Mills College Professor of public policy Carol Chetkovich has been selected as the 2014 recipient of the Leslie A. Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA).
The annual award recognizes faculty at NASPAA institutions who make outstanding contributions to public service education through excellence in teaching over a sustained period of time. Nominations are submitted via email with a summary of the nominee by an individual or a program and two letters of recommendation which may come from former and current students.
“I am absolutely delighted that my colleagues and students have gone through so much dedication to go through with the nomination,” Chetkovich said.
Chetkovich likes to think of the public prolicy program as bringing politics and policy together.
“Part of the public policy program is is trying to really support women who are not only interested in policy but also interested in politics,” Chetkovich said. “People get trained in how to think about policy but they don’t stop there; they think about how to enact policy, implement policy, and how to work with other people to make policy happen.”
Chetkovich formerly taught at The University of California at Berkeley from 1994 to 1995. In 1996 to 1997, while teaching part-time at UC Berkeley, Chetkovich was also visiting professor at Mills before teaching at The Kennedy School of Public Policy at Harvard University for eight years.
It was not until Mills was looking for a director to develop the graduate program that brought Chetkovich back to Mills in 2005. Chetkovich helped launch the Master’s in public policy program in 2007. The public policy program started at Mills in 2001 as an undergraduate major.
Chetkovich said that she prefers teaching at Mills as opposed to the other colleges she has taught at because she is a Bay Area native and felt that the time she has spent teaching here was more satisfying.
“I do think our students go out and do very useful things in the world and it makes me feel like I’m able to have an impact through what the students do,” Chetkovich said.
The 2014 NASPAA awards will be taking place from Nov. 4 to 6 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
