Throughout her career, Nancy A. Mattison, Ph.D., ’69 took risks, forged new paths, broke glass ceilings and made decisions based on the “rocking chair theory,” which essentially suggests that one should consider any decision through the lens of being retired and rocking leisurely on a front porch.

“I would ask myself whether in my elder years I would be satisfied that I had taken advantage of as many opportunities offered as made sense,” Mattison says. “For example, if I did not take the opportunity—and risk—of moving to Europe, and pushing the envelope of what I could achieve as a woman, would I have regrets when I was older?”

Mattison’s recent $1.2 million gift to the is designed to give graduate students more opportunities to make rocking chair decisions.

“Financing one’s education always presents challenges, and some may forego a graduate program for that reason,” Mattison says. “This gift is intended to help allow a student to engage in graduate studies sooner rather than later.” And she believes Maxwell can help develop thinkers and leaders who will seize opportunities, take risks and help solve problems around the globe.

For Mattison, her undergraduate degree in international studies was the catalyst for graduate work and a fascinating career in healthcare policy, with a decidedly international focus.

A Curiosity About the World

Though she grew up on a dairy farm in Central New York, Mattison’s vision for her future was expansive, and Syracuse University nurtured both her intellectual curiosity and interest in the world.

Mattison’s college experience was inextricably intertwined with societal and global change: the Vietnam War was in full swing; Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; the National Organization for Women was established with an active Syracuse chapter; curfews and dress codes were eliminated at the University.

After earning a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of South Carolina, Mattison brought an international perspective to the Center for the Study of Drug Development, an academic group studying public policies affecting medical innovation. This was soon followed by an active role in influencing those policies in positions at Novartis and Roche in the U.S. A move to Switzerland to work at Roche headquarters offered a chance to be more directly involved in international efforts.

Mattison then headed the London-based Pharmaceutical Partners for Better Healthcare, a global strategic policy group sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. Among other projects there, Mattison was instrumental in the creation of the International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations, the first and only such global patient advocacy group, still influential in healthcare policy worldwide 30 years on. Ultimately, she returned to the states to launch The Mattison Group, an international consultancy specializing in healthcare policy and strategy.

“Each of these career opportunities was possible in part because I had such a strong grounding in international studies,” Mattison says. “It was both a challenge and a pleasure to work closely with people from so many different cultures, as part of a global community of interests.”

Mattison’s gift to Syracuse University recognizes its commitment to global citizenship and civic responsibility. “The University has always impressed me with its focus on community. It does not close itself off, but tries to be part of a community,” she says. “This gives students both invaluable opportunities and an important perspective.”

Creating Global Citizens

The Nancy Mattison ’69 Endowed Graduate Scholarship, enhanced in part by The Syracuse Promise scholarship initiative, will provide scholarship and financial assistance to Maxwell graduate students with a preference to those pursuing a master’s degree in international relations.

“Nancy is the embodiment of what it means to be a global citizen,” says Maxwell Dean David M. Van Slyke. “Throughout her career, she focused on improving the health of people around the globe. Her philanthropy maintains that vision, allowing our students to pursue similarly meaningful careers that make a tangible difference.”

“Nancy’s foresight is aligned with Syracuse University’s historic commitment to providing opportunities to talented students who dream big but need some support to deliver on those dreams,” says Chancellor J. Michael Haynie. “The Syracuse Promise initiative, when activated by the generosity of donors like Nancy Mattison, ensures that ambitious dreams remain within reach for every deserving and driven student.”

“Education clearly expands and hones one’s ability to understand how different countries and cultures view the world and how that affects both public and private decision-making,” says Mattison. “Universities are where the leaders will come from, people who can think critically and solve whatever problems we are facing.”

Inspiring Generations

As Mattison was making her own private decisions about “estate matters” she envisioned a gift that would have lasting impact. By combining an estate gift with enough current funding to make the graduate scholarship active now, Mattison can see the impact of her support for students during her lifetime.

