Courses

(Course updated as of Spring 2025; Formerly known as Public Service Organizations)

This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of organizational intricacies in the public and nonprofit sectors. The course content and activities support students in acquiring knowledge, skills, and tactics necessary for navigating organizational dynamics in these vital sectors. The course includes a focus on organizational theories, a review of pivotal issues and challenges, and discussions of effective managerial processes and strategies.

This course introduces students to performance measurement and management in the public and nonprofit sectors. It covers theories of public and nonprofit performance as well as the history of performance measurement in society. Students learn tools for performance measurement, such as index construction, benchmarking, trend analysis, dashboards, and data visualization. The role of technology and big data are also considered. Students learn how to align performance metrics with strategic goals and objectives in order to facilitate organizational learning and improvement. But consideration is also given to problems of gaming, goal displacement, and other unintended consequences of performance measurement. 

Philanthropy: Volunteerism, Fundraising, and Community Engagement examines the role of volunteers and philanthropy as vital to the success of nonprofit organizations. Different from the profit and public sector, the nonprofit sector is built upon the good deeds of volunteers and the private financial support of individuals. Students will have the opportunity to develop basic knowledge and skills in how nonprofits recruit, secure, and retain volunteers and financial contributions through a study of the art and science of this important work.

This course introduces the theory, history, and structure of nonprofit organizations and how these relate to leadership and management in the nonprofit sector. Emphasis is given to critical functions such as volunteer management, strategic marketing and communications, executive leadership, board governance, policy advocacy, and program evaluation.

(previously Introduction to Public Administration)

This course introduces students to what public administration is as a field of study and why it is critical to the practice of democratic governance. This learning process occurs through the identification of intellectual, theoretical, institutional, and constitutional foundations distinctly found in the study and practice of public administration in the United States, as well as in other democratic contexts. It also explores the intersection between public administration theory and practice, examines many of the practical challenges currently affecting civil servants at all levels of government, and emphasizes ways in which the boundaries of the administrative state evolve. At the course's conclusion students are able to: (1) identify seminal public administration scholars and theories as well as many of the political, economic, and social issues affecting public administration in the 21st century, (2) apply theories of democratic governance to the practice of public management, and (3) have developed an understanding for how the rule of law legitimatizes public administration in theory and practice.

This course provides students with the knowledge and skills needed to evaluate public and nonprofit programs. It surveys the background and accountability demands for evaluation in the public and nonprofit sectors. Important topics and techniques of evaluation are explored, including needs assessment, program theory, assessing implementation (process evaluation), assessing impact (summative evaluation), analyzing cost effectiveness, and communicating evaluation findings. The role of evaluation in management and the policy process is also discussed. Students apply concepts from the course by reviewing current examples of evaluation studies and by designing their own evaluation of a program or initiative of interest.

Supervised arrangement for readings, research, assignments, fieldwork, and/or internship as agreed upon by faculty instructor and academic dean. Credits awarded by arrangement.

Note: Credits vary from 1-4

This is a seminar focused on theoretical issues in public budgeting. The aim of the seminar is for the student to understand the central issues and questions in the areas of public budgeting and public finance, and the place of this field of study within the larger context of public administration, thus enabling the student to incorporate public budgeting and finance concepts into their research agenda.

This course examines critical questions of public expenditures in the United States. The goal of the course is to understand the reasons for government intervention in the economy, the extent of that intervention, and the responses of individuals and firms to the government’s actions. Specific topics include public goods, environmental and health externalities, political economy, fiscal federalism, education finance and policies, healthcare finance and policies, and welfare programs.

This course introduces students to basic financial and managerial accounting principles, techniques and concepts that relate to the allocation, investment, and control of public funds. Students will learn how to use financial information to make decisions in public, health, and not-for-profit organizations. Some of the topics covered in this class include financial condition analysis, cash and pension fund investing, time value of money, accounting and financial reporting.