Chapman Undergraduates Share Stage with Researchers at Presidential Library

Two Chapman students presented papers on the Nixon environmental policy legacy in a conference this month at the
Richard Nixon Presidential Library
and Museum in Yorba Linda.  The “Student Research Conference on Richard Nixon and His Era,” held May 3, 2013, featured

research papers on Nixon’s foreign and domestic policies by graduate students from around the nation.  The Chapman students were two of just three undergraduates featured in the program.

Seniors Madison Hoffacker (
pictured above
) and Morgan O’Donnell (
pictured right
) are members of the first graduating class of Environmental Science and Policy majors.  The interdisciplinary program is a partnership of
Wilkinson College
and the
Schmid College of Science
that began in 2009.  The two seniors relied on library research and original documents to research their papers, which were completed as part of an independent study in public policy with Dr. David Shafie.

O’Donnell’s paper, “Nixon, the EPA, and the Politics of Agency Design,” examined the political environment in which the EPA was created and how Nixon’s decision to reorganize the executive branch determined the kind of agency it has become today.   Hoffacker presented “Nixon’s Paradoxical Decisions Regarding Two Major Pollution Acts,” which contrasted the political context of Nixon’s support for the Clean Air Act of 1970 with his veto of the Clean Water Act two years later.