The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs will celebrate its 90th anniversary this weekend with a series of events including a roaring ‘20s party and a self-guided tour of the school.

The events begin on Thursday and will also include the Tanner Lecture and a symposium on Iran’s nuclear negotiation strategy. The school scheduled the events at the same time as Orange Central weekend, hoping to provide alumni a chance to participate in the celebration, said Maxwell dean James Steinberg.

“Alumni are an important part of our tradition. This is a chance for them to participate and be part of sharing with current students their own experiences and how their time and experience at Maxwell has contributed to their professional and personal lives,” Steinberg said.

Christina Leigh Deitz, Maxwell’s grant development administrator, said staff members have been planning the celebration for almost a year.

The weekend begins with “Passport to our Past,” a self-guided tour in which students move around the school with a passport and fill it with stamps from each department. The goal is to gain a deeper understanding of each department’s history and mission. The students with the most stamps can redeem their passports for Maxwell and Syracuse University souvenirs, Deitz said.

“We wanted to make it participatory as possible,” she said. “With the self-guided tour, we are trying to get whether it’s visitors, employees or students that attend school in the building to go places where they have not been before even though they might have been here for years.”

Following the tour, the school will host its anniversary party, which will have a roaring ‘20s theme. The theme was chosen in connection with Maxwell’s founding year of 1924 and will feature music and food from the 1920s.It will be hosted on Thursday from 4-6 p.m. in the Joseph A. Strasser Commons.

Jill Leonhardt, director of communications for Maxwell, said she sees the anniversary as an opportunity to showcase the talent and expertise of the school through the inclusive events. She added that the tour and party are a chance for attendees to have a good time and celebrate, but it also allows for each unit of the school to showcase its expertise.

Steinberg said the celebration was not only a chance to look back and pay tribute to the accomplishments of the last 90 years, but also a way to look to the future.

“It’s helping us think about where do we want to go from here because one of the things we are doing, alongside this 90th anniversary celebration, is watching what we call the 10th decade project,” he said. “We are thinking about what we can do over the next 10 years so by the 100th anniversary of Maxwell we would have made even further progress.”

Steinberg added that the upcoming events provide a chance to reflect on the opportunities Maxwell offers and its role on campus. He said it gives students and faculty a chance to reflect on the school’s history, values and progress through the years.

Said Steinberg: “I think it’s valuable to reflect on the trailblazing role that Maxwell has brought over the last 90 years by bringing the perspectives of social sciences and public policy together in one school and our long-standing tradition of citizenship.”

Published on October 9, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Chizobam: cnwagwu@syr.edu