Please join us for a UNC MPA Special Topics Webinar – Women in Government featuring current student Melissa Cordell. Our Director of Admissions and student guest will discuss the inspiration behind her new podcast, ‘Women in Government’, why she decided to pursue the MPA, and what she has learned about a career in government and the importance of women in government.
This event will explore the MPA degree as an option for those considering careers in government. This event is open to anyone exploring the MPA or a career in government.
This event is for anyone interested in learning more about the Masters of Public Administration program. The event will be facilitated by our Director of Admissions, Cara Robinson along with participation from a member(s) of our community. This session is for anyone exploring the MPA, and we will talk about both of our format options – online and on-campus.
Topic areas that will be discussed include:
– What is a MPA, and who is it for?
– MPA vs. other degrees
– Why UNC MPA?
– The student experience oncampus and our curriculum
– Program Outcomes and Career Services
– Application Process and Financial Aid
UNC MPA faculty members Charles Szypszak, Maureen Berner, and Jonathan Morgan will discuss what the MPA is, who it is for, and how it relates and differs from the J.D. degree and Public Policy degrees.
Differences in curriculum and career outlooks will be discussed.
Social capital can come in many forms (trust, civic engagement, community attachment, and social networks) and has become one of the most contested concepts in social sciences. This course is designed to balance theories, methods, and applications, drawing on literatures from sociology, public policy, public administration, communication, media studies, and management.
This skills-based, half-semester course familiarizes professional program graduate students with insights into effective data communication, exposes them to a communication framework, and allows them to hone new skills through the completion of various assignments. Covered topics include developing clear messages, designing effective graphs and tables, formatting written documents, and creating multimedia presentations. While new tools and techniques feature in this course, the overarching goal is a timeless one: the sharing of ideas.
This foundation course introduces students to the historical and contemporary social, economic, political, and ethical context of public administration and governance in the United States. Students gain an understanding of public institutions and values and develop skills for interpreting and critically evaluating American public service issues.
PUBA 747 requires students to reflect on and demonstrate how they apply and integrate their learning from five required MPA courses and their professional public service work experiences to successfully respond to an applied research problem. Students will select from a list of applied research problems, conduct a literature review, collect data, and identify their preliminary findings. These steps will be informed by their professional public service work experiences given the applied research needed to produce their thesis substitutes, which will be written and evaluated by a three-person committee during PUBA 748.
In PUBA 748, students will continue to work on their applied research problem from PUBA 747. Students are expected to enter PUBA 748 with a complete (clean) dataset, including a preliminary analysis that has been revised to include the feedback from PUBA 747 instructors. In this course, students will continue with the data analysis, discuss the findings, and develop recommendations.
Nonprofit leaders and public officials rely on grants to help fund their grand plans. This course covers the process of finding grants, preparing grant proposals, and planning for and managing grant funds. It covers some of the similarities and differences between the funding process from federal/state agencies and private foundations.
NOTE: Students may take either PUBA 763 or 764.
This course covers theory and practice of dispute resolution and consensus building processes for public policy and program implementation. It focuses on workplace and service provision conflicts to develop mediation skills; is comprised of short lectures, demonstration, and student practice of a mediation model/specific skill sets.
NOTE: Students may take either PUBA 768 or 772.