Setting Up Community Roots
Many of the young people had never been on a college campus before, and many had never held a job. As they sat in nervous silence, Matava decided to lighten the mood by introducing another workplace custom. Pointing to a table with coffee, juice, and bagels, she told the youngsters to help themselves. “You know how it is,” she lectured in mock seriousness. “You come in to work. Then it’s coffee break time.” At most US business schools, a group of at-risk teens learning the fundamentals of work would not be a common sight. But at Sawyer Business School, a summer jobs program for urban youth fits right in at the Center for Public Management. Established 36 years ago to bring the efficiencies of business to public service, the Center for Public Management has become one of the region’s leading training and research institutions for nonprofit organizations and government agencies. Whether it is training mid-career, mid-level managers at community health centers, conducting an efficiency study for a small-town government agency, or introducing teenagers to the world of work, the Center for Public Management strives to promote growth and opportunity where they are needed. The Timely Return of a Familiar Idea
Public service has been a hot topic at business schools lately. Wall Street’s collapse and the excesses that preceded it have caused much soul-searching at business schools, which educated so many of the leaders whose pursuit of big profits and paydays helped lead the economy into ruin. Prompted also by President Obama’s call for all Americans to perform public service, many schools have launched programs in social responsibility and ethics. Placement offices at business schools now often steer graduates toward government and nonprofit organizations. No such reorientation has been required at Sawyer Business School, where public service has been at the top of the agenda for decades. “This has always been a high priority within the Business School,” says Associate Professor of Public Management Michael Lavin. “When people talk about ethics, it’s nothing new with us. Certainly the idea that nonprofits, government, and business work together has always been part of our theme.” The Business School launched its public management program in 1973 when the New England Council, a regional business organization, awarded Suffolk University a grant to help governments become more efficient. At first, the school used the money to provide technical help for local governments and to offer seminars for public officials. Several faculty authored a book, Your Massachusetts Government, which became a primer for local leaders. The school also established a public management department and began offering a master’s degree and an undergraduate major in public administration. In 1992 Sandy Matava joined the Business School’s public management faculty with a lengthy resume from state government. She had started her career as a case worker at the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind where she worked for ten years. Governor Michael Dukaksis in his 20/
Suffolk Business Magazine
WINTER 2010
first administration recruited here to serve as commissioner for the state’s Commission for the Blind. After Dukakis lost his reelection bid in 1978, Matava left government and earned a master’s in public administration at the Business School. When Dukakis regained the governorship in 1983, he appointed Matava director of the Department of Social Services, a job she held for ten years. “Sandy Matava was one of the best Commissioners of Social Services the Commonwealth ever had. She won national awards for the work we did in foster care, and she is a superb public manager, said Dukakis. One of the early projects Matava helped initiate at Suffolk was a study for the Boston Public Health Commission of people living with HIV in Massachusetts. Under Matava’s direction, researchers surveyed HIV-positive individuals to identify their needs and how best to deliver
services to them. The survey has been repeated annually for over a dozen years. As the Public Management department added more programs in both research and training, Matava and Richard McDowell, then dean of the Business School, began to explore establishing an umbrella entity for the programs. While reviewing the school’s budget, they noticed a line item for a Center for Public Management and an allocation of $400. The long-forgotten item, inserted some two decades earlier, was exactly what Matava and McDowell were looking for. “We found our history,” Matava says. “There we were, ahead $400, but this was an entity that already existed. We said, ‘Perfect, that’s who we are.’” With a name and a structure, the center began to expand, gaining research contracts with state and local gov-
ernments as well as with nonprofits. Since then, the center has extended its reach to Washington, DC, launching an internship program for Business School graduate students in offices of the Massachusetts congressional delegation. The program is named after the late US Representative J. Joseph Moakley, a Suffolk University alumnus and a member of the Board of Trustees. The center also looked to nurture and expand connections between government and business. With the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the center launched an annual one-day conference at which future business leaders, nominated by their employers, work with top government officials to tackle a challenging public policy question. In 2008 officials from MassDevelopment, the state’s chief economic development agency, discussed at length with the up-and-coming business leaders different scewww.suffolk.edu/business
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