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Program Learning Outcomes

The Master of Public Administration equips graduates with the following skills and knowledge:

  • Professionalism. 

    • Effectively lead, manage, support, and collaborate with peers and across organizational boundaries in the public interest

    • Recognize, adapt to, and make decisions in changing and increasingly complex environments

    • Become effective users of communication and collaboration as tools for negotiating, creating, and implementing new solutions

    • Work to solve local, national, and international problems in public, private, and/or nonprofit administration with the goal of strengthening communities and improving lives

    • Participate in, and contribute to, the policy process

    • Articulate, apply, and advance a public service perspective

    • Reflect upon the social and ethical responsibilities and the equity implications linked to the application of their knowledge and judgments
  • Core Knowledge. 

    • Fluency in the theory of public administration necessary for professional practice

    • Apply management and policy tools for addressing urban and environmental policy problems

    • Identify problems of practice and to locate innovations that can address these problems
  • Research Methods and Analysis. 
    • Design a sound applied research study grounded in relevant peer-reviewed research

    • Collect, analyze and use qualitative and quantitative data to inform decision making that best serves the well-being of the public

    • Conduct a review of research on specific topics in public administration in order to inform organizational decision-making

    • Critically consume and use data and representations of data by evaluating their relative strengths and limitations

    • Translate results from academic research into practical guidance
  • Communication. 
    • Structure coherent written documents that present and evaluate evidence to support claims

    • Understand and properly use writing styles found in academic research and policy outlets

    • Make clear and cogent oral presentations

    • Communicate and interact productively and in culturally responsive ways with a diverse and changing workforce

    • Communicate and interact productively and in culturally responsive ways with society at large