July 2025 Newsletter

The Trachtenberg Difference: Get a Degree Here, Take It Anywhere

Message from the Director
Spotlights
Faculty Kudos
Upcoming Events and Opportunities

Message from the Director

Kathy Newcomer and Domonic Bearfield are now leading the Trachtenberg School and are focusing on supporting our community of students, alumni, staff, and faculty through a variety of actions. We are bringing all four of these groups together on a regular basis to listen to and support one another over lunch in our Trachtenberg Conversations. We will be featuring a number of our community members to start the conversations, starting with Steve Trachtenberg on August 26.

Given the recent turbulence in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors, our faculty and staff have been collaborating on how to best prepare and support our students and alumni both inside and outside of the classroom. Kathy has been on a listening tour with alumni across the country and sectors to get their input on what our students need now, and as they build their careers going forward.

Our fabulous Director of Career Advancement, Denise Fowler, has been especially proactive in developing support for students and alumni given current challenges - see more on her work below.

Domonic and Kathy are active connectors and have both been very active in our relevant professional associations. Domonic has chaired NASPAA’s accrediting body (COPRA) and has been an active public administration scholar, perhaps best known for his co-authored book The Myth of Bureaucratic Neutrality. Both his father and brother have worked in law enforcement, and his mother spent many years employed at Head Start and the Boy Scouts of America before working in the private sector. To Domonic, public service is the family business.

Kathy’s pracademic focus has straddled public administration and program evaluation, and she has served as the president of both NASPAA and the American Evaluation Association. Her research on Federal Inspectors General (LINK) and the use of evaluation and evidence-building in government (LINK) has led her to work frequently on committees (eight) for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Both Domonic and Kathy are NAPA fellows, and have worked closely with NAPA on many projects, including their involvement with the Arthur Flemming Awards. In fact, Kathy has hosted the Flemming Awards for 26 of its 76 years. See more about the 2025 ceremony below. Their work with the Flemming awards reflects the long-standing mission of the Trachtenberg School to develop leaders for public service.

Spotlights

Our Shapiro Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration, Sanjay Pandey, continues to be a phenomenal thought leader for our community and beyond! Sanjay is truly Public Administration’s “EGOT” winner - since his scholarship has been recognized by almost all of the major career/lifetime research awards -- NASPAA/ASPA Distinguished Research Award (2013), the H. George Frederickson Award for Career Contributions to Public Management Research (2022), the Dwight Waldo Award for distinguished career contributions to public administration (2023), and the Herbert Simon Award for distinguished contributions to the scientific study of bureaucracy (2023) - as well as countless awards for best papers in conferences and journals.

Sanjay’s current research spans multiple urgent areas, including the role of AI in public policy and administration, and he continues to be a thought leader and mentor on mixed methods research, having founded the Mixed Methods Research Interest Group (MMRIG) at the George Washington University over eight years ago. Our MMRIG continues to bring together doctoral students and faculty who have published their work in leading public policy and public administration scholarly journals.

In addition to being a rock star researcher and inspirational colleague, Sanjay is a master gardener, mindfulness practitioner, and is always happy to take the role of a beginner learner whenever there is an opportunity to do so!! Sanjay’s many co-authors and collaborators, at GW and elsewhere, are inspired by his curiosity, kindness, humility, and search for wonder; wonderful human qualities also recognized by his students at GW who successfully nominated him for a university-wide teaching award for the many positive mentoring relations and holistic caring for development of student abilities. Sanjay is truly a renaissance man, and is much appreciated by all of our community!

The newly renamed Master of Arts in Environmental and Sustainability Policy degree program at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration has experienced huge increases in both the number of applications and incoming students for fall 2025. While the Trachtenberg School has been the home of an MA addressing Environmental Policy for many years, the degree was recently reviewed and revised.

The MA in ESP represents a renewed dedication to developing leaders who will tackle the pressing environmental challenges of our time. As the MA-ESP Program director, Dr. Rachel Emas, notes, "The new name and curriculum are more than just a rebranding; they reflect the evolving landscape of environmental issues and the urgent need for comprehensive, effective solutions. Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword—it’s a critical framework for understanding our planet’s future. The rapid growth of this graduate program reflects the need for successful environmental policy to integrate economic, social, and ecological dimensions in ways that meet the needs of both present and future generations."

Ron Walters is our star Trachtenberg School alum of the summer. Ron earned his Master of Public Administration from us, after graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgetown University. After finishing his MPA, Ron earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from The Johns Hopkins University.

Currently, Ron is the Acting Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs (USMA) at the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration (NCA). He has served as the top leader for NCA off and on since the Obama administration. As the Acting USMA, Ron oversees the maintenance and operation of 156 VA national cemeteries in providing dignified burial services for military Veterans and eligible family members; and the worldwide distribution of hundreds of thousands of headstones and markers at private and other government cemeteries.

Ron has been a career civil servant for 40 years and a member of the Senior Executive Service since 2003. Since January 2015, he has served as the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs (PDUSMA) at the NCA. The PDUSMA is the highest-ranking career position in the organization. Prior to this position, he was the NCA’s Deputy Under Secretary for Finance and Planning and Chief Financial Officer. He was instrumental in efforts to modernize the approach to memorializing Veterans through the establishment of the Veterans Legacy Grant Program and the online Veterans Legacy Memorial. Under his leadership, the NCA has been ranked first in customer satisfaction among the nation’s top companies and federal agencies seven times in a row on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). ACSI was developed by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and is the only cross-sector measure of customer satisfaction.

Ron has received two Presidential Rank Awards and was one of seven federal employees profiled in a series published by The Washington Post and in the book Who Is Government? published by Michael Lewis this spring.

Faculty Kudos

Leah Brooks was featured in the Marketplace segment What May inflation numbers might tell us about tariffs.

Stephanie Cellini was quoted in the Inside Higher Ed article Congress Opens the Credential Floodgates.

Susan Dudley was quoted in the New York Times article How Trump’s Regulatory Rollbacks Are Increasing Costs on Americans.

Richard Kahlenberg was featured in WBUR-FM’s "Here & Now" segment Author calls for class-based affirmative action in higher education.

Leighton Ku was quoted in the Vanity Fair article The GOP’s Big, Beautiful Bind.

Kathy Newcomer was cited in the FTC's report Employee called out for ethics violation in FTC’s OIG report.

Roger Nober was quoted in the CBC article He can't quit him — easily. Why SpaceX could complicate the Trump-Musk split.

Upcoming Events and Opportunities

Save the Date: 2025 Flemming Awards

Join us at the Flemming Awards, co-sponsored by the Trachtenberg School. As the 76th anniversary of the Flemming Awards approaches, we would like to thank the President of the Arthur Flemming Awards Commission, TSPPPA Director Kathy Newcomer, for her service to the commission. This year's ceremony will be on November 2 at 5pm at the National Academy of Sciences Building in downtown Washington, D.C., as part of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Academy Fall Meeting. Read the full press release to learn more about the awards and this year's winners.

Date: November 2 at 5pm

Location: National Academy of Sciences Building in downtown Washington, D.C., as part of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Academy Fall Meeting

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