UW News

March 13, 2003

Two finalists for Evans School dean named

The Search Advisory Committee on the deanship of the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs has named two of the finalists who will come to campus for two days of interviews and meetings.


John Witte, director of the Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be at the UW on Thursday and Friday, April 3 and 4.


Sandra O. Archibald, associate dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, will be here on Thursday and Friday, May 1 and 2.


The name and visit dates of the third candidate will be announced shortly.


Witte has been at Wisconsin since 1977 and has been director of the LaFollette School for three years. His research interests include education and tax policy and politics. His current research, supported by the U.S. Department of Education, is on charter schools. He has been a fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.


Witte was the Executive Director of a Governor’s Task Force studying the quality and equity of the Milwaukee metropolitan public schools in 1984, and in 1988 he was awarded (with William Clune) grants from the Bradley, Spencer and Joyce Foundations to organize a conference on Choice and Control in American Education. That May 1989 conference produced two volumes on educational choice.


The author of four other books and more than 40 articles or book chapters, Witte has a new book on school vouchers, The Market Approach to Education, recently published by Princeton University Press.


Witte earned a Master’s degree in philosophy and a doctorate in political science from Yale University.


Archibald has been at the Humphrey Institute since 1992, where her responsibilities include all aspects of collegiate administration. She previously served as Interim Dean of the Humphrey Institute and Associate vice Provost for Faculty Development at the University of Minnesota, where she was responsible for academic policy and faculty development programs.


Archibald’s research interests concern a wide area focusing on the intersection of economics, institutions and public policy. She is the co-author of Management and Leadership in Higher Education and author of more than 50 articles and book chapters. She has won several teaching and research awards and been the recipient of numerous research grants.


Archibald’s recent research focuses on the economics of water, including institutional barriers to improved management and the politics of water allocation policy. She has published extensively on the environmental effects of economic liberalization in Central and Eastern Europe.


Archibald holds a doctorate in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley.


Witte’s public presentation, about his work and research in the public policy arena, will be at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 3, in the Walker-Ames Room, Kane. There will be an opportunity for questions and answers, and a reception will follow. The time and place of other presentations will be announced when details have been finalized.