Minor in Public Service

The Public Service Program offered by the Department of Politics enables students of all majors to minor in public service. The minor is designed to combine ideals and skills with academic learning. It offers three unique opportunities. First, the minor provides an academic path to understanding the complex world of government institutions, political process, and the struggles and compromises that produce policy and change. With courses that illuminate the legislative process, bureaucratic politics and policy creation and implementation, students can be on their way to becoming sophisticated players and savvy change agents. Second, the program offers an opportunity for students to explore their own ideas regarding serving the public. In the Program, they are encouraged to articulate their ideals about justice and service as they expand their knowledge, skills and experience. Third, the minor provides a valuable opportunity to link the general theory of the classroom with practical "real world" experience. With the Public Administration Internship, students will be placed in public agencies where they will do meaningful work and learn the vocabulary of the bureaucracy. They will see public service from above, through the eyes of the agency that serves the public. Students, however, also will experience another sort of placement, the field placement requirement. Students can satisfy this requirement by volunteering in the community or by formally taking a course with their field placement. Their work might relate to the problem of homelessness, AIDS, or drug abuse. Here the students will see the problem from below, through the eyes of those who need services, sometimes desperately. With fieldwork and work in a public agency under their belts, students can judge for themselves how well the lessons of texts apply in the day-to-day context of addressing problems of our society.

The Program requires the following:

Four core courses, chosen from:

• POLS - 118 Introduction to Public Administration
• POLS - 396 Public Administration Internship and two (2) of the following:
• POLS - 323 Lawmaking
• POLS - 361 Bureaucratic Politics
• POLS - 362 Public Policy
• POLS - 363 Housing and Homeless Policy
• POLS - 364 California Politics
• POLS - 365 Applied Policy Analysis
• POLS - 366 Environmental Policy
• POLS - 367 Public Policy: Drug Policy
• POLS - 368 Public Policy: Punishment

One elective chosen from the Program's interdepartmental list of recommended electives (available in the Politics Department).

Note: Students may complete more than one minor. But in doing so, students may count no more than 2 courses for any two or more minors. In other words, for each 5-course minor, at least 3 of those courses must be unique to that minor, and not be used to satisfy any other minor.