This is not the first time Mattison has given the gift of opportunity. “Years ago, I established a smaller endowed scholarship in my mother’s name at her alma mater, Keuka College. It was one way of thanking her for encouraging me to pursue a career path that would be both intellectually challenging and make a positive contribution to the world,” she says. “I have been pleased with the benefits it has brought to students.” Doris A. Mattison G’60 also attended Syracuse, earning an M.A. from the in 1960.

Mattison is currently writing a biography of her mother, whom she describes as “an extraordinary ordinary woman who made a difference in all the lives she touched. She is one of those unsung women who represent and pass on the best of humanity.”

With her new gift to graduate students at Maxwell, Mattison is hoping to inspire new generations to pass on the best of humanity.

“Without reliable leaders, and thoughtful voters, the future is bleak,” she says. “Maxwell offers outstanding programs that are invaluable. Supporting that seemed to me to be just the right choice, particularly at this point in history.”

At the edge of a park on Syracuse’s Rich Street, a small dog barks with excitement, straining to get closer to roughly 30 approaching walkers. Jill Ceilly holds the other end of the leash.

Maxwell School alumnus Andrew Lunetta is among the walkers.

“Hey, Jack,” says Lunetta to the dog, before it leaps into his welcoming arms.

Ceilly and Jack live across the street from the park in a home built by Lunetta’s nonprofit, . This scene plays out nearly every Tuesday morning: Tiny Home staff and supporters embark on a 2-mile walk that starts at the organization’s headquarters on South Avenue and passes several of the homes it has built or rehabbed.

Along the way, several tenants, including Ceilly, join the walk or step outside for a friendly catch-up. The route is filled with conversation, laughter and hugs—a contrast to the hard times many tenants have known, from job loss and addiction to domestic abuse and illness.

What’s clear: They count Lunetta a friend, and perhaps, a lifesaver.

“When he says he’s going to do something, it gets done,” Ceilly says. “He’s not just a landlord. He’s trying to build a community.”

Lunetta founded A Tiny Home for Good in 2014, the same year he earned a master of public administration from Maxwell. In the 12 years since, the nonprofit has built 23 tiny homes and rehabilitated nearly two dozen additional properties across Syracuse, housing 47 people. Roughly two dozen more projects are underway.

That work made Lunetta a 2026 , an honor given annually to people making extraordinary contributions to their communities. The segment aired in July, featuring some of the tenants on the walk on a recent Tuesday morning.

When the call came in late 2025, Lunetta didn’t believe it.

“I thought it was just a scam—a call from some random number saying someone from CNN was trying to reach me,” he says.

A committee had already reviewed a nomination on his behalf, and after months of vetting, made it official.

Lunetta says the recognition isn’t about him.

“It’s a recognition of what our team has built,” he says.

A Different Plan

Lunetta didn’t come to Maxwell with homelessness on his mind. He arrived planning to work with international organizations in a career that would involve extensive travel.

“I don’t remember the professor, but I remember the class. I remember exactly where I was sitting,” Lunetta says. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh—this is not what I want to do.’”

Lunetta volunteered at a 115-bed men’s shelter in Syracuse during his undergraduate years at LeMoyne College and eventually became a staff member. He watched a cycle that never seemed to break. Men would leave with a plan to find stable housing and, time and again, come back, often because they couldn’t afford anything beyond some of the city’s worst housing stock.

“Maybe a quarter of the way through that first year, I really started asking myself: What do I care about?” Lunetta says. “And it was this. It was the work at the shelter, hearing the guys’ stories, trying to find a solution.”

He focused on nonprofit management. The idea for what would become A Tiny Home for Good—permanent, dignified housing paired with long-term support—began to take shape.

Lunetta said his Maxwell coursework gave him tools he reaches for every day. Chief among them: statistics, taught by Sarah Hamersma, associate professor of public administration and international affairs.

“Statistics was something I would have run in the opposite direction from,” says Lunetta. “She’d come in and share a statistic that’s published, that everyone treats as gospel and then break down why it didn’t actually hold up. It was like, ‘Wow—these numbers I’ve always been afraid of are actually useful.’”

Hamersma says Lunetta “was that ideal student we always dream of for the M.P.A.”

