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We had a great meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina just a couple of months ago, with over 40 attendees and two days of panels, keynotes, and interactive sessions. Looking ahead to next year's gathering, we are beginning to form a program planning committee. Program Planning Committee members will detemine a conference theme, help to solicit session propopsals from members, reach out to potential keynote speakers, and design the schedule for the meeting. If you are interested in serving on the committee, please contact Sarah Giles.
UNCG welcomes the new Director of the William D. Ruckelshaus Center at Washington State University / University of Washington, Michael Kern. Interim Director and UNCG Treasurer Rob McDaniel will continue as the Associate Director for the Center.
Michael joined the Ruckelshaus Center earlier this spring, though he has been working in the field of collaborative public polity, particularly in the natural resources arena, for twenty years. His past projects –as a sole practitioner in an academic setting, with non-profits and most recently with the firm Triangle Associates, , – include work related to salmon recovery, hatchery reform, improving relationships between American Indian and non-Indian governments, and promotion of stakeholder involvement and risk management around nuclear clean-up. He is a graduate of the Evans School of Public Policy at UW.
We recently chatted with Michael to learn more about the Center.
UNCG: Can you give a brief background on the Center?
Kern: We’re a joint effort of Washington’s two research universities, University of Washington and Washington State University, and we were developed in response to requests from community leaders. We’re named after our founder and Advisory Board Chair, William D. Ruckelshaus. This creates a particular opportunity and responsibility to promote his vision of making democracy work by fostering collaborative decision-making and public policies created by the people most directly affected.
UNCG: This is the only center housed at two universities. Can you explain that unique relationship and how that works? How is the joint relationship a benefit to the Center and its work?
Kern: We’re in a part of the country that is a hotbed for ADR, with a lot of other folks in the private and non-profit sectors doing that type of work. So, what creates a special space for us is the contributions that the universities bring. Part of this is particular subject matter expertise. Universities are well placed to provide a research element to the conflicts we’re addressing, in addition to the dispute resolution and project management aspect. In many situations, the umbrella of the university leads to groups’ willingness to “come to the table.” The University setting brings a gravitas, formality, and neutrality to a conflict that might not otherwise be there.
At UW, we’re hosted by the Evans School of Public Policy, which provides us with an affiliation with one of the country’s top public policy schools and the accompanying expertise. At WSU, we’re hosted by WSU Extension. This makes for a nice pairing, as the Extension aspect provides an on-the-ground, pragmatic focus.
As a joint Center, I think a perfect project is one where the Center is drawing faculty, staff and students from both campuses to work in a productive team. In one project we just got off the ground, for instance, WSU has a Division of Governmental Studies and Services that is providing the project management, situation assessment and meeting facilitation. There’s also an economic analysis aspect to the project, so we have an economist from the UW School of Marine Affairs on the team doing that piece.
UNCG: What are some of the new projects that the Center is working on?
Kern: The Center has largely been involved in natural resources issues and will continue to do those types of projects, but we’re working to to grow issues outside that area as well. For example, we have a project now around nurse staffing issues. There have been disagreements for long period of time over what level of staffing is needed for nurses at hospitals. In 2007, we held an initial forum between a number of groups, including hospital executives and labor groups. A year later the groups all agreed to an MOU about beginning facilitated discussions to resolve issues, and hospitals set up nurse-staffing committees to come up with staffing plans. Now the Center is facilitating the group that will implement the MOU.
Our most high-profile project at the present time is an effort to help several caucuses develop an incentive-based approach to protecting “environmentally critical areas” on agricultural lands, as part of the State of Washington’s Growth Management Act. Those recommendations are due in September.
The new natural resource project I mentioned above for us is the Surplus Salmon project. Here we’re helping the WA Department of Fish and Wildlife work with their stakeholders on issues of surplus salmon returning to their hatcheries. The result will be recommendations about making the best use of those resources. We have also recently done work on several projects relating to polluted stormwater runoff.
UNCG: As someone new to UNCG, what do you hope your Center gets out of membership?
Kern: The Center has been excited to be part of helping to develop the network, and we look forward to continuing to help it grow. For members I haven’t yet met, one of my priorities is to get to know the other member centers better and have an opportunity to do valuable work together. This is already happening up in the Pacific Northwest, between the Ruckelshaus Center and the programs at the National Policy Consensus Center, for example with the pilot Regional Environment and Natural Resources Forum. We’re serving on the Steering Committee for the Forum and helping NPCC and the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution to provide a neutral place for regional environmental leaders from federal, state, local and tribal governments to identify emerging issues of mutual interest and map a strategy for addressing them.
