Edwin Dorn, Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs
As a young child, Edwin Dorn had speech difficulties and was sent to a speech therapist for pronunciation exercises. His attempts at public speaking often led to ridicule by his schoolmates. But at his ninth-grade graduation ceremony at Miller Junior High in Houston, he heard a young lawyer named Barbara Jordan deliver the graduation address, and he was inspired to speak with her clarity and precision. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, a Fulbright scholar, a Yale Ph.D., and a former Under Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, Edwin Dorn returned to Austin in 1997 to serve as dean of the prestigious LBJ School of Public Affairs. But he hasn't forgotten the lesson he learned as a child. "I know from humiliating experience that a lack of performance is not the same as a lack of effort," he says. Since he took over as dean, the LBJ School continues to rank among the nation's top ten graduate programs in public affairs. That takes both great effort and great performance. |