Two faculty recognized with PwC grants

Robert Denhardt, Charles Polk Messick Professor of Public Administration, and Mark Huddleston, political science and international relations, have both received research grants from the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government.

The two UD faculty members were among only 16 chosen from 160 applicants for the first PwC research grants, and UD was the only institution in the nation receiving more than one grant.

Focusing on the improvement of the management and operation of government, the program provides research grants to university professors, nonprofit officials and journalists, as well as other grants to finance conferences and offers sabbaticals to federal, state and local government executives.

Denhardt, the author of The Pursuit of Significance, a study of highly successful public managers from around the world, plans to do a follow-up of three outstanding leaders in city management who have relocated to new positions in Fairfax, Va.; Fremont, Calif., and Altamonte, Fla., respectively. He will conduct interviews with them and their staffs to discover how they bring about change and improvements in their different localities and situations.

Huddleston is co-author with William Boyer, Charles P. Messick Professor Emeritus of Public Administration, of The Higher Civil Service in the United States. He plans to conduct a series of in-depth interviews with members of the Senior Executive Service, the top managers of major federal programs. Huddleston plans to talk to approximately a dozen of this elite group who have received leadership awards from the Senior Executive Association.

According to his grant proposal, the goal of Huddleston's research is to discover "ideas that can be put to good use throughout the public sector" through "profiles of outstanding leadership among career federal executives" and to suggest reasons "why these men and women achieved such excellence."