion Andina de Fomento (Andean Development Corporation). For nine years, the CAF sponsorship has allowed us to build a strong partnership with key universities in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil. The program reaches 1,300 students a year, and focuses on communication, organizing, and policy making skills for local and regional political and government leaders. This program is run by Luis Raul Matos, who sends GSPM faculty to the universities in the region to teach weekend seminars.

We also work directly with one of the universities on their master’s program. I was in Guayaquil last weekend to teach a seminar for the Universidad Catolica de Santiago de Guayaquil. My topic was politics and public policy (yes, I did get Oliver Cromwell into the talk). I did a four-hour session Friday night after the students came into town from a day at work. I followed up with a daylong session on Saturday, after which the students returned to their home towns. The students we work with in Latin America tend to have extensive experience already, and they make full use of our faculty when they visit. Several stayed around for a while afterwards to ask me more questions and to teach me a little bit about how they can use some of these ideas from the US in Ecuadorian politics.

We also do a third program in addition to our CAF program and our direct partnership in Guayaquil. Roberto Izurieta (a GSPM alumnus) manages our campaign education in the region, and he does several campaign and communications seminars in the region every year. These conferences bring GSPM faculty and alumni, local political consultants, and politicians together to discuss campaign strategy. Roberto targets the seminars to coincide with elections, and the turnout is pretty huge for most of these conferences. Our governance and campaign programs in Latin America have made GW famous in the region and have brought us several students over the years. We are about to launch a new initiative which builds on our reputation and visibility. On Monday we will be proposing to the CPS dean’s council that we be authorized to launch a certificate in political management governance to be taught in Spanish; if approved, we will launch it in the fall. If it is successful, we expect to add a second certificate that would enable students in Latin America to earn a master’s in political management in Spanish.

GSPM in Spain

This week also saw the final presentations made by teams of the students from the Universidad de Navarra in Spain, who come to DC for a month each spring. 23 graduate students studying political communication came here to see how issues management, lobbying, and public relations happen in the US. They closed out their stay with us by giving final presentations on media and political strategies for several groups working on immigration questions in Spain – the topic is a major political challenge in Spain, much as it is here in the US. The students learned a lot, which showed in their presentations.

This program has been very successful, and we are now discussing with the Facultad de Comunicacion how we might expand our partnership with them.

This proposed expansion is only one of several initiatives our team here is working on. We are also pushing for a teaming agreement with a major Spanish editorial company, which publishes several of the largest-circulation periodicals in Spain, and we are in the first stages of exploring a program like the Navarra exchange program with a university in Italy.

All of this together makes the GSPM not only a Washington school, or even an American school. These efforts are giving us a better global vision, and I hope we can push this into the classroom here in Foggy Bottom too – several of our Latin American students worked with me to create an elective on international campaigns, which is underway now. I hope to see further electives come out of our international work – any ideas? Please let me know!

Branding the GSPM

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A major initiative we have to embrace here at GSPM is a marketing/communications/branding effort. We have talked about it in both community forums so far, and it is clear from those discussions that we need to raise the visibility of our programs and our people if we want to have the impact we aim for here at GSPM. There are already a few things in motion to make this happen:

Distinguished Lecture Series
We are very pleased to announce the launch of this series, which will bring major practitioners to GW to speak about their experiences with the GSPM students, alumni, and faculty. These events, to be held at GW’s Jack Morton Auditorium in our MPA Building, will showcase GSPM’s connection to the field, and will give the GSPM community the chance to learn from the most successful players in professional politics. It also allows us to bring in media to follow this series, and to get our name out there much more effectively. I thank Prof. Larry Parnell of the Strategic Public Relations program for putting this event together, and I look forward to many more of these.

Marketing Director Search
We have received a pile of resumes from interested people and the search committee is already at work reviewing the candidates. We hope to have interviews shortly, and a candidate soon after that. We are looking for a director who can build on the innovative marketing campaign launched in the past two years, which has brought in excellent students – and we want more of them. In addition to the increased use of social media and a more targeted approach to student recruiting, the strategy sent GSPM people to participate in key conference and meetings where likely students gather, to raise our profile and give people a chance to talk to us in a no-pressure environment. One of the most interesting of these efforts is sending GSPMers to the big SXSW conference in Austin, TX. Kyle McClellan is going this year to be a presenter, which is great for him and for us – he will be an excellent representative of what we do at GSPM, and that helps get our name out there some more.

We will keep working on raising our visibility, and if you have ideas, or want to help, please let me know!