Courses
MPA 610. Seminar in Public Administration and its Environment (3)
Introduces graduate students to the major areas within public administration and encourages them to relate this knowledge to their own experience and career. Considers the political, social and economic environment of public administration.
MPA 612A. Intergovernmental Relations (3)
Provides an in-depth examination and analysis of the dynamics of the legislative, political and intergovernmental processes. Analyzes the relationships of different levels and branches of government. Lobbying and change agents, decision-making procedures and media impacts are evaluated. Involvement in creating change and impacting decisions through the use of intergovernmental techniques is explored. Explores the roles of the bureaucrat, administrator and legislator at local, state and federal levels.
MPA 620. Research Methods for Public Administration (3)
Discusses theory and limits of scientific inquiry, including quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, and research design and implementation. Encourages critical analysis of the research underlying policy recommendations. Introduces students to a wide variety of social science research techniques and assists them in developing their own research projects.
MPA 622A. Policy Implementation and Program Evaluation (3)
Public administration is fundamentally a discipline interested in identifying public problems and implementing successful solutions. This course focuses exclusively on strategies for successful implementation of policy solutions in a competitive policy environment and on mechanisms for evaluating program success.
MPA 623A. Seminar in Effective Public Sector Management (3)
This course is designed to introduce students to the effective functioning and management of organizations in the public sector. The course will focus on key management issues in public sector organizations and how to more effectively function in leadership roles in those organizations. Seminar participants are encouraged to relate work-life issues to theoretical perspectives and to bring in examples from their professional experiences to seminar discussions.
MPA 623B. Approaches and Methods in Program Evaluation (3)
Prerequisite: MPA 620. This course is designed to introduce students to the art and science of program evaluation, in both qualitative and quantitative ways. The course will review the dominant approaches to program evaluation and align these approaches to the social science research methods students study in MPA 620.
MPA 623D. Human Resources and the Basics of Competencies Measurement in Government (3)
This course will strategically look at the area of human resources and its link to firm performance through the balanced scorecard method. Specifically, students will learn how to develop the balanced scorecard and use it in the analysis of human resource decisions. Students will learn how to analyze the various human resource functional areas and measure the overall worth of these areas.
MPA 630. Organization Theory and Human Behavior (3)
Traces the historical development of organization theory. Examines contemporary approaches to the study of organization. Discusses the various concepts, issues and approaches to the study of organizational behavior. Considers such concepts and processes as decision making, power, conflict, communication, leadership, motivation, group effectiveness, organizational change and personal and organizational autonomy.
MPA 632A. Organizational Leadership (3)
Explores the theories and styles of leadership. Students become familiar with and work toward the incorporation of the traits and habits of effective leaders. Reviews the necessary qualities required of and challenges and ethical dilemmas facing leaders in the public sector today.
MPA 632B. Strategic Management (3)
Examines how managers guide their organization in establishing goals, setting priorities, coordinating disparate activities and how they adjust to a changing environment. Class produces actual strategic plans.
MPA 632C. Communication in Public Organizations (3)
Highlights the function of communication as the life blood of public and non-profit organizations, examining the nature of such communication issues as organizational culture, communication networks and message distortion, communication climate, communication and conflict, new communication technologies and communication during crisis situations as these impact public and non-profit organizations.
MPA 632D. Overview of Nonprofit Organizational Management (3)
Designed to meet the needs of the professional administrator who works within the growing not-for-profit sector and also of the governmental employee who may work in cooperation with non-profit sector. Governance through boards of directors, impacts of public policy, planning and policy formulation, funding and social marketing, effective partnership with business and government agencies, and challenges of motivation and leadership are examined.
MPA 632E. Strategic Planning, Needs Assessment and Program Design (3)
Examines the critical interconnection among strategic goals and objectives, including community needs assessment, program design and evaluation to the organization’s mission. Students will gain knowledge of the strategic-planning process through an experiential approach that creates the mission, identifies long-range goals and develops objectives and action plans. Provides students exposure to the full cycle of organizational activities to examine organizational effectiveness by exploring approaches to community needs assessment and building a program and evaluation process based on the needs assessment.
