This spring, the La Follette School welcomed a wide range of alumni back to campus, not as students, but as teachers. Alumni visited undergraduate and graduate classes related to their fields, sharing expertise from their careers and helping students connect classroom learning to real-world public affairs work. Their visits gave students a chance to hear directly from practitioners working across government, nonprofit, and private sector roles.
Chad Ruppel (MPA, URPL ’04), director of the Community Development Authority for the City of Madison, visited the undergraduate class PA 200: Contemporary Public Policy Issues. He spoke to students about affordable housing policy and working in local government. “Often, the policies that have the greatest impact on our daily lives are made at the local level,” he said. “Local policies are also often more accessible and easier to influence, which means that even when progress at the national level feels stalled, students can still make a meaningful impact by applying their policy knowledge to local government decision-making.” Chad’s office provides affordable housing for approximately 3,000 households in Madison.
Representing nonprofit work, Sara Vant Hoff (MPA ’17), vice president of mission and strategy at the Goodman Center, spoke with graduate students in PA 974: Nonprofit and Leadership Management. “For students interested in public service, nonprofits can offer meaningful, community-centered careers that may not always be the most traditional path but can be deeply impactful and rewarding.” Vant Hoff said. “Students bring valuable skills in analyzing complex public problems, designing evidence-based solutions, and systematically evaluating costs, tradeoffs, and outcomes.” She believes these skills help nonprofits strengthen services, improving their breadth of impact in communities while also allowing students to see how policy affects people and creates positive impacts in real time.
Many La Follette graduates go on to pursue careers in the federal government. Don Eggert (MPA ’15) recently accepted a position as budget director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service overseeing the $1.4 billion dollar agency. Eggert visited PA 892, a graduate class on public budgeting taught by the City of Madison’s finance director, David Schmiedicke. “My La Follette education and experience opened doors that otherwise would have been closed to me.” Eggert said. “La Follette’s emphasis on public affairs blends the theoretical understanding of public policy with practical understanding of management and administration. Then, the school puts that combination into practice through real-world projects in multiple courses like Cost-Benefit Analysis, Program Evaluation, and Capstone.” Eggert believes this unique and practical combination perfectly prepares students for any public service role, particularly at the federal level.
Visits like these are central to the connections cultivated at the La Follette School, which provides students with an extensive professional network outside of their cohort, including friends of the school, alumni, staff, and faculty. Through class visits, current and former students are able to develop relationships across sectors, learn from their experiences, and better understand how their degrees lead to meaningful careers while helping alumni to stay connected and give back to the next generation of policy leaders. “Coming back as an alum gave me the opportunity to show how classroom theories translate into practice within a local nonprofit right here in Madison,” Vant Hoff said.
Ruppel, meanwhile, expressed what it meant to him to be able to give back to a community that played such a big role in his own career development. “By staying connected and visiting classrooms, I feel that I am paying it forward,” Ruppel said.
If you are an alum or friend of the La Follette School and are interested in paying it forward, please contact, Mindy Walker.
– Story by MPA student Grace Florence (MPA ’26)