Ellwood joined the KSG faculty in 1980, just two years after the school’s founding.

He said that when he received his doctorate from Harvard, many people advised him to “do the traditional thing” and teach in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Economics, rather than take a post at the newly-formed grad school.

But Ellwood said his choice to accept an assistant professorship at the KSG was “the second best decision I ever made in my life.”

He then pointed to his wife Marilyn, who stood in the JFK Jr. Forum audience, and—as audience members applauded approvingly—said marrying her was the “best decision I ever made.”

“He grew up in the [Kennedy] School and embodies the school’s mission of excellence in public problem-solving,” said Dillon Professor of Government Graham T. Allison Jr., who led the KSG as dean from the school’s founding in 1978 until 1989.

“He has been fascinated by one of the most intractable of problems—persistent poverty—and has been determined in searching for ways to address it,” Allison said.

In his 1988 book Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family, Ellwood advocated universal health care, raising the minimum wage and setting stricter time limits on welfare benefits.

JOURNEY FROM CURRIER HOUSE

Ellwood will be the first Harvard College alum to be dean of the KSG. As an undergraduate, Ellwood—an economics concentrator in Currier House—was involved in the American Field Service, a cultural exchange program. He was also an avid hiker and had already become keenly interested in politics.

Ellwood, whose daughter Andrea is a sophomore in Pforzheimer House, is a popular guest lecture in the introductory economics course Social Analysis 10 and a member of the University’s Allston planning task force on undergraduate life.

He said the KSG’s “strategic location” near the Anderson Bridge means it can serve as a link between Harvard’s older campus and the new facilities planned for across the river.

Ellwood repeatedly emphasized what seems to be his motto for the KSG’s direction—”partnership, excellence, impact”—and said he hopes the school will connect with undergraduates who “hunger for public policy and public interest sorts of things.”

MR. ELLWOOD GOES TO WASHINGTON

Shortly after becoming the KSG’s academic dean in 1992, Ellwood left the post to join Clinton’s welfare policy team.

“I am extremely proud of my public service,” Ellwood said yesterday. But he also noted that he was disappointed by some aspects of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the compromise struck by Clinton and Congressional Republicans.