She added, “He had a vision for serving the public good—a big vision—and he was ready to work really hard to master the skills he needed, even the ones that didn’t come naturally.”

Lunetta said Tina Nabatchi’s course in public organizations and management gave frameworks for running an organization.

“I went into Maxwell thinking I’d do something very different,” he says. “There’s a very direct line from what I learned there to where I ended up. Without it, I probably would have ended up doing something I wasn’t best suited for.”

One House at a Time

While pursuing his M.P.A. and volunteering in the shelter, Lunetta talked about his idea for A Tiny Home for Good with nearly everyone in the community supporting the unhoused. People told him the idea could work but cautioned him about the capital and risk involved. He started the paperwork while still a student.

“For a while, from 2016 to 2020, pretty much, it was just me,” he says.

The operation looks different today: volunteer crews, tradespeople and sponsoring businesses now handle much of the physical construction. But Lunetta still finds his way onto job sites.

“I really love that part of the work,” he says. “I hope to always spend at least a little bit of time doing it.”

One of the most recent projects sits right next door to the headquarters: a two-family home that just cleared final approval for occupancy after a remodel. Out back, a new playground sits near a pergola designed and built by Syracuse University architecture students.

Every home the organization builds or renovates goes to someone who would not pass a typical background check for market-rate housing. Most go to tenants pulled from the county’s coordinated entry list, which ranks people by how long they’ve experienced homelessness; those with co-occurring substance use or mental health needs rank near the top.

“We’re proud of that,” Lunetta says. “That’s who our houses are for.”

This summer, three Syracuse students crossed the Atlantic for immersive academic three-week programs through the . Only 30 students were selected nationwide for this prestigious program.

Though their subjects couldn’t have been more different, Ellie Ensign, Clara Hasegawa and Anthony Viola engaged in an experience that reshaped how they think about their own field of study.

Ellie Ensign ’29—Queen’s University Belfast: Listening Across a Divide

Ensign, an international relations major in the and and a marketing management major in the , spent three weeks in Queen’s University Belfast’s (QUB) international summer school studying Northern Ireland’s history and the dynamics of divided societies. The program paired classroom lectures on nationalism and populism with field trips to Derry-Londonderry, the North Coast, Crumlin Road Gaol and Stormont.

One conversation stayed with her most: a session with Brian Rowan, a journalist who covered Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Rowan described the burden of relaying information from every side of a conflict to the public, without a rulebook to guide him. For Ensign, it reframed how she thinks about storytelling under pressure. She learned that pursuing unbiased truth doesn’t mean there’s a single clear path to it.

A second formative moment came from Karl Vidamour, a QUB doctoral student who spoke about how environmental issues get filtered through the same “othering” dynamics as political ones. It showed Ensign the patterns she was studying in Belfast appear in places she wouldn’t have expected, including debates back home.

Clara Hasegawa ’29—Lancaster University: Finding a Voice Behind the Sound

For Hasegawa, a film major in the , the defining challenge of her program at Lancaster University was collaborative filmmaking—pitching, critiquing and producing a script as a team that would share a single grade.

Going in, she worried about managing creative differences among a group of equally passionate filmmakers. Instead, she found the experience to be the highlight of her trip. After each student wrote and pitched a short screenplay, the group settled on one story to produce together and divided up production roles.

Hasegawa ended up as sound designer, a role she’d never held before, working alongside a first-time cinematographer and a first-time director.

The group’s film explored the anthropocene, the time we are living in, using Lancaster’s city streets to evoke humanity’s disruption of the natural world. Hasegawa built much of the soundscape from field recordings of traffic and crowds, and in hindsight, wishes she’d gathered even more raw audio to layer into the mix.

Beyond the shoot itself, weekend travel to Liverpool, the Lake District and London gave her a broader sense of British storytelling traditions, from the Beatles Museum to Beatrix Potter’s house to the West End stages.

Anthony Viola ’28—University of St Andrews: History as Information Architecture

Viola, an information management and technology major in the, found that a Scottish history program at the University of St Andrews spoke directly to his discipline. Visits to the university’s special collections archive showed him how carefully organized historical documents and letters preserve context, not just content, and he found himself applying that lens throughout the trip.

