LBJ School Associate Professor Bill Spelman plays "spot the classroom applications" with the Austin City Council's weekly agenda.

Any item, from health care contracting to the police department budget, has aspects that fit into the quantitative analysis, management fundamentals, and urban policy seminars that Spelman teaches. He has more than academic incentive to look at the issues closely--Spelman was elected to the City Council in 1997 and plays an active role in city decision-making.

In Spelman's classes, students can find out what happened behind the scenes, discuss problems, and think about the processes that could have led to a better decision.

"The reason for a school of public affairs to exist is to reform things," Spelman said. "There's no need for these schools if governments are fine."

Turning theory into practice has been the cornerstone of Spelman's career. He earned his Ph.D. in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and he is nationally recognized as the developer of a number of innovative community policing programs.

At the LBJ School, Spelman founded the Texas Institute for Public Problem Solving to help police officers connect with their communities, continuing work he did at the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, D.C. Community policing focuses on addressing underlying community problems and working to prevent crime, not just respond to it.

"The thing that's neatest about it is that it's so concrete," Spelman said. "It's more concrete to deal with a neighborhood than with national or international concepts. For people who don't tend to think in abstractions, community policing is a good way of making clear connections between ideas and results."

Spelman takes case studies for his classes straight from city streets to show the way policy concepts tie into everyday life. Real-life issues emphasize the way aspects of public policy interconnect and need to be addressed both comprehensively and at ground level.

"A good public policy issue is like a torus," Spelman said. "When you try to turn it inside out, you have to take the whole universe with it."

Spelman bio
Texas Institute for Public Problem Solving
Austin City Council