Welcome to the Master of Public
Administration Degree.
We are pleased that you chose to
join us here at Maxwell. You will be joining a class of talented individuals
with impressive academic accomplishments and professional experience.
The department faculty and staff
look forward to meeting you electronically as you begin your summer classes and
meeting you in person with our MPA Colloquium, held starting August 24, 2020.
Our associate director, Josh
Kennedy, is available to explain program’s procedures and to offer guidance
about how to best embark on your chosen career. However, do also reach out to
other staff or faculty who can provide more detailed information on your area
of interest.
The MPA program features a balance
of required and elective coursework, with further details found on our website
and in our graduate handbook for MPA students, available on our current student's page and our student blackboard site.
During your time at Maxwell, you
will:
- Complete seven core course that provide general
knowledge and skills that all public administrators and public managers
need;
- Focus your studies through five elective courses,
potentially focused on one of our programs of study; core courses that
provide general knowledge and skills needed in the global workplace;
- Complete a culminating professional experience through
our capstone courses, the MPA Workshop and the Leadership and Public
Policy Seminar.
This page is designed to help you
decide how to initially navigate your options. For more detail, we are hosting three interactive online advising
sessions this summer. These sessions
will be held on June 23 at 2 pm, June 30 at 2 pm, and July 14 at 2 pm.
Planning
Your Schedule
Below is a multi-step plan for
crafting your fall schedule.
1.
Determine if you are starting the MPA degree in the summer or fall semester.
Due to COVID-19, Syracuse University
has determined that all summer classes will be taught online. As a result, incoming MPA students can opt to
start courses online during the summer of 2020 or in person during the fall of
2020. For more details on the various paths that the summer or fall start
entails, please consult our summer and fall start formats.
2.
Plan in your fall core courses
During their first fall semester,
MPA students are expected to enroll in PAI 721 – Introduction to Statistics and
PAI 723 – Economics for Public Decisions.
If you have not taken PAI 734 – Public Budgeting, we encourage students
to do so as well. PAI 721 is especially
important as it is the prerequisite for PAI 722 – Quantitative Analysis.
Additionally, students may wish to
take their management core course during the fall semester. For the 2020-2021 academic year, those
choices are PAI 712 – Public Organizations and Management, PAI 748 – Non-Profit
Management, and PAI 762 – Challenges in International Management and
Leadership.
Students with sufficient prior
knowledge in economics or statistics may choose to take a waiver exam in both
topics. More information on waiver exams can be found on
the student blackboard page.
3.
Select your ‘morale’ course
The design of the MPA program
presumes that students will complete three required classes during the fall
semester. That leaves one course for
students to begin to build the foundation of knowledge and skills for their
chosen post-graduate career.
You should consider whether this
class would concentrate your studies in one of the seven MPA areas of study or
build out a particular technical or management skill.
Once you decide on this path, choose
the first of the department’s many elective offerings. This This course should be your 'morale
course' one that covers a topic of greatest interest and serves as a
cornerstone for your development as public administrator.
Registration
Please note, you will be registering
for courses before you officially arrive on campus. The registration begins at
10 am eastern time on Monday, August 3, 2020, but you can change your schedule
until September 8, 2020.
Syracuse University students
register via the MySlice on-line system, which requires a Syracuse University
NetID, you will need to make sure you have (1) returned the Intent to Register form to Syracuse University; (2) Activated your NetID; and (3)
Set your NetID password.