Carnegie MellonFIPPM collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University

Flinders University, through the Flinders Institute of Public Policy and Management, has welcomed the arrival in Adelaide of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. The Heinz School’s graduate teaching program in Public Administration has a distinctive focus upon quantitative, econometric and technical education. FIPPM’s character and strengths are different and complementary, arising from its social-science, political-science and human-service disciplinary affiliations as well as from its long experience engaging with and preparing graduates for the Australian public sector.

Recognising their complementary strengths and mutual interests within the field of public policy and management, Flinders University, Carnegie Mellon University and the South Australian Government have signed a Memorandum of Understanding setting out the terms of an active collaborative partnership.

Teaching collaboration

FIPPM and the CMU Heinz School have agreed to institute cross-teaching arrangements with input from State Government departments. The aim is to strengthen the current Masters courses offered by the two universities, each of which has a somewhat different focus. The plans entail FIPPM and CMU Adelaide staff convening agreed topics in each other’s programs, aided by contributions to lectures and seminars from public servants working across all areas of government. There are also plans for a regular program of professional placements or internships in government departments for students enrolled in both the FIPPM and the CMU Adelaide programs. This teaching collaboration has become operational since mid 2006.

Research collaboration

The Memorandum of Understanding foreshadows active research collaboration between Flinders University and Carnegie Mellon University staff and advanced students.

At the initiative of Flinders University and with financial support from the South Australian government, a project examining governance and policy arrangements in our two home cities, Adelaide and Pittsburgh is under way. The Pittsburgh-Adelaide Research Project aims to produce an engaged comparative examination of the current policy challenges and public-sector policy responses in the two localities. The goal is constructive policy learning and policy transfer: what can governments and policymakers in metropolitan Adelaide (and South Australia more broadly) learn or adapt from the metropolitan Pittsburgh (and broader Pennsylvania) experience, and conversely what lessons might the Adelaide experience hold for policymakers in Pittsburgh?