This insight structured his experience of Dunnottar Castle, a ruined fortress perched on cliffs above the North Sea, built in part to physically separate classes by keeping servants on the lower levels. Walking through its remains, Viola began seeing the castle itself as a form of information storage, its architecture encoding a history that’s still open to interpretation.

The three students worked with the to apply for the Fulbright UK awards. For more information, contact cfsa@syr.edu

Syracuse University’s three study away locations, which provide distinct and wide-ranging opportunities for students, are an equally valuable resource for their professors.

Several faculty members capitalized on those resources this summer, supported by funding from the new program offered by the . The awards were established as a direct result of work done on the University’s academic strategic plan, “,” with the aim of facilitating in Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C.

“These locations give our faculty a rare kind of reach,” says , associate provost for strategic initiatives. “These are fully embedded footholds in three of the most influential cities in the world. They provide an opportunity to extend the classroom into the center of the industries our students are preparing to enter, and to let that experience shape both scholarship and pedagogy in expansive ways.”

Participating faculty members agree that the experience enhanced their professional work and helped lay the groundwork for new academic experiences. , associate professor of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, was one of them. He conducted archival research at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library and think tank collections with an eye toward building a study away program centered on peacekeeping and global governance. “New York City is one of the world’s great cities and a hub for innovation, international business, civil society and global governance,” he says. “It has been great spending the summer learning how to access the best of what the city has to offer to enhance the education of Syracuse students.”

As the Maxwell School enters a new academic year, three of its faculty and administrative leaders are stepping into expanded roles that will help guide the school’s direction—from its day-to-day operations to its role in the study of global affairs and law.

In the dean’s office, Bob Bifulco joins associate deans Gladys McCormick and Shana Gadarian as the associate dean for budget and administration, rounding out a leadership team assembled to ensure continuity following Carol Faulkner’s return to the faculty after nine years in leadership.

Meanwhile, Daniel McDowell is serving as associate director of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, and Yüksel Sezgin has been named director of the law, society and policy integrated learning major, succeeding founding director Gretchen Purser.

New Roles for Associate Deans

Carol Faulkner stepped down as senior associate dean on June 30 after more than nine years in a leadership role and has returned to the Maxwell faculty.

Faulkner’s tenure began in January 2017. She worked closely with department chairs and academic directors to strengthen Maxwell’s programs and played a central role in developing new undergraduate programs, including environment, sustainability and policy, and law, society and policy. She was also a trusted advisor to Dean David M. Van Slyke on faculty and academic matters.

“It has truly been a privilege to work with her,” Van Slyke wrote in a message to the Maxwell community, calling Faulkner “responsive, accountable and deeply mission driven.”

The leadership team, along with Van Slyke, consists of the following:

Gladys McCormick, associate dean for curriculum and academic initiatives, serves as the primary contact for undergraduate education, curriculum development, experiential and international learning opportunities, academic integrity, and ongoing initiatives to foster community and belonging.

She is a professor of history and the Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

Shana Gadarian, associate dean for faculty and research, leads faculty mentoring and development, promotion and tenure processes, research administration and external funding, and the strategic growth of centers and institutes. She is a professor of political science and the Merle Goldberg Fabian Professor of Excellence in Citizenship and Critical Thinking.

Bob Bifulco, professor and former chair of the Public Administration and International Affairs Department, has joined the dean’s office as associate dean for budget and administration, overseeing budgetary and financial strategy, resource planning, faculty workload, graduate program enrollment and funding, and long-term financial sustainability. A distinguished scholar and Maxwell alumnus, Bifulco brings deep institutional knowledge to the role.

“This leadership team will be instrumental in helping me lead the school through a challenging moment in the higher education environment while also identifying opportunities to strengthen Maxwell’s mission,” Van Slyke says.

McDowell Serves as Associate Director of Moynihan Institute

Daniel McDowell, the Maxwell Advisory Board Professor of International Affairs in the political science department, is serving as associate director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, where he also co-directs the institute’s Study of Global Politics speaker series.