Please mark your calendars for an invitation-only research forum hosted by the University of Oregon and Portland State University September 8-9 in Portland Oregon.
The purpose of the forum will be to discuss and analyze the findings of an OTREC (Oregon Transportation and Education Consortium) Research Project on regional transportation and land use decision making. The research project involved a multi-state examination of institutional arrangements for integrating land use and transportation in large metropolitan regions. Four case studies, including interviews and on-line surveys, were conducted in the following metro regions: (1) Denver, Colorado; (2) Portland, Oregon; (3) Seattle, Washington; and (4) San Diego, California.
The forum will convene university researchers, case study area officials and state and federal agencies to:
If you would like to join us for the Forum in September, contact Sarah Giles for a formal invitation and registration form with more details in late July/early August. There is no registration fee, though attendees are expected to make their own travel arrangements.
Through its plenaries and panels the 2010 NASPAA Conference (September 30 - October 2 in Las Vegas, NV) will highlight the many transitions in the public service. These include 1) transitions in our universities, including new approaches to university design and management, the restructuring of traditional disciplines, and efforts to serve students well in a time of limited, if not shrinking, resources; 2) agency transitions, including the succession to a new generation of public leaders, new policy challenges at all levels, and increased efforts to engage citizens in the governance process; and 3) political transitions, such as a renewed emphasis on public service and major new initiatives in a variety of policy areas.
Visit NASPAA's website to register.
The Center for the Study of Conflict, Collaboration and Creative Governance (3CG), housed in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado - Boulder, is holding Reinventing Governance: Breaking down Silos, Building up Relations October 8 - 10 in Boulder, CO. The conference will bring together participants from four different and often disconnected communities that have been significant in advancing new decision making practices in joint discussions:
The conference is designed to 1) establish new relationships among participants from these four groups, 2) take the best ideas from the four communities and synthesize them into a broader set of principles of collaborative governance, 3) disseminate these and other related ideas on a post-conference website, 4) continue the "conversation" among participants and others through online discussions, and 5) develop education and training materials on innovative governance that will be distributed through the Conflict Information Consortium and partner websites and integrated into CU courses. Visit the 3CG website for more information on conference format, registration, and featured participants.
The CommunityMatters'10 conference, to be held October 5-8, 2010 in Denver, will provide an opportunity for community leaders, thinkers and doers to meet and engage in person, sharing ideas, success stories, and tools for on-the-ground action. The online community, which is under development, will offer a way for conference attendees to keep in touch, to collaborate on projects and ideas, to share and access tools and resources, and to connect with other community innovators nationwide.
CommunityMatters is a commons for individuals and organizations working to steer change, engage citizens and build strong, vibrant communities from the ground up. Together, the CommunityMatters conference and online community fuel a growing network of leaders, thinkers and doers in a variety of disciplines – planning, sustainability, health, democracy, education, economic development and the arts. CommunityMatters is a project of the Orton Family Foundation, in collaboration with other partners.
Visit the CommunityMatters website for information, including the conference program and schedule, registration, and venue and details.
On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Ruckelshaus writes about current generation of problems that we are facing and the "citizen collaborations" needed to solve them. He writes, "citizen collaborations have to be carefully structured, stimulated and led by leaders in the government or private sector, facilitated by trained professionals, and end with an outcome of clear goals and objectives." Read his entire article, "New Solutions for New Environmental Problems."
For those interested in workplace mediation, particularly within universities, the Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on national campaign to urge colleges to use alternative dispute resolution in handling complaints of mistreatment that do not necessarily violate any civil-rights laws. Read more about this effort in "Workplace Mediators Seek a Role in Taming Faculty Bullies."
Tina Nabatchi, with UNCG member the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration at the Maxwell School
of Citizenship and Public Affairs, has an article in the current issue of the American Review of Public Administration titled "Addressing the Citizenship and Democractic Deficits: The Potential of Deliberative Democracy for Public Administration." The article asserts that the field should refocus its attention on the role of citizens in the work of government to help address the pervasive citizenship and democratic deficits in the United States. American public administration has an obligation to address these deficits because (a) it is required to do so by democratic ethos, (b) it has contributed to the deficits with its widespread embrace of bureaucratic ethos, and (c) it must find ways to effectively engage citizens within modern network and collaborative governance structures. This article identifies deliberative democracy as one potential method to help fulfill these obligations and explains how deliberative processes may help address the deficit problems. The article concludes by identifying a preliminary research agenda for exploring the potential of deliberative democracy for public administration. Read the entire article on ARPA's website.