Hey Everyone!

My name is Dennis Robillard and I’m ecstatic to have the opportunity to share my experiences at Maxwell with everyone for the next year.

Here’s my quick story – I’m originally from Massachusetts, but came to Maxwell from six years living and working in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservation. I got out there originally with Teach For America, but chose to stay past my two year commitment because of the relationships and opportunities to work on staff with TFA to expand and deepen our impact there. I chose Maxwell for a few reasons, but mostly because it is a one-year program, so I can get back to work quickly, I wanted a broad range of hard- and soft-skill development in a variety of fields and because my girlfriend is at med school around the corner at Upstate Medical University. Triple win.

One of the things I already appreciate most about Maxwell is the way that professors are focused on teaching us the skills that we actually need in workforce – writing memos, leading meetings, researching policies. With the exception of Econ and Statistics, I don’t actually have any traditional tests this semester, and no traditional research papers at all.

Instead, in classes like Public Organizations and Management with Prof. Van Slyke, we do interactive deep dives into case studies each week – with different groups of students leading the discussion.

Recently, to simulate the challenges (to put it nicely) of the public sector response to Hurricane Katrina, a group led us in a simulation in which each other group had to replicate a simple picture from a children’s coloring book – but with various constraints and gaps in knowledge.

It became more tense, more quickly than I would like to admit, but it forced everyone to really think about how they would have authentically responded to a similar situation. It’s easy to think back with 20/20 hindsight that X, Y, Z went wrong, but to have the intelligence, empathy and humility to recognize that you may fall into some of the same traps is vital.

In addition to making class more fun, it seems to me that this is the type of learning and experience that is likely to make a difference long-term.