Dr. Samélia Okpodu already runs the day-to-day business of one of Calvert County’s bayside towns. On Sunday, Sept. 27, she added a University of Maryland certificate to a résumé that runs from optical engineering to AmeriCorps to the leadership of a state service commission.
Okpodu, the Town Administrator of Chesapeake Beach (2020 population: 6,356), graduated from the Academy for Excellence in Local Governance at a ceremony in Memorial Chapel on the College Park campus. She was one of 124 public officials from across Maryland to receive a certificate in front of family and friends. All of the graduates, known as Academy Fellows, completed core and elective classes built for municipal and county officials.
The dean’s pitch
University of Maryland School of Public Policy Dean Gustavo Flores-Macías used the ceremony to argue that government is mostly a local experience. “When people hear ‘public policy,’ their minds often go immediately to Washington,” he said. “But most people experience government much closer to home.” That means roads, services, development and “the people who respond when something goes wrong.” Doing that work well, he said, “requires far more than good intentions.” He listed ethics, open meetings, public information, risk management and effective governance as the skills involved.
That list matches the Academy’s required curriculum. According to the Maryland Municipal League, participants complete nine core classes: Basics of Risk Management, Conducting Effective Meetings, Consensus and Team Building, Employment Issues, Ethics, Municipal Budgeting, the Open Meetings Act, the Public Information Act and Structure of Municipal Government. They also take five electives, which range from general administration to public works to planning and zoning.
Flores-Macías, who became dean on Sept. 1, 2025 after more than a decade at Cornell’s public policy school, framed the Academy as a statement about what the school should be. “We don’t want simply to study public institutions; we want to work alongside them,” he said.
A scientist at town hall
Okpodu’s own path to municipal administration is unusual. The town’s staff directory lists a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics, a bachelor’s degree in optical engineering, AmeriCorps service and a stint as executive director of the Maryland State Service Commission. She also co-founded a consulting firm, Gilded Alliance Group. When the Maryland Association of Counties reported her 2022 appointment as director of the Governor’s Office on Service and Volunteerism, it noted that she had worked as a biomedical scientist, graduated from Howard University and served as executive project manager at End Hunger in Calvert County.
Residents have seen the administrative side of that job up close. After a two-alarm fire displaced about 25 people in Chesapeake Beach in November 2025, Okpodu was the town’s public information officer. The town’s administration page says her role is to support the mayor and Town Council so that services are delivered “efficiently, transparently, and in accordance with Town policies and Maryland law.” The Academy’s classes in open meetings, public information and ethics are built around those same duties.
An Academy that keeps growing
The Academy offered its first classes in 1998. It was founded by the Maryland Association of Counties and the Maryland Municipal League, is sponsored by the Local Government Insurance Trust and is coordinated through the School of Public Policy. Its ceremonies have grown into a statewide tradition. The 2022 ceremony recognized 92 graduates, and the 2024 ceremony recognized 141 as the program passed 1,000 total graduates. This year’s class of 124 continues that pace.