McDowell’s research focuses on international political economy, with an emphasis on financial sanctions, international currency competition and financial crisis management involving the United States and China. He is the author of “Bucking the Buck: US Financial Sanctions and the International Backlash Against the Dollar” (Oxford University Press, 2023) and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, where he was a 2022-23 Wilson China Fellow.

His commentary and research have appeared widely in national media, including recent analyses for Bloomberg, Newsweek and the Financial Times on topics ranging from sanctions policy to the future of the dollar. McDowell earned a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2012 and joined the Maxwell School as an assistant professor of political science.

The Moynihan Institute, endowed by the U.S. Congress to honor the legacy of former U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, supports faculty and student research on the peoples, cultures, governments and economies that shape international affairs through seven regional centers and a range of multidisciplinary research programs.

Sezgin Named Director of Law, Society and Policy Program

Yüksel Sezgin, associate professor of political science, has been named director of the law, society and policy integrated learning major, succeeding Gretchen Purser, associate professor of sociology.

Introduced by the sociology department in fall 2023, the integrated learning major, or ILM, allows students to pair a base major from Maxwell or another Syracuse University school or college with a concentration in either law, crime and society in the U.S., or comparative and international law. The program also includes a three-credit internship requirement that students can fulfill locally, through Maxwell-in-Washington or through study abroad.

Sezgin brings more than a decade of Maxwell leadership experience to the role. He is an O’Hanley Faculty Scholar, director of the Pre-Law Program in Europe, a senior research associate with the Middle Eastern Studies Program and a research affiliate of the South Asia Center. He also holds a courtesy appointment as associate professor in the Syracuse University College of Law.

His research examines legal pluralism and comparative religious law, including Islamic, Jewish and Hindu family law, and human and women’s rights in the Middle East and South Asia. He is the author of “Human Rights under State-Enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt and India” (Cambridge University Press, 2013), which received the 2014 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Prize from the American Sociological Association, and “Judging Through Narrative: Muslim Family Laws in Non-Muslim Courts” (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Sezgin earned graduate degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of London’s SOAS and the University of Washington.

At Syracuse University, some of the most valuable classroom instruction is based not on a textbook but on decades spent solving real problems in the field. Professors of practice bring that kind of expertise directly to students, translating professional experience into lessons that go beyond theory. Nearly 100 professors of practice across the University represent one of the most direct ways Syracuse connects academic learning to the industry.

That connection is central to , one of the areas of distinctive excellence outlined in the academic strategic plan, “.” Where traditional coursework builds foundational knowledge, professors of practice show students how that knowledge is applied in real settings. Their presence ensures Syracuse’s academic programs stay current with an evolving professional landscape, giving students a clearer view of the careers they’re preparing to enter.

We sat down with three professors of practice to hear more about their approach: , professor of practice in forensic science in the College of Arts and Sciences;  , Cramer Family Professor of Practice in Community Impact in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; and , professor of practice in the School of Information Studies.

For the second year running, Syracuse University is claiming an entire week on “,” the nationally syndicated program that brings university research to NPR stations across North America and to international listeners worldwide.

Five scholars will each take a turn during “Syracuse Week,” Aug. 17–21, sharing work that spans food policy, artificial intelligence, architecture, political science and marine biology:

Monday, Aug. 17: , professor of public administration and international affairs in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, examines how new SNAP work requirements will restrict benefits for adults ages 60–64, increasing food insecurity and ultimately costing taxpayers more through Medicare and Medicaid.

Tuesday, Aug. 18: , research professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, explores whether humans can still distinguish real people from AI-generated ones. In a study co-authored with Gina Luttrell, participants identified synthetic profiles correctly only 54% of the time—barely above random chance—while an AI detector hit 88% accuracy. (Related article)

Wednesday, Aug. 19:, associate professor in the School of Architecture, argues that architecture shapes not just space, but time itself. From Rome’s stone-inscribed calendars to today’s airport priority lanes, he traces how buildings have long organized whose time is valued—and whose is not.

Thursday, Aug. 20: , professor of political science in the Maxwell School, draws on his book “” to argue that American secession, however appealing to the polarized, would almost certainly turn violent.

