LBJ Alumna Returns to the School to Teach

In her 20 years of public service, Susan Rieff has seen the government from many different angles.

"It was a very different culture," she said of coming to work for Texas state government in the late 1980s after five years on Capitol Hill.

Rieff has also seen the LBJ School from different perspectives. In 1978, she came to the LBJ School as an environmental science major freshly graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. She graduated with an M.P.Aff. two years later. Now, Rieff is entering the second semester of her second life at the LBJ School--this time in front of the class as a visiting professor. She teaches environmental policy.

"I would have liked having a class like I'm trying to teach. It's pretty nuts and bolts," Rieff said. "I try to give people an understanding of the big picture."

She believes the environment is an important area of study even for students who don't plan to have careers in environmental policy.

"It's a great microcosm for policymaking in general," she said. "(Environmental policy) is something that nearly every public sector--and even private sector--official has to deal with."

While her course is a survey of environmental policy issues, Rieff believes that semester-long classes could be taught on resource management, water issues, pollution issues, environmental health policy, and international environmental policy.

In her years as an LBJ School student, Rieff took environmental policy classes from the late Professor Gerry Rohlich, a man she considers a mentor. Along with student internships at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Water Resources Council, Rohlich's classes helped point Rieff in the direction of her career interests.

"I had a great professor and some very interesting practical experiences," she said of her LBJ years. Another big influence on Rieff's future in government was Barbara Jordan's ethics class. Rieff said it was one of the first classes Jordan ever taught at the School.

"It was incredibly inspiring," she said. "She made us think about the unique responsibilities of working in the public sector."

After graduating from the LBJ School in 1980, Rieff worked for the Department of Interior in Washington D.C. as a Presidential Management Intern. She did a rotation on Capitol Hill and was then hired by Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas. She staffed the Senator's Energy and Natural Resources Committee work, handling a variety of issues including western federal lands and Arkansas wilderness legislation.

"Working for the Senator was tremendously exciting . . . The stunning thing about that experience was the amount of responsibility you were given at an age when you really shouldn't have it," she said.

After her first stint in Washington, Rieff returned to Austin to work for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. As a division director, Rieff learned management skills, which would help her in other state government jobs working for Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower and Governor Ann Richards.

"In those situations, you really don't separate policy from politics. They are very intertwined," she said of her years at the frontlines of Texas politics.

Rieff's last position in the Governor's Office was as environmental policy director. After Richards lost the governor's race in 1992, Rieff returned to Washington and the Department of Interior. Now back in Austin, she is the vice president for the Southwest Region of the National Wildlife Federation--a national non-profit environmental policy organization.

In 1994, she was the winner of the LBJ School Alumni Association's Distinguished Public Service Award.

October 5, 2000

News and Events • Fall 2000 News Briefs

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October 5, 2000

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