Doug Brattebo became Director of the Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP) at IEL in September 2005 and, with the support of his colleagues, set about transforming the program through modernization and growth.  A scholar of executive leadership, he manages all aspects of EPFP:  program development, innovation, and expansion; relationship-building with program stakeholders; and program implementation and assessment.  Brattebo has led the EPFP staff in creating a new program Web site, which will be linked during the fall of 2007 to a searchable database of more than 6,200 EPFP alumni.  He oversees the Lumina Foundation for Education’s two-year study of EPFP, intended to harvest the lessons of the program’s 43-year history in order to describe effective methods for preparing the education policy leaders of the 21st Century.  Brattebo also works to extend EPFP into additional states.  EPFP is set to commence the 2007-08 Fellowship year with program sites in 12 states and DC, with on-going outreach for the development of additional sites.  Brattebo’s talks with interested host institutions in more than a dozen additional states are gathering momentum.  Additionally, he has brought a global subject matter focus to EPFP’s two annual national conferences, particularly the Leadership Forum.

Prior to his arrival at IEL, Brattebo served as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, from 1999 to 2005, where he taught Honors Introduction to American Government, The American Presidency and the Executive Branch, and a Seminar on the Democratic Peace.  In May of 2002 he was the winner of the Naval Academy’s prestigious Apgar Award for Teaching Excellence, for demonstrating “effectiveness in teaching the qualities of leadership, with special emphasis on character, responsibility, and integrity, through the academic environment, curriculum, and mentoring roles outside the classroom.”  Among Brattebo’s scholarly publications are articles and chapters on topics as diverse as Bill Clinton’s 1992-93 transition to the presidency, the politics of steel tariffs, and the Iraqi no-fly zones of 1991-2003.  He served as guest editor of the December 2004 special edition of the journal White House Studies, entitled “The Presidency, the Navy, and the War on Terror.”  His most recent book, co-edited with Tom Lansford and Robert Maranto, is The Second Term of George W. Bush:  Prospects and Perils.  Brattebo served as American Government Course Coordinator at the Naval Academy, has co-convened a national conference of presidency scholars, and continues to be a mentor of undergraduates and graduate students through the Center for the Study of the Presidency.

Brattebo is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Iowa with majors in Political Science and History and a minor in Journalism.  He earned an M.A. in American Politics from the University of Maryland at College Park, and where he also went on to earn a Ph.D., with a special emphasis on the American presidency.  In addition, Brattebo earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and is a member of the Maryland Bar.