Online EMPA Curriculum

This course is designed for managerial leaders in the public sector and has two major objectives. First, the course helps students to build a better understanding of leadership theories and how they underlie practice. Second, the course guides students in assessing and improving their own managerial skills and competencies. To meet these objectives, much of the class time is devoted to self-assessment and experiential learning activities.

Coursework focuses on the changing environment of management at all levels of the organizational hierarchy, the latest thinking in leadership, and concrete ideas to enhance students’ managerial abilities. Students apply the theory to managerial situations and reflect on how they can continue to develop new leadership skills. Students improve their ability to observe and analyze leadership and gain new insights into how to lead.

Upon completion of this course, students are able to:

• Explain and assess leadership and managerial theories, skills and competencies.
• Apply leadership theories to workplace situations.
• Assess how personality affects their leadership choices.

Fundamentals of Policy Analysis provides an understanding of some of the models and methods used in policy analysis for the public and nonprofit sectors. The course provides students with an understanding of the rationale for and limits to public sector policies.

Since many public policies, and certainly much analysis of those policies, rely heavily on basic principles of economics, a portion of the course is devoted to an explanation of those principles. The second portion of the course focuses on the policy analysis process, including recognition of the multiple objectives commonly sought from public policies, and illustrates how the rational policy analysis model can be used to evaluate alternative policy instruments. The third portion of the course focuses on cost-benefit analysis as one technique for systematically analyzing the effects of potential policies.

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Identify and explain the basics of market-based methods for allocating scarce resources, the variety of ways markets can fail to efficiently allocate those resources, and the policy instruments governments might use to correct for these failures.
• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of various policy analytic tools and approaches, being mindful of the various and often competing objectives sought from public policies.
• Describe and analyze the ethical issues faced by policy analysts.

The Master’s Project Course is the capstone for the program. During this course, students have the opportunity to incorporate what they have learned throughout the program to a specific case that has practical application to a real-world organization or group of policymakers. Working in groups or individually, students integrate concepts and skills learned from the online executive M.P.A. curriculum to design an evidence-based master’s project paper.

Students start this process with an incubation period, where they explore areas of interest and develop ideas into concrete topics, with the intention of developing a project proposal. The project allows the students to apply concepts and skills from the executive M.P.A. curriculum to a real-world policy or organizational issue.

Students design a data-driven research project to study the issue and effectively communicate the results of the project to both academic and professional colleagues upon its completion.

Here’s a list of examples of past projects:

This course covers strategy formulation and the strategic planning process in public organizations. The course introduces and defines strategy in a public administration context, and covers processes, tools and practices for devising and implementing a mutually reinforcing set of actions to reach desired outcomes. The course teaches:

• Strategy fundamentals: a brief overview of the history, theory and evolution of strategy as a distinct area of public administration thinking and practice
• Strategy content: alternative strategic stances and actions public organizations take, such as prospecting, defending and related decisions about service expansion, market entry or exit; and changes to organizational structure, culture and operating procedure
• Strategy process and tools: distinct stages in formulating, implementing and evaluating a strategic plan, and accompanying tools such as stakeholder analysis, SWOT analysis, strategy mapping, scenario building, prediction methods and group-based strategy-making practices
• Strategy management at scale: the roles of strategy and strategic planning in addressing boundary-spanning issues and problems that involve multiple sectors and actors

Upon successful completion of this course, a student should be able to:

• Comprehend the distinct role of strategy and strategic planning in a public administration context, as well as how they relate to and differ from uses in other contexts (e.g., business).
• Identify and articulate alternative strategic stances and actions, and assess alternative strategies' alignment with different organizational environments.
• Develop and analyze organizational missions, visions, values, goals and objectives, and how they relate to strategy and strategic planning processes.
• Design and manage a strategic planning process that makes use of tools and practices appropriate to the environmental and organizational context, setting and needs.
• Draft and communicate strategy content across a variety of formats and audiences, including developing written plans, presentations, scorecards, in-progress updates and briefings for leaders and decision makers.

This seminar provides an overview of U.S. social welfare policy, with some exposure to social welfare policy approaches in other countries. We cover three branches of social welfare policy: income support policy (major emphasis), education (some emphasis) and health policy (less emphasis). Spending on these three areas comprises more than 70 percent of total government spending in the United States and an even higher percentage in other rich nations.

This course is designed to introduce different ways of defining “the problem,” through policy analysis, policy formulation and implementation and program evaluation. We draw from readings in economics, sociology, demography, history, political science, evaluation, psychology, law, management and education.