MPA 632F. Issues and Problems in Human Resources, Board and Volunteer Management in Non-Profits (3)
This course is an introduction to the aggregate of human resource management process in complex organizations. The course will focus on current policy issues and problems that challenge today’s human resource specialists, supervisors and managers. Further, beyond the internal focus, the course also will examine the external human resources brought to non-profit organizations by governing boards and volunteers. Students will study important policy issues for their political, legal, social, ethical and organizational ramifications.
MPA 632G. Non-Profit Finance and Financial Management (3)
This course will expose the student to non-profit financial management concepts and practices, including the framework for budgeting, financial analysis, internal controls and reporting. Students will engage in exercises and learn to use tools for financial management. The course will introduce and cement the partnership between non-profit programming and effective financial management, and identify the intersections among governance, programmatic vision and financial practices.
MPA 632H. Funding and Resource Development for Non-Profit Organizations (3)
This course examines how fund-raising works and fits into non-profit management as a whole. Students will learn what must be in place before a non-profit organization raises money; how to plan and implement various approaches to raising funds, including grant writing, events and major gifts; and how to develop, manage and evaluate an annual fund-raising plan.
MPA 632I. Program Implementation and Management for Non-Profit Services (3)
Examines the policies, strategies and the decision-making process to support successful program implementation from a manager’s perspective. Non-profit policy formulation places emphasis on training managers to develop and analyze problems, both in terms of choosing goals and organizing resources to achieve them. Students will be given the opportunity to formulate strategic implementation considerations using environmental analysis, resource assessment, goal determination, program planning and evaluation and performance overview. This course will concentrate on the process of implementing programs and the role of advocacy in achieving programmatic and overall mission attainment.
MPA 640. Public Policy Analysis (3)
Focuses on the methods and models of policy analysis used by public administrators. Emphasis on developing a perspective for putting social problems in the context of market and government failures. The basics of cost-benefit analysis and its application also are examined.
MPA 642A. Ethics and Professionalism (3)
Examines ethical issues and cases relevant to public administration. Focuses on professional relationships and responsibilities. Analyzes wider questions of public power, violence, deception and justice for their important relevance to public administration. Prepares students to analyze and confront ethical challenges in their professional life.
MPA 642B. Public Sector Labor Relations (3)
Accelerated intensive study of labor-relations concepts and role-playing participation in labor/management negotiation and formal arbitration.
MPA 642D. Community and Economic Development (3)
The questions of community and economic development are interrelated and more important than ever. How can practitioners facilitate community growth and change? What approaches are fruitful in promoting economic development, and what effect might this have on community development? Cultivation of such community development skills as intercultural communication, group facilitation and collaborative planning. Explores economic development tools, such as assessment, strategies to induce investment and ways to assess the social costs and benefits of economic development.
MPA 643. Human Resources Management (3)
Focuses on the development of public service concepts, including personnel methods, testing and recruitment; interaction with other management functions and with the executive and legislative processes; human resources allocation; employee motivation and evaluation; manpower planning and forecasting; employee relations; affirmative action programs; and career planning and development.
MPA 644. Public Budgeting and Financial Administration (3)
Discusses budgeting processes and administrative control, including various techniques of budgeting; line item, performance, program and zero base; fiscal policy in implementing public policy; public revenues; sources and effect of principle taxes; intergovernmental aspects of revenue problems; and revenue sharing.
MPA 650. Public Policy Process (3)
Examines the formation of the public policies that government agencies must carry out. Traces the process of problem identification, agenda setting, policy proposal and adoption. Includes both legislative and regulatory policies. Explores the role of public managers as active participants in the policy-making process.
MPA 697S. Comprehensive Examination (3)
Students selecting this option prepare for examination in General Public Administration and in two Specialized Subfields.
MPA 698S. Graduate Project (3)
This culminating course requires students to demonstrate their mastery of their specialization in Public Administration. Students will produce a manuscript that displays originality and independent thinking and could be submitted as a professional conference paper, journal article, or academic writing sample. This course is to be taken only in the student’s final semester. (Credit/No Credit only)