Street to switch from City Hall to halls of academe

Clearing the Record: This article incorrectly reported Mayor Street's compensation as an adjunct professor at Temple University. Street will be paid $30,000 to teach two undergraduate courses for the spring 2008 semester.

Professor John Street will teach urban politics and policy at Temple University next year after completing a 28-year training program in city government, Temple announced yesterday.

Philadelphia's mayor, a former teacher, will join Temple's Political Science Department as an adjunct professor in January at an annual salary of $30,000. He follows into academe his predecessor as mayor, Gov. Rendell, who is an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania. It was Rendell who encouraged Street to make the move.

"I love Temple, Temple's a great place, and I look forward to working up there," said Street, who lives a block from campus in North Philadelphia. Street graduated from Temple's Beasley School of Law and has three children who have worked and studied at the university.

"We are delighted that Mayor Street has offered to share his deep experience and acknowledged expertise in urban politics and policy with our students," Temple University president Ann Weaver Hart said in a statement.

"We also welcome him as a former teacher who knows the classroom and as a neighbor who understands the strength and diversity of our students and faculty, the uniqueness of our urban mission, and the intellectual and social vibrancy of our campus."

Few who know Street would question his credentials as a lifelong student of city government and politics.

"Even people who would disagree with some of the things he has done as mayor would acknowledge that he has been a very serious policymaker," said Joe McLaughlin, assistant dean in Temple's College of Liberal Arts, a former lobbyist and Street adviser who helped close the deal with the mayor over the last month.

It all started in early October, in a conversation between Street and Rendell.

"He was saying, 'Oh, you've got to teach, you have to teach - you would be great. You should be up there at Temple - that's your place. You should teach!' " Street said, doing his best Rendell impression.

Next thing he knew, Temple was calling.

"One thing led to another," Street said.

Rendell "believes that John Street has got a great deal to share," said Chuck Ardo, the governor's spokesman.

Street's syllabus will include public school funding; development of major capital projects such as stadiums; and public support for the arts, tourism and recreation, among other topics with which he has been intimately involved.

He "will also assist the university in attracting prominent speakers and supporting forums on issues relating to urban public policy," according a Temple news release.

Street taught adult basic education for four years at the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan's Opportunities Industrial Center near Temple and English to eighth graders at the Larchwood School, a private Seventh-Day Adventist school in Philadelphia.

The Temple job is the only one Street is contemplating at the moment, and that's the way he wants it.

"This isn't exactly going to burden me," Street said. "It will give me an opportunity to stay busy, and at the same time I'll have an opportunity to think about a future for me and my family."