Sidney Baldwin

Sid Baldwin, emeritus professor at California State University, Fullerton, passed away in December of 2003 following a long illness. He joined the faculty in 1967 and taught a wide variety of courses spanning most areas of public administration, public policy, and comparative politics. He was also very instrumental in the development of the University's Masters Program in Public Administration. He retired in 1991.

Sid was a careful and creative scholar who published a great deal at a time when teaching loads were quite high and few resources were available for scholarly work. His first book Poverty and Politics (University of North Carolina Press, 1968) won several awards and is still widely cited. His second, Public Administration: Government in Action (Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1976), co-authored with the late Ivan Richardson, also a member of our faculty, was considered an important and innovative textbook. Sid also had an abiding interest in the Middle East; he traveling there frequently often as an emissary for local Jewish interests.

We remember Sid most as a dynamic and creative teacher who was beloved by his students in spite of significant demands placed upon him. He employed diverse techniques and displayed an encyclopedic knowledge of both the science and art of his discipline. His students read novels, short stories, biographies, and plays in addition to the empirical works in the field. His student evaluations were always very high in spite of the complex readings and numerous writing assignments he required and evaluated with exacting rigor.

Sid earned a Bachelor's degree in Government from Wesleyan University, and a Masters and Doctorate in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. We remember him perpetually in the form of the “Sidney Baldwin Award,” given to the most outstanding MPA student each year.

He is survived by his wife Diana, two children, and four grand children. Sid was 81 when he passed away.