Graham’s paper focuses on recent changes in the application process to the Presidential Management Fellowship program. When he began his career at the Martin School, Graham had never heard of the program – until he befriended Jennifer. She was applying for the program, so “I learned about the process as Jennifer went through it,” says Graham.
The Presidential Management Program, or PMF, began in 1977 as a way of jump-starting talented graduate students into federal service careers. Finalists are selected from top graduate schools and then given the opportunity to connect with various federal agencies. If a finalist is hired by an agency, they are fast-tracked into that agency’s managerial ranks. PMF fellows are highly valued by federal agencies because they have a history of making excellent employees. In fact, any agency who hires a fellow must pay a hiring fee of $6,000 to the PMF program, a fee that agencies are willing to pay because of the program’s reputation.
Having learned about the program during the school year through Jennifer, Graham found himself knee-deep in PMF come summertime. He’d landed a much-coveted internship in the Washington D.C. offices of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration and after only days on the job learned that one of NASPAA’s major tasks over the summer would be “re-imagining federal hiring programs, including PMF.”
The task was an important one because two years earlier the PMF application process had undergone a marked change. Under the new system finalists were chosen solely on the basis of a three-part standardized test. Since the PMF’s inception NASPAA membership institution grads had always accounted for a large number of the finalists, and in the wake of the new application process, the feedback NASPAA had been receiving wasn’t good. “It was a hearsay thing, but they weren’t happy – the professors, deans and program directors – because they felt like the best students weren’t being selected,” says Graham.
Graham wanted to know – had the new application process changed the makeup of the PMF pool of finalists? With a capstone in mind, he submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act asking for data on the PMF applicants and finalists from 1997 to the present. According to his results, the characteristics of the finalists did change along with the application process. Specifically, fewer public policy & administration students – and an increasing number of law students - were becoming finalists.
Graham emphasizes that his research was not able to determine any changes in the quality of those PMF finalists who became federal employees, because the Office of Personnel Management did not provide him with data about the fellows – that is, those finalists who were actually hired by a federal agency. But he does think his results show there is a need for further examination, and possible change. And it seems the federal government agrees. Graham notes, “Since I wrote my paper – not because of the paper – they’ve re-instituted the interview process after the test” for a certain number of PMF applicants.
Multiple faculty members worked with Graham on the project, including Dr. J.S. Butler, Dr. Ginny Wilson, Dr. Eugenia Toma and Dr. Edward Jennings. Reflecting on both Graham’s accomplishments and the Martin School’s seven-out-of-seventeen streak, Dr. Toma concludes: “There’s something about our formula that’s fantastic. There’s something we’re doing here that’s really great.”
Dr. Jennings calls Graham’s paper “one piece of information NASPAA can use as they try to shape and inform the federal selection process.” Jennings also notes that the paper has been submitted to The Journal of Public Policy & Education and feels confident that it will be accepted, promoting Graham’s research to a wider audience. One audience Graham is sure to get plenty of attention from is the audience at the 2010 NASPAA conference. Held September 30 - October 2 in Las Vegas, Graham is being sponsored by the Martin School so he may attend the conference and pick up his award in person.