Friday, Aug. 21: , research assistant professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, describes how suction-cup tags and remote-sensing technology help identify whale foraging hot spots in Massachusetts Bay—with real-time alerts pushed to mariners to prevent deadly ship strikes on endangered right and sei whales. (Related article)

Each segment airs on NPR-affiliated stations and is posted online at following its broadcast date.

Bernard Appiah didn’t set out to become a public health communication scholar. He originally trained as a pharmacist, but during his studies he took on editing a student magazine and discovered the power of communication.

He has since built a career researching how communications can change public health behavior and outcomes in Africa. Last year, that work , one of the field’s highest honors.

, who recently earned tenure as an associate professor of public health in the , traces his approach to public health communications back to his childhood in Ghana, where his father served as the community’s gong beater, relaying messages from the village chief.

Watching his father taught him early lessons about clarity and consistency, ideas he later built into his “10+10+30” model. The communication format blends a 10-minute radio drama series, followed by a 10-minute discussion by community health workers and then a 30-minute listener call-in segment to spread health information in low- and middle-income countries.

His research has shown measurable results, including a project in Ethiopia that linked use of radio drama about childhood vaccination to higher rates of immunization.

Below, Appiah discusses the roots of his approach, the balance between education and entertainment and where he sees global health communication headed next.

This summer, 162 researchers from Yale, Oxford, the London School of Economics, Princeton, Columbia and dozens of other leading institutions from every continent except Antarctica traveled to the for the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research.

The institute, referred to as IQMR by attendees and alumni, wrapped its 24th year and its 16th at Maxwell in late June.

“The institute’s annual presence at Maxwell shows the school’s stature as a leading place for social science research and training,” says event organizer , a research associate professor of political science at Maxwell. “And the fact that this year saw one of the highest attendance signals how much social scientists around the globe value the training and opportunities provided by the institute.”

Karcher says that qualitative and multi-method research is vital to understanding critical dynamics in the U.S. and around the world. Qualitative data can be almost anything that isn’t a number—interview transcripts, historical documents, photographs and even a researcher’s own field notes from watching an event unfold. The real skill, taught at IQMR, lies in checking that material against itself, comparing sources and revisiting them over time so the conclusions hold up. Researchers learn to leverage and triangulate different forms of qualitative data to build findings that have validity and reliability.

The annual institute meets a need: While most researchers and Ph.D. students have ample access to training in quantitative methods, which includes statistical analysis and correlation research of large data sets, exposure to qualitative research methods, techniques and expertise is scarcer.

“From political parties to populism and policymaking and protest, qualitative methods help people understand not only the why but also the how of foundational social, economic and political processes,” Karcher says. “IQMR trains researchers to investigate those mechanisms rigorously.”

The institute is hosted at Maxwell by the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry (CQMI), which Karcher directs along with the related Qualitative Data Repository—a first-of-its-kind archive that stores and shares the data underlying qualitative and multi-method research worldwide.

Since its founding in 2002, IQMR has trained more than 3,500 researchers. Karcher estimates that almost 3,000 of them have attended the institute at Maxwell.

Attendees chose from more than a dozen module sequences led by leading scholars in the social sciences. This year’s topics ranged from ethnographic methods and comparative historical analysis to geographic information systems, research ethics and approaches that blend qualitative insight with machine learning. Additionally, the institute offered sessions where participants put their own research designs on the table and heard frank feedback from peers and faculty.

“IQMR alumni form a global community,” says fellow organizer Christiane Pagé, associate director of CQMI. “They maintain friendships and collaborations decades after the institute and are represented on the faculty of many of the leading political science departments in the world. And whenever they return to Maxwell, be it for an invited talk, as IQMR instructor or as Maxwell faculty member, it’s a little bit like a homecoming.”

Eleven current Maxwell faculty members are institute alumni, including , chair of the Political Science Department. He says IQMR was a pivotal experience during his graduate studies. “I met amazing instructors from all over, whose work I had read in classes,” he says. “The peer networking was just as important. Intellectually, it was transformative for my dissertation project and my future research and, socially, it expanded my peer network immensely.”

