PHILADELPHIA-- Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Rebecca Bushnell has announced that Donald Kettl, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named director of the 68-year-old Fels Institute of Government at Penn.  He will assume the post July 1.

He succeeds Lawrence W. Sherman, who will step down as director to chair Penn's new Criminology Department.  Sherman will continue to teach at Fels and direct the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology as well as the Pennsylvania Leadership Academy at Fels.  Under Sherman's leadership, Fels increased enrollment, applications and student financial aid, and amassed a total of $20 million in grants and contracts.

In response to the announcement, Sherman said, "I am delighted that we have been able to recruit as our next director the most distinguished scholar in the nation on the issues of concern to Fels.  Don Kettl is unequalled in his knowledge of the administrative and leadership issues of federalism, state and local government and domestic policy.  His ability to combine that knowledge with warmth, enthusiasm and commitment to his students and colleagues makes him an ideal leader for the Fels Institute at Penn."

"I am grateful to Larry Sherman for his exceptionally effective leadership of Fels in the past six years," said Bushnell, "and I am happy now to welcome Don Kettl as the new director.  I have full confidence in Don's ability to lead Fels in new and exciting directions in the future."

Kettl came to Penn in 2004 after 15 years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he directed the Robert La Follette Institute of Public Affairs for four years.  During the past year he has directed a Century Foundation project on homeland security and coordinated the Pew Trusts' National Government Performance Project.

Kettl is the recipient of the 2005 Donald C. Stone Award of the American Society for Public Administration for "significant contributions to the field of inter-governmental management over a substantial period of time."  His book "The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for the 21st Century" won the National Academy of Public Administration's Louis Brownlow Award for the best book published in public administration in 2003.  His other awards include the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award and the Marshall E. Dimock Award of the American Society for Public Administration and his election to a fellowship in the National Academy of Public Administration.