This course examines mediation principles, and the role, ethics, and techniques of ombudsman in public sector. Models of mediation are compared, and students share in class their application and/or adaptation of mediation to their current or desired public sector duties.

NOTE: Students may take either PUBA 768 or 772.

This course gives students a working knowledge of the multi-disciplinary approach to governance as embraced by the theories of public administration. The course will include discussions on public management, values, organizational theory, and politics, among other topics. It will review the history and development of public administration, delve into the theories that are integral to the discipline, and review practical approaches to the application of these theories. 

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.

This course acquaints students with the concept of productivity, its importance in the public sector, principal techniques used to improve productivity in local government, and barriers to productivity improvement initiatives.

This course emphasizes the practical application and implementation of various approaches to economic development. Students will apply tools/strategies by doing case studies and small group projects based on real-world scenarios faced by local practitioners.

This course is designed to acquaint students with the grant seeking process for not-for-profit and public sector agencies. Through a review of specific writing techniques, students will practice and learn how to produce proposals that are comprehensive, cogent, and accountable to the objectives of the grantor agency.

Students may not receive credit for both PUBA 763 and PUBA 764. 

This course explores the nature of city or county manager’s job: expectations of elected body, staff, public and professional peers. It examines contemporary issues in departmental operations that have significant effect on how manager’s performance is perceived.

This course examines the managerial challenges posed by nonprofit organizations and techniques and practices used by nonprofit managers to help their organizations succeed.

Students gain knowledge of the behaviors and practices of human resource management, as well as an overview of diversity and inclusion in public sector workforces. Class learning is both theoretical and experiential.