For many, the institute has shaped how they think about research—not just the methods they use, but the questions they ask.

The institute’s influence extends well beyond the two weeks on campus. Doctoral students who met at IQMR have gone on to become long-term research collaborators, most recently contributing to Doing Research as a Native: A Guide for Fieldwork in Illiberal and Repressive States (Oxford University Press), a volume addressing one of the most urgent challenges in contemporary field research, edited by Kira Jumet of Hamilton College and Merouan Mekouar of Canada’s York University; they met at IQMR in 2011.

“Sixteen straight years of researchers from major institutions choosing to come train at Maxwell says something about where this school stands,” says , associate dean for research and professor of political science. “IQMR gives them the training to do rigorous work on pressing questions about political institutions, democracy and public policy.”

Gadarian and Maxwell faculty colleague Brian Taylor gave remarks at this year’s institute.

One of the highlights of this year’s lineup was an evening event that had participants gather with faculty over mocktails for informal, one-on-one conversations about their thorniest methodological questions. These informal exchanges between faculty and participants leave some of the most lasting memories.

“I came in hoping to learn more about qualitative methods, but I left with much more than that: many wonderful friends, meaningful feedback on my research, and so much inspiration to do better research,” says Kaniz Fatema, graduate student in sociology at the University of Kansas.

Four faculty members have been named Faculty Fellows for the 2026-27 academic year. Now in its fifth year, the program pairs faculty with museum curators and staff to build object-based teaching into courses across the University. The fellows integrate the museum’s collection into their courses and ask students to consider how a photograph or a hand-thrown sake bottle offers its own kind of insight, much like a passage in a textbook.

The fellows this year come from four very different corners of the University including law, economics, music composition and geography, and each is putting the collection to a different use. Together, their projects show just how many doors the museum’s collection can open.

“This year’s cohort shows just how interdisciplinary the uses of the museum’s collection can be and the possibilities it holds for object-based teaching across wildly different, yet interconnected, fields,” says Emily Dittman, director of the Syracuse University Art Museum. “The same collection, in the hands of these faculty, provides opportunities for four completely different conversations. That is at the heart of this program: showing that the museum belongs to every discipline.”

The 2026-27 Faculty Fellows are:

, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Chair in Public Policy and professor of economics and public affairs in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences

Cawley will integrate the museum’s collection into his course, The Economics and Regulation of Risky Health Behaviors. This course uses the social science of economics to understand the causes and consequences of risky health behaviors such as poor diet, alcohol and drug abuse and smoking. He identified more than a dozen objects, ranging from tobacco advertising posters, Prohibition-era cartoons, photographs romanticizing alcohol and more, to engage students with the ideas presented in the course. Cawley says that the collection highlights the contrast between the marketing of these behaviors and their real-world consequences, arguing that tangible, visual evidence reaches students in ways readings alone can’t.

, professor of law and associate dean for faculty research, in the  College of Law

This fall, Barnes will bring museum objects into her Housing Law course. She identified photographs and prints for her students to examine that touch on subjects including worker housing, environmental injustice and high-pollution sites located next to residential communities. During class visits to the museum, she will ask students to think about the interconnectedness of housing and climate.

, assistant professor of music theory and composition,  in the Setnor School of Music, College of Visual and Performing Arts

As part of her course, Class Composition, Loiacono will ask her students to compose two different works in response to objects from the museum’s collection, building on historical examples like Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” and Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead,” both inspired by visual art. Students will complete a short in-class response after an initial museum visit, then return independently to choose a work for a longer piece that will be performed at the end of the semester.

, assistant professor of geography and the environment, in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences

Kelly will bring object-based teaching to her course, Transformative Cartographies, a graduate seminar exploring feminist, decolonial and social-justice approaches to mapping. Students will spend the semester with weekly readings that will be paired with hands-on analysis of map-based objects, such as 1965 satirical map of global disease by Boris Artzybasheff. Kelly sees synergy between object-based teaching and geography and cartography, as the disciplines blend theoretical and hands-on training.