Dean Anil Deolalikar
After over a year of the ongoing pandemic, this fall we saw the return of students, faculty, and staff to campus. Over 90% of the UCR community has been vaccinated, and seeing everyone masked up and reconnecting has given us a glimpse of what it was like pre-pandemic being part of a university community.
At the SPP, we started the 2021-22 school year with the inaugural Policy Innovator Awards Ceremony where we honored Mr. Randall Lewis with the SPP Policy Innovator Award and Mr. Jesse Melgar (MPP ‘17) with the SPP Emerging Policy Leader Award. We were graced with the virtual appearances of Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Alex Padilla, and Senator Richard Roth, just to name a few.
In addition, this fall we hosted online seminars by Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson and Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, as well as a Riverside County Panel with a special introduction by County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen. We also hosted a Policy Debate, judged by former San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos, featuring UCR students that debated whether the federal use of privatized prisons should be phased out as a solution for over-incarceration.
I am also happy to announce that for Giving Tuesday this year we raised over $7,600 from 53 gifts for the SPP Student Support Fund, and the SPP unlocked a $5,000 Dean’s Challenge for reaching 50 donors. This was also our first year raising funds for the Bob Stockton Scholarship Fund in Environmental Policy in honor of the late Riverside community figure; we raised $5,270 from 23 gifts for that fund. All the money we have raised will go towards supporting our public policy students.
Finally, some news that you may have already heard through the grapevine! After nearly a decade in this position, I will be stepping down from my position as dean in June 2022. It has been an honor – and the thrill of a lifetime – serving as Founding Dean of the SPP. As I look back at the past nine years, I cannot believe what the School has been able to achieve in this short period of time, thanks to the hard work of our faculty, staff, students, and alumni and thanks to the support of our well-wishers in the community. It is now home to 20 faculty and nearly 350 students in undergraduate and graduate programs, both with upward enrollment trajectories. The undergraduate program was ranked by College Factual as eighth in the nation on their “2022 Most Popular Bachelor’s Degree Colleges for Public Policy” and third on the “2022 Best Public Policy Bachelor’s Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region.” The graduate program was recently ranked in the top 100 nationally by US News and World Report, and the research quality and productivity of the faculty landed the school in the top 25% of all policy schools worldwide. More importantly, SPP has woven itself tightly into the fabric of policy dialog and development in the inland region and in California. For a relatively new program, these are extraordinary accomplishments.
I will continue to remain as a faculty member at UCR after I step down, and I will continue to support the great work of the School as a faculty member. But in the meantime, I am still the dean until the end of the school year, and I look forward to reporting to you our forthcoming accomplishments in future newsletters.
I look forward to an exciting year, and I hope you will continue to stay engaged with us!