Courses

This foundational seminar examines and analyzes models of democratic accountability to identify viable techniques and strategies for encouraging effective public participation in governance. Provides a theoretical underpinning for discussions of public ethics. .

Research Methods for Public Affairs and Applied Statistics
Use of quantitative information and research in politics and public policy. Topics include research design and methodology, statistical association, causal reasoning, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and geographic information systems. Students are exposed to appropriate statistical and database software.

Writing for Political Professionals
Essential writing skills required for political professionals including such writing styles as press releases, speeches, talking points, policy memos, policy briefs, position papers, opinion editorials, and grants.

Public Affairs Colloquium
This capstone seminar course provides grounding for the fieldwork internship experience and research project as well as a forum for the presentation of these projects. The colloquium will be open to the public.

Master's Capstone Project
Master's degree candidates will propose, design, and implement a substantial and original research project designed to intergrate theory and knowledge with political action. Topics should be designed in conjunction with the internship experience and be of interest to the host organization.

Public Affairs Fieldwork
This intensive fieldwork internship is required for completion of the degree. Students are expected to successfully complete 400 hours working with a public affairs organization including political campaigns, advocacy agencies, community organizations, neighborhood associations, public offices, or similar entities. This non-credit, required internship will be arranged, facilitated, and directed by faculty along with an on-site supervisor.

ELECTIVE COURSES

Campaign Management and Organization
Explores choices made by campaigns in staffing a campaign and devising and executing a campaign plan. Includes fundraising, field organizing, voter targeting, volunteer recruitment, and get-out-the-vote efforts..

Campaign Strategy and Elections
Examines the legal framework within which campaigns operate in the United States and locally. Addresses campaign finance and other regulations and situates the strategic decisions made by campaigns within a legal and political context.  This class leans heavily on guest practitioners explaining their craft.

Mobilizing for Political Action
This course combines theories of political mobilizing with applications from labor and grassroots organizing. Examines mobilization in the context of electoral and extra-institutional campaigns, and combines strategic considerations for inspiring and organizing mobilization with practical skills in power mapping, organizatoin-building, and leadership development.

Politics and Political Advocacy
Considers the role of organized advocacy and interest groups within American political processes. Explores the development of advocacy strategies including lobbying and issue advocacy.

Governmental and Intergovernmental Relations
Explores the principles of, and skills required in, governmental relations. Particular focus on American federalism and the practice of intergovernmental relations between branches and layers of governmental institutions.

Urban Public Policy Issues
An introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on the central public policy challenges facing urban areas in the United States from a global perspective. Explores relationships between private economy and public policies in American cities; causes of urban decline and uneven development; and urban redevelopment and human capital policies. Includes development politics, land use, housing, transportation, and the political and institutional settings for policy making.

Understanding Public Opinion and Political Persuasion
Considers the processes by which people make decisions and behave politically. Covers theories of public opinion, political socialization, and political behavior. Includes the essential skills required to design and interpret survey research.

Citizen Participation and Community Power
Addresses the relationship between civil society and the state in contemporary American politics. the course considers the role of civic engagement and participation in politics and government and the viability of community associations and other neighborhood organizations as sources of political power.

Strategic Communications
This class addresses the formulation of communications strategies as a basis for advocacy and political persuasion. Examines messaging, policy framing, media relations, and processes of macro and micro targeting. Develops skills in various forms of communications including both written and oral.

American Urban Politics
Explores the political development and contemporary political dynamics of U.S. cities. Includes processes of political mobilization and governance, elections, public policy formation, role of nonprofits and community-based organizations, and economic, ethnic, and cultural conflicts.

Intergovernmental Relations and Lobbying
Explores the principles of governmental relations, and the skills required for successful advocacy.  While this class focuses on lobbying, it explores the importance of coalition-building, messaging, relationships, subject expertise, and other facets of the business

Media and Politics
This course is designed to give students a practical understanding of how the media and political worlds interact on a day-to-day basis. Through projects based on real-world scenarios and discussion, students will develop a sense of what is required of a media strategist.

Project Issue Advocacy
This course is designed to help students learn the skills of collaboration, project planning and issue advocacy campaign execution. The project-based course goal calls for students to work as a team to create an online presence for a particular issue or cause that is decided upon by the class in the first two meetings. The end-product of the course will include a Web site designed according to a coordinated message strategy, research that can be featured on the site, and some type of press event, fundraiser or other event that moves the agenda of the selected topic forward.

Non-Profits and Public Policy
This class explores the role of nonprofit organizations in the formation and implementation of public policy in the United States. Topics include an introductory review of public policy process, lobbying and advocacy, building organizational capacity to participate in public policy, government regulation of nonprofit organizations, developing advocacy campaigns, public policy analysis, ballot initiatives, ethics in public interest lobbying, grantmaking for public policy and challenges to nonprofit advocacy