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The Ford file: A history of success The Gerald R. Ford Institute for Public Policy and Service has had its share of successes over the years: a Rhodes Scholar and four Truman Scholars; student intern placements in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Congress, parliaments in Great Britain and Australia, and at CBS News, among many others; and a speaker’s series that has brought to campus highranking government officials from the U.S. and abroad, as well as senators and congressmen, judges, leading journalists and interest group representatives. The Institute has been fortunate in its leadership over the years as well. From the beginning, the Institute has had a distinctive vision of connecting challenging academic work in public policy and WHITE HOUSE PHOTO, 1982
Michelle Morris-Cowan, ’85, was the first Ford Institute student to land an internship at the White House. She worked in the White House News Summary Office with then-deputy press secretary Larry Speakes. Such opportunities for practical public service experience are among the Ford Institute’s distinctions.
Fund Dinner, and now serves on the boards of Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Nature Conservancy-Michigan Chapter. A 1984 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, he lives in Detroit.
service with relevant practical experience—it was the first such program to be established at any primarily undergraduate institution in the nation. Founding director Mike Dively and his successor Kim Tunnicliff shaped this vision and guided the program ably during its formative years. Joe Stroud, drawing on his many years of experience as an editor at the Detroit Free Press, further refined the Institute’s mission, and current director Tom Padgett, ’65, with his background in municipal government and consulting, continues to build the program. Ford students have gone on to graduate and professional study at Oxford, Harvard, Tufts, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Duke, Michigan, Northwestern, Texas and Stanford. And today, they are practicing law with prestigious firms across the country, serving on Congressional staffs and in state and municipal governments, working as lobbyists, administering arts and cultural programs, and writing for national and international news organizations, to name only a few of the diverse fields where Ford alumni are represented. Exceptional private-gift support has built the Institute’s endowment and created new scholarships and prizes. In particular, the Towsley Foundation has contributed $800,000 in support of the Ford Institute’s programs over the past 15 years. Thanks to additional donor support, the Institute annually presents the President Gerald R. Ford Leadership Award, the Michael P. Noonan Award for Leadership in Public Life, and the Michael A. Dively Leadership Award. Norman Sleight, ’40, and his late wife, Alethea, and Justin, ’43, and Marjorie Wardell Sleight, ’44, created the endowed Sleight Professorship in Leadership Studies, which is currently held by political scientist Myron Levine and is closely allied with the Ford Institute. Finally, Victor and Margery Burstein and the late Jerrold and Jeannette Wiener Rosenberg, ’38, established the endowed Wiener Fellows Program and the Rosenberg Community Initiative supporting internships and special projects in the Greater Albion community.
the College of William and Mary and was an education specialist at Colonial Williamsburg for seven years.
Mark Schauer, ’84 Liz Maurer, ’91 In her job as education project manager at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, Liz Maurer has a leading role in the creation of a new 20,000square-foot education center devoted to Washington’s life story. Maurer is now researching the historical information that will be presented in each of the building’s 17 galleries, and, with the center’s curators, will decide what artifacts will go on display. “The Ford Institute,” she says, “was helpful in showing me how institutions, organizations and people form communities and interact in societies. . . . I hope that after visitors tour our education center they will have a better sense of where we came from as a society and what that means to them as individuals.” Maurer holds master’s degrees from George Washington University and
Elected last fall to the Michigan State Senate, Mark Schauer now serves as the Democratic floor leader and vice chair of the Senate committees on the judiciary and on commerce and labor. In his role as floor leader, he has become a leading Democratic spokesperson in the current debates over funding priorities in the state budget. “Albion College, and the Ford Institute in particular, gave me exceptional preparation for a career in public service. It’s a great honor for me now to represent the Albion community in the Michigan Senate.” Prior to taking his seat in the Senate, Schauer served three terms in the Michigan House of Representatives. Earlier in his career he was a Battle Creek city commissioner and executive director of the Community Action Agency of South Central Michigan. A Ford Institute Visiting Committee member, he holds master’s degrees from Western Michigan University and Michigan State University.
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The current Institute staff includes Tom Padgett, ’65, director; Katie Schook (left), coordinator; and Marcy Sacks, associate director.
Ford Institute Directors Michael Dively John Cooper Kim Tunnicliff Joe Stroud Thomas Padgett, ’65
1978-1984 1984-1985 1985-1999 1999-2002 2002-present
To learn more about the Ford Institute’s programs today, go to its Web site at: http://www.albion.edu/ford/.
A special Ford Institute reunion is planned Oct. 10 during Homecoming Weekend. For details, please refer to the Homecoming schedule on page 27.
Tom Raven, ’97 Tom Raven is currently writing his doctoral dissertation at Cornell University on institutional change in the U.S. House of Representatives over the past century. A fourth-year Ph.D. candidate, he is specializing in American political development and is especially intrigued by the forces that have shaped the role of Congress, and the presidency, in recent decades. His interest in “the changing nature of politics” began during his undergraduate days at Albion, he says. “The Ford Institute was truly a formative experience for me. My fellow students and the faculty involved with the Institute created an engaging and energized academic environment that constantly challenged my preconceived notions of the world around me.” A fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington, D.C. last year, Raven currently holds a Mellon Fellowship supporting the completion of his dissertation. He is a Ford Institute Visiting Committee member.
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