Walter Enloe 

Senior Fellow (Deceased)

Walter Enloe

Walter Enloe was a teacher researcher and participant-observer of organizations and cultures. He had an abiding interest in the study of organic systems in the human and social sciences. He was Professor Emeritus and Gordon B. Sanders Chair in Human Studies at Hamline University, where for over twenty years he co-designed and facilitated the MAED and EDD Learning Communities teaching courses in educational leadership and policy, and participatory action research. Prior to Hamline he taught K-12 for seventeen years as a founding member of the Paideia School in Atlanta, and as teaching principal of the Hiroshima, Japan’s International School of peace and culture. Coming to the University of Minnesota in 1988 he was a founding member of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement. He began working with public chartering in the early 1990s and co-created such schools at Twin Cities Academy, Minneapolis International School, and Avalon School. He approached systems design by taking the concept of "organ" in organization seriously as an "open system:"self-organizing, self-regulating, and self-adapting. For the past twenty years he was an associate of Education Evolving and EdVisions. Visit walterenloe.com

In Memoriam

Hello, I’m Dan Loritz, Senior Fellow and President of the Center for Policy Design and a long-time friend and colleague of Walter’s.


Walter's celebration of Life was held on May 22, 2022 on the Saint Paul campus of Hamline University. It was an amazing afternoon full of

energy that was such a reminder of Walter's life.


On behalf of the Center for Policy Design I want to share the following memoriam as a way to honor Walter by sharing the many things that he created to make the world a better place. Over the next several months we will be adding special links highlighting Walter's many contributions.


In Memoriam


I met Walter 28 years ago at Hamline and had many meetings over the years, in this room, with Old Main looking upon us.

In fact, Walter spoke at my retirement from Hamline in this same room in December 2012.


I was leaving Hamline after 22 years to become Senior Fellow at, and President of, the Center for Policy Design.


One thing I didn’t know, that I learned from Walter’s remarks, was that beyond being a friend and colleague he also considered me an “older brother”. Over the past 10 years this idea of “older brother” surfaced time and time again leading Walter and I to focus on the Center for Policy Design as a way to continue his work. The Center, for the last 6 months, has been in the process of moving Walter from Fellow to Senior Fellow. That process is now complete, and I am pleased to announce Dr. Enloe as a Senior Fellow of the Center.

The Center provides a select group of retired individuals a place to continue their work.


On a personal note, when I answered my phone on April 1st, I expected it to be Walter. Instead, it was Kitty, sharing with me that Walter had died. It was an emotional moment that I have seldom experienced in my life. From a place deep inside of me this emotional moment that Walter was no longer with us was searching for a way to respond.


My sense of loss, our sense of loss, was beyond words. I have often turned to Dr. Suess at such moments to remind me what is truly important. His quote reads: Don’t cry because it’s over . . . Smile because it happened. Yes, there are times to cry, and I have, but the road forward, as Walter always challenged us to find, was to smile and celebrate every day that it happened.


In closing, few people know that it was Walter, as the first acting director of the Wesley Center” in 2006, along with Gretchen Fogo, Director of Church Relations, that helped John Wesley’s quote to become part of Hamline’s annual commencement and history of Hamline.


So, it seems fitting to close with John Wesley’s quote:


Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can, as long as ever you can.


Thank you, Walter, for making this “charge” a part of us all.


Publications

How Could You Do This book cover

How Could You Do This?

January 2021 · By Paul Gilje

How Could You Do This? highlights the half-century history of the drama in Minnesota’s property tax-base sharing law—more popularly known as the metropolitan fiscal disparities law—that began in 1968 with extensive controversy, and extends to the present day. The drama began in a Citizens League committee where the possibility of tax-base sharing first surfaced. It continued in a three-year battle in the Minnesota Legislature, followed by three lengthy, but ultimately unsuccessful, challenges in the Minnesota state courts. The drama then shifted to efforts to weaken the law’s provisions, which with one notable exception involving the Mall of America, were unsuccessful. In the 1990s drama extended to Minnesota’s Iron Range, where similar tax-base sharing was enacted. Discussion, with more drama possible, has continued in Minnesota and in other states to the present day. The book contains meticulous documentation, with more than 300 footnotes.

The Center for Policy Design (CPD) is publishing the book to help illustrate the importance of highlighting system change in public policy, as advocated by Walter McClure, founder and president of the CPD. McClure’s objective, as quoted in a foreword to the book: “Systems and organizations tend to behave the way they’re structured and rewarded to behave. If you don’t like the way they’re behaving, you probably ought to change the way they’re structured and rewarded.” 

Tax-base sharing adjusts the system within which municipalities compete with one another for tax base. Traditionally, “winner-take-all”, the system enacted in 1971 still favors the winners, but not by quite as much. Without the law a 13-to-1 ratio in per capita commercial-industrial value would prevail today between the wealthiest and poorest municipalities over 9,000 population in the Twin Cities metro area. With the law the difference is reduced to 6-to-1. 


Click to view and download >>