In her December letter to alumni and friends (pdf), La Follette School Director and Professor Susan Webb Yackee reflected on the past year and looked forward to the school’s 40th anniversary in 2023.
Yackee highlighted the school’s growing academic programs, including the Undergraduate Certificate Programs, which allow students to secure important jobs and find solutions to many of the world’s most challenging issues.
“That is why our School’s top development priorities (pdf) focus on financial support for La Follette School students,” she wrote.
Gifts to the school can be made online or by calling 800-443-6162.
December letter to alumni and friends
Dear Alumni and Friends,
As I sat down to write this annual letter, an email message from one of our alumni popped into my inbox describing the impact of one of our graduate student team projects from the spring semester. It began:
I hope you’re all doing well. I just wanted to let you know that Power Africa has awarded a $47 million project for the Healthcare Electrification and Telecommunication Alliance. The five-year program will aim to electrify and digitally connect 10,000 facilities across sub-Saharan Africa. The work you did and the presentation you made to stakeholders on this subject was spot on. I wanted to make sure you were aware of how USAID/Power Africa will be addressing this development challenge.
This success story is one of many reasons why, as I reflect on everything the La Follette School has accomplished in the past year and look ahead to the School’s 40th anniversary next year, I am filled with a sense of optimism. The work our faculty, students, and alumni are doing to promote evidence-based research and policymaking is more important now than ever before, and our School is poised to bring people together during this time of deep divisions and extreme partisanship in our country.
The last few years have been transformative for our School. We have served as a convenor of thoughtful debate around policy issues, and in the past year alone, we have greatly expanded our outreach through the release of our first-ever La Follette Policy Poll, our third annual La Follette Forum, and Journalist in Residence visits from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight and Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post.
The La Follette School taught over 700 UW–Madison undergraduates over the past year, and interest in public service and public policy is exploding on campus and across the country. Recent alumni from our master’s degree programs are also making an impact in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Our Master of Public Affairs and Master of International Public Affairs programs continue to be the cornerstone of our programming.
Your donations directly impact La Follette School students. Around the world, La Follette School alumni play critical roles in finding solutions to many of the world’s most challenging issues. That is why our School’s top development priorities focus on financial support for La Follette School students (see the “Support our Students” document included with this letter). Your gifts allow us to reward strong students with experience and tuition support to launch meaningful careers that improve the lives of people worldwide.
I hope you will consider making a gift online at go.wisc.edu/donate-LFS or by calling 800-443-6162. I also encourage you to stay in touch by sending your latest updates to alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu. We enjoy hearing from you!
Thank you, and have a wonderful holiday season. On, Wisconsin!
Susan Yackee
Professor of Public Affairs
Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs