The Master of Arts in Public Administration program, which is accredited with training over one-fourth of the city managers in Illinois is celebrating its 25th anniversary at NIU.

The program was started in 1962 by Daniel Wit, dean of international and special programs. The bachelors’ program began in 1961, followed by the masters’ program in 1962, and the Ph.D. program in 1968.

The MAPA program has turned out a third of the city managers in Chicago and its surrounding counties.

DeKalb Assistant City Manager Gary Boden is a graduate of the program and believes MAPA has been very helpful in his career. “Realistically, it established me in a career. I graduated in 1983 and had an internship sponsored by the program.

“It trains people to go into urban management. Consequently, it trained a lot of different people, which is a testimony to its success,” Boden said.

MAPA’s internship program began in 1963 when former NIU president Clyde Wingfield started the program with the idea of a part-time, 20-hour a week assignment for full-time students of the program. Prior to this, most programs involved full-time service and were typically completed during the summmer months between the first and second years of graduate studies.

“The program is a focus of welding classroom experience with actual experience … (It) gives students the chance to learn about the profession, also where the profession is going and gives insight into the new technologies of public administration,” Boden said.

In DeKalb, interns from the program are involved in a number of projects including research, research projects, financial planning, collective bargaining, computer and word processing work, and cost benefit analysis. Interns work for a number of communities in western Illinois cities and suburban villages.

Barbara Kleisner, coordinator and graduate of MAPA program, said, “Graduates in the profession form a majority of the city managers in the western cities. We do have graduates in several of the departments in the city of Chicago who are alumni.”

Kleisner said, “It (the program) has given me the opportunity to work in the field I wanted to work in.”

Boden said one the past interns played a key role in the cost benefit analysis report regarding the award-winning water system in DeKalb.

James Banovetz, current director of NIU’s division of public administration, joined the faculty in the fall of 1963 after he was recruited by Wit and Wingfield.

More recently, a September 1988 survey found that of the 81 percent for whom employment data is available, 88.7 percent have positions in the public sector.

Nearly half of the graduates (48.6 percent) are employed by local governments, 14.5 percent work in human services, 13.6 percent are city managers and 18.2 percent serve as chief executive officers of public agencies.

The NIU MAPA program has provided professional education of 28 percent of Illinois city managers, 59 percent are assistant city managers, and 80 percent hold the title of administrative assistant or the equivalent in Illinois’ local governments.

The day-long program entitled, “The Political Role of the Professional Public Administrator” will be held in the Holmes Student Center on Friday. Registration will start at 9:30 a.m. in the Illinois Room (HSC) and small group discussions surrounding the theme “Professional and Personal Perspectives: What the MAPA Program Has Meant” begin at 10 a.m.

Banovetz and Paul Nicholson, village manager of Western Springs and chairman of NIU’s MAPA city management alumni group, will preside at the anniversary lunch held in the HSC’s Duke Ellington Ballroom.