Things are falling into place for the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the first new school at UVA since the Darden School of Business Administration was founded in 1954. A building, Varsity Hall, is set to be occupied at the end of this month, and about 30 students in the five-year joint-bachelor’s/master’s program are already considered part of the Batten School. The next step is finding the leader.
“The real excitement is going to be for the founding dean, who will have as close to a blank slate as you’re ever going to get,” says David Breneman, who last year left his post as dean of the Curry School of Education in order to oversee Batten’s planning. “If that person stays five to 10 years, he or she will have hired the whole faculty. Normally you walk into an ongoing organization with 90 percent of the people already fixed and all you can do is work on the margins, unless you stay a long time.”
 Frank Batten gave $100 million to found the Batten School. He might have a little more to give if his company, Landmark Communications Inc., successfully sells the Weather Channel for $5 billion. |
To hire a dean, however, the job description must be written. UVA Provost Tim Garson is leading the search committee, which will have a retreat in mid-February. Breneman says that the new dean should have experience both as an academic and in the real world, whether that’s in Washington, state government or leading a nonprofit.
Whoever the dean is, that person will face the major trick of integrating “leadership” and “public policy,” a pair not always strongly aligned. “Public policy schools, when they were first created largely during the ‘60s and ‘70s in response to the Great Society type programs, emphasized training analysts, people who wouldn’t be necessarily leading change but would somehow be guiding the so-called leaders or policy makers with analytical tools,” Breneman says. “And I think if there’s anything that will set the Batten School apart is that we also will take seriously the challenge of turning students into more than just bureaucratic analysts, into turning them into people who may actually get out there and figure out how to implement and encourage change.”
Over the next several years, Batten is slated to expand to include an undergraduate major for about 75 students per class, a two-year master’s program in public policy for about 60 students per year and possibly a midcareer master’s program. The school would have about 18 of its own faculty, along with six joint appointments.
One problem a dean won’t have, at least for the first few years, is money, thanks to Frank Batten’s $100 million gift, the largest single donation in UVA history. (Though he could easily top his own mark if he throws the University some of the $5 billion that his company, Landmark Communications Inc., is expected to generate with the sale of the Weather Channel.)
“Among the rest of the nation’s public policy schools,” Breneman says, “we’re already at or near the top in terms of endowment.”
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