By: Diane Stirling
(315) 443-8975
It just wasn’t Milton Mueller’s style to end a distinguished academic career with an easy departure and a comfortable retirement—at least not without first giving something new a go, and trying a different challenge, he told his School of Information Studies colleagues.
A position at the nexus of policy and information, where “my intellectual development would be advanced in a School that is professionally focused on public policy,” was the draw that moved Mueller to leave the School of Information Studies, his academic home since 1998, this May.
He’ll begin a new role in the fall as a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Public Policy in Atlanta, joining one other professor focused in that teaching area, someone who is a longtime friend and collaborator on Internet governance and policy. Mueller’s addition to the faculty is an initiative that will help strengthen the Technology School’s academic focus in the Internet governance area, he said, and the school also is “eagerly offering a home” to his Internet Governance Project as a prominent part of the school’s profile.
Professor Mueller’s teaching career reached the pinnacle honor for faculty at Syracuse last year when he received recognition as a Laura and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence.
He initially came to the iSchool to direct the Telecommunications and Network Management program, an area that has seen tremendous changes ever since.
Mueller said he always has enjoyed the policy side of his teaching focus primarily, and will be teaching students in Georgia who have the same perspective. “I was always a policy person, never a tech person per se,” Mueller noted. “I was interested in the implications of new technology, so I had to keep up on what new technology was doing and changing things. I was always interested in the broader kinds of social changed caused by information technology that plays out on the economic and government levels,” he described.
Mueller leaves Syracuse with affection for the School of Information Studies’ support and the friendship of his colleagues, he added. “I appreciate this school’s hospitality and its willingness to provide a supportive environment for me here, particularly with the Meredith award. It’s kind of sad [to leave] because of that recognition and resources. I certainly appreciate Syracuse’s recognition, and the Meredith opportunity, because we did some really good things with it in this past academic year, particularly the joint course on cybersecurity with the Law School,” he said.
Georgia Tech houses one of the world's top programs in the field of science and technology policy, and is a university partner in the European Union's network of excellence in technology and innovation policy. It has hosted a major international conference on policy that brings participants from every continent.
In addition to his faculty service, Mueller, who became a full professor in 2003, has served on the governing board of the iSchool’s Center for Convergence and Emerging Network Technologies (CCENT); has been chair of the scientific committee of The Internet Governance Project; and led the Steering Committee for the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet). He also served at the iSchool as director of the certificate of advanced studies in Information Security Management.