Upon successful completion of this course, a student should be able to:

• Understand the key elements of the U.S. social safety net, how it has evolved over time and how it compares to other developed nations.
• Become familiar with arguments regarding the causes and consequences of poverty and the evidence regarding the effectiveness of different solutions to addressing poverty. Students should gain a deeper understanding of perspectives that differ from their own through readings, lectures and class discussion.
• Develop skills to evaluate the costs and benefits of different policy options across a range of topics through written policy memos, class presentations and a final paper.
• Understand the structural inequities embedded in the social safety net by race, gender, family structure and immigration status (among others), and implications for the future of social policy through readings, class lectures and class participation.
• Strengthen oral and written communication skills through reading reactions, policy memos, class presentations and participation in a policy discussion.

This course provides an overview of budgeting and financial management in the public and nonprofit sectors. Fundamental concepts and practices of budgeting, financial management and public finance are introduced, with special emphasis on state and local government budgeting and financial management in the United States.

Students explore the basic concepts and nomenclature of public finance to develop an understanding of budget processes as well as the sources and uses of public revenues. Coursework enables students to develop basic competence in using spreadsheet programs.

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Explain and assess key elements of government budgeting processes.
• Apply concepts of direct, indirect, fixed, step and variable costs to the analysis of agency expenditure needs.
• Design and produce a flexible budget for a government agency.
• Apply concepts and measures of efficiency, equity and adequacy to the evaluation of government revenue policies.

Ethics and Morality in Public Affairs is designed to enhance students’ abilities to think ethically about the means and ends of public policy.

The course examines normative concepts and principles that typically enter into moral reasoning and use of those tools in analyzing actual cases.

Through discussions, students will be able to gain a better understanding of the moral issues facing the decision-makers and explore how those issues might be resolved in ethically responsible ways.

This course teaches theory, research and practices for effective human resources management in public and nonprofit agencies. Political and institutional context of public sector human resources management, evolution of the U.S. civil service system, and critical issues confronting public managers.

People are the most valuable resource in any organization. Most public sector organizations spend more than 70 percent on personnel costs. It is the people who provide service, manage the business and come up with creative solutions that keep organizations strong.

Thus, how personnel are recruited, managed and motivated is essential to an organization’s success. This course will look at the changing role of human resource management in the public sector from three perspectives: strategic, legal and individual.

This course defines public sector as including the nonprofit sector and provides materials and class discussions specifically focused beyond government. Students will learn broad concepts, theories, skills and strategies applicable to any organization.

Upon completion of this course, students are able to:

• Analyze the conflicting demands on the human resource management function.
• Identify and explain the link between effective human resource management and achieving public policy and social goals.
• Apply theoretical perspectives to practical problems in human resource management.
• Demonstrate skills required for developing staff productivity and motivation.

Public administration is as much an art as it is a science. It requires far more than the rote application of managerial skills. Public Administration and Democracy is primarily normative rather than skills-oriented in nature.

In contrast to many other courses in the public administration curriculum, this course does not teach students how to carry out particular management functions. Rather, it is based on the presumption that only those public administrators who are broad-minded and self-reflective, who are cognizant of the environments in which they operate and of the principles that ought to drive their decisions, can be effective in a truly meaningful way.

This course provides students with the opportunity to grapple with fundamental questions about the relationship between public administration and democracy. Each session is grounded in questions such as: What is democracy? What are the tensions between bureaucracy and democracy? And, to whom are public administrators responsible? Each question is seemingly simple, but actually quite complex. Reasonable people can and do disagree on the answers.

In addition to classroom sessions, students participate in role-play exercises that offer insights about how their answers to these questions will affect the way they practice public administration. The primary goal of this role-play is to enable students to experience and understand the tensions between bureaucracy and democracy as manifested in a situation characterized by ambiguity, expectations for collaboration, and organizational politics.

Upon completion of this course, students are be able to:

• Analyze the social and political context of public administration.
• Identify and apply the principles that ground good public administration practice.
• Describe and analyze the ethical and normative issues that public administrators face as they seek to make effective decisions.

Public Policy Process provides an introduction to the policy process, focusing on new directions in policy process scholarship and evidence-based insights for practitioners. The course explores various roles that elected officials, public managers, nongovernmental organizations and contractors play in public policy and how these actions affect the larger policymaking procedures. Students do not need to possess a background in public policy or the policy process.

A broad representation of policy areas is covered in this course, including social policy (e.g., education, health, employment and training), environmental policy and security policy. By focusing on “implementation” and the changing face of public sector governance, students will analyze the central components and key factors in the policymaking process.

Upon completion of this course, students are able to:

• Identify the central components of the policymaking process.
• Identify key actor, institutional, structural and social factors that influence the policy process.
• Exhibit a strong foundation of knowledge concerning major public policy process theories and apply these theories to study different aspects of the policymaking system.
• Exhibit the ability to comprehend and synthesize academic and professional research.