Broadnax receives Distinguished Public Service Award

Broadnax receives Distinguished Public Service AwardMarch 24, 2009Jill Leonhardtjlleonha@maxwell.syr.edu

Walter Broadnax, distinguished professor of public administration at the Maxwell School, has received the American Society for Public Administration’s (ASPA) 2009 Elmer Staats Lifetime Achievement for Distinguished Public Service Award. The honor recognizes a public administrator’s career accomplishments and contributions to the public service and to ASPA over a lifetime.

Broadnax has been a scholar, administrator and public policy expert during his 40-year career. He has served in executive-level positions in academia and in government at the local, state and federal levels.

“Walter Broadnax’s long and illustrious career epitomizes ‘distinguished public service,'” says Maxwell School Dean Mitchel Wallerstein. “Whether serving as a university president or dean, as deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, or in the myriad of other appointments that he has held over the years, Dr. Broadnax has consistently demonstrated a selfless commitment to the public service and to the betterment of the human condition. The Maxwell School is proud to count Walter not only as a highly accomplished alumnus (and former member of the SU Board of Trustees), but also as a current member of the faculty of our highly ranked Department of Public Administration.”

Immediately before joining the Maxwell School faculty, Broadnax was president of Clark Atlanta University, the nation’s largest United Negro College Fund institution, and he previously was dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University and professor of public policy and management at the University of Maryland. Broadnax served from 1993-96 as deputy secretary and chief operating officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, overseeing a major restructuring of the agency and the creation of the Social Security Administration as an independent entity.

From 1981-87, Broadnax was a faculty member at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. While at Harvard, he served as chairman of the Massachusetts Executive Development Program, advising the governor on effective leadership strategies and new ways of training senior executives. He was the founding director of the Innovations in State and Local Government Program, a joint venture between the Ford Foundation and Harvard University to recognize and publicize exemplary government innovations. During his career, Broadnax also served as president of the New York Civil Service Commission and director of Children, Youth and Adult Services for the state of Kansas.