Helping Legislators Legislate: An Executive Education Program for State Senators

Abstract

This paper reports on lessons learned from designing and delivering a two-day executive education program to help state senators be better senators. We provide 10 lessons on the process of creating and delivering the program and five lessons about its content. We base these lessons on observations we made during the program and evaluations submitted by the participants. We frame the lessons in ways that apply to a range of legislative institutions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Leete

Laura Leete recently joined the faculty of the Planning, Public Policy and Management department at the University of Oregon, after serving as the Fred H. Paulus Director of Public Policy Research at Willamette University. Leete has written and taught extensively on applied public policy topics relating to labor market institutions and social policy. She is recently the coauthor of a book published by the Russell Sage Foundation, Staircases or Treadmill? Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy (2007) and has published in journals including the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Labor Economics, and Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. She may be reached at [email protected].

Steven Maser

Steven M. Maser is a professor of public management and public policy and director of the Executive Development Center at Willamette University’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management. He has published articles on public policy, government regulation of business, and constitutional choice in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. He may be reached at [email protected].