The Stylus

Dean Haynes. Stock Photo Courtesy of Andrew Schappert, Web Specialist at SPP

So long, farewell, Auf wiedersehen, goodbye…

For twenty years Dean Kingsley E. Haynes has guided George Mason University’s School of Public Policy. Dean Haynes will be retiring from this position in July, and Dr. Edward Rhodes will take his place. In an interview with The Stylus, Dean Haynes discusses how the School of Public Policy started, what makes it stand out and what his legacy as the first and only Dean of this remarkable program is.

The Stylus: Here’s the million-dollar question . . . Why are you leaving?

DH: I am not [leaving]. I am stepping down as dean. I am going to b­­­­­­­e coming back as a faculty member, so I will be here for another few years, anyway. But, I have been the dean here for 20 years, so I think I have done my duty as dean . . . I want to go back and be a regular faculty member.

The Stylus: When you first started with George Mason University, did you ever envision the School of Public Policy to be as it is now?

DH: Yes, the entire purpose was to build it and expand it

The Stylus:  What was the School of Public Policy like when it first started out? It started out as an institute, correct?

DH: It was an institute and what we had was a Ph.D. program for public policy students only. And we built it from there. Normally these kinds of programs are built from the bottom up, [but] we built it from the top down. We have more of a focus on research in this program than you do in a lot of other programs in public policy.

The Stylus: How did creating the School of Public Policy come about?

DH: There was a university group put together in the mid-1980s. And they wrote a set of statements about the desire of the university to put together a public policy program. And then a fellow by the name of Joe Fisher, who had been head of Resources For the Future, had been a congressman, had worked for one of the governors, was on the staff ­­­­­here helping President Johnson (who was the previous president), and what he did was get the people organized for a public policy to execute that program to the faculty and outline.

The Stylus: What do you think makes the School of Public Policy stand out in comparison to the different schools, such as the School of Public Administration or the School of Public Affairs?

DH: I think we have a very strong international component that we always foster. We also have a very strong research component . . . about two-thirds of our budget comes from grant contract activities that we are highly involved in, so a lot of funding comes in that way. And we have executive education and a variety of other things that help support the funding of the school. In fact, the National Science Foundation (NSF) does a ranking every year to look at research activities (R&D activities) by different discipline groups, and we fall in the one in Political Science, and as a consequence, this school ranks number one in the country. So we are pretty proud of that.

The Stylus: Why are there two different campuses for the program? Why is the SPP not in one place?

DH: Well, we started . . . in Fairfax, Va., with the Ph.D. program and then we took over a masters program, which existed in something called the International Institute . . . There was a masters in something called International Transactions and it was having some difficulties. The university was thinking of getting rid of it. So we took it over, re-built it from scratch and focused in the area of international commerce and policy and that’s what kind of grew out of it.

The Stylus:  Do you think the goals during your tenure here have been fulfilled?  What goals do you have for the SPP in the future?

DH: I think our first goals from the beginning have been fulfilled. Right now we have a lot of international activities, but I would like to see them grow. Yet we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin. We have opened up George Mason study centers in New Delhi, India, as well as in China. Yet we are not very developed in the fields of Africa or South Africa.

The SPP needs to be better integrated within [Mason], and the SPP Medical and Health policy should be expanded.

I look forward to the construction of the new SPP building in Arlington. One problem with the SPP program has been that we have been split between two campuses, Fairfax and Arlington Campus.  We have to have headquarters in one place, so by next January we will be moving to the new building in Arlington.

The Stylus: Any advice or thoughts you have for students at SPP?

DH: I want them to be able to provide leadership so they can provide benefit analysis or writing analysis in their jobs; they will need to have these skills in order to be valuable to an organization. About 50 percent of our graduate level students go into the federal government and the rest go into other areas.

The Stylus: What’s your favorite thing about being dean?

DH: Dealing with faculty. We have a great group of faculty here. And they are just so exciting to work with and work in a lot of different areas. They are very active, [which] makes it a lot of fun.

The Stylus: What advice would you leave to the new dean, Dr. Rhodes?

DH: I would say we should continue our focus as a professional campus. At the graduate level, 30 percent of students are full time, and 70 percent are students part-time. We hope to get it to 50/50 because it would utilize faculties better.

Thank you, Dean Haynes, for your leadership and service to the School of Public Policy! You will be greatly missed as dean, but we look forward to having you as a part of the faculty. We wish you the best in your future endeavors in research and in teaching.

Ryan Dunn,  Stylus Correspondent & Maria Habib,  Editor In Chief