Courses

Data plays an increasingly important role in powering today’s enterprises, governments and society as a whole. With the rapid pace of innovation, data science, advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are becoming increasingly central and critical to business today. Over time, social impact organizations will deem these tools as core to achieving their mission.

This course is an introduction to major health policy issues and examines the role of government in the health care system. An important focus of the course is an assessment of the role of policy analysis in the formation and implementation of national and local health policy. Because much of government health policy relates to or is implemented through payment systems, emphasis will be placed on the discussion of the policy implications of how government pays for care.

The past decade has seen the increasing availability of very large scale data sets, arising from the rapid growth of transformative technologies such as the Internet and cellular telephones, along with the development of new and powerful computational methods to analyze such datasets. Such methods, developed in the closely related fields of machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence, provide a powerful set of tools for intelligent problem-solving and data-driven policy analysis.

Capital is but a tool – one that can be used for many different purposes. This course explores the use of finance as a tool for social change.

Throughout this four-session workshop, students will use their experiences and education as the context for a series of career-related analyses based on the following four lenses: Issue, System, Organization, and Role. All discussions will be brought back to Composing Your Career (CYC), a framework for maximizing one’s time at Wagner based on the SEER strategy: Smart, Experienced, Engaged, and Reflective. All of this will lead to an action plan to maximize one’s time at Wagner in the pursuit of a successful public service career.
 

This course examines the process by which financing objectives are transformed into municipal bond transactions and other opportunities to utilize structured finance products in the health and corporate finance sectors. The course will center on a case study of an actual bond transaction that financed multiple new money (construction) and refunding projects. We will learn the mathematics underlying financial structure and the governing conventions and vocabulary of structured finance. We will study the instruments of structured finance and how they manifest into structural form.

The goal of this course is to train advanced students on the principles, practices, and technologies required for good database design, management, and security. An introduction to the concepts and issues relating to data warehousing, governance, administration, security, privacy and alternative database structures will be provided. The course concentrates on building a firm foundation in information organization, storage, management, and security.

This course is designed to study the essential role of human resources management within healthcare organizations. It is required for health management students and recommended for health policy and finance students. In order to meet the challenges of the marketplace, organizations will need to improve the quality of the services they provide; streamline their clinical delivery and support systems, and transform their human resources management accordingly.

The Realities of Managing Complex Health Systems course is designed to provide students with an up close perspective of how large health systems operate. Using real life case studies, expert insight, and relevant reading materials the course will outline the problems, issues, and possible solutions for essential areas of management, operations, and finance such as:

This course encourages students to think creatively about what it means for a healthcare organization to make quality the highest priority. We will explore the current forces driving the push toward quality outcomes and accountability at all levels and settings of healthcare, while focusing on the philosophy of continuous improvement through team work and statistical thinking. Students will use structural tools for analysis, decision making and performance measurement.

This two-day course is designed to develop your ability to build, lead, and participate in high-performing teams. We will draw from the fields of psychology, management, strategy, and sociology to discuss best practices for designing, launching, participating in, and coaching in-person and virtual teams. We will also focus on the benefits and challenges of managing diverse teams, using teams in various contexts (including Capstone teams), understanding and managing conflict, and developing problem-solving techniques for team effectiveness.

Management consultants work in all corners of the public and nonprofit sectors on every imaginable topic—from organizational strategy to technology implementation, education to migration. But what is management consulting? Why do so many public service organizations rely on it? What skills and experience do you need to be a management consultant?  And how much good can management consulting really do for the public and nonprofit sectors?

This 7-week course exposes the students to the application and use of data analytics in setting public policy. The course does so by teaching introductory technical programming skills that allow students to learn and apply Python code on pertinent public policy data, while emphasizing on applicability. The course is accompanied by readings for each class in order to contextualize why data analytics supplements but doesn’t replace the student / professional role in setting public policy.

In study after study, people lying on their deathbeds overwhelmingly say they regret five things at their end of their life: 1. Not living a life of authenticity 2. Working too hard at the expense of their relationships 3. Not having the courage to express their feelings 4. Not staying in touch with friends. 5. Not letting themselves be happier. For leaders, it's not any different.

This course is designed to help students understand and make their own mark in today’s revolution in how to innovate.  Although the world still needs dedicated innovators of all kinds to create the new combinations of ideas for solving to difficult social problems, this course is based on the notion that durable social change depends on five tools for innovating in how to innovate: (1) innovative social exploring to call others to action and identify the root cause that needs to be addressed, (2) innovative social finance to leverage existing funding toward high-impact inv

This course teaches the principles of macroeconomic policy in an international setting. The course focuses on developing a framework for understanding the forces that determine output, employment, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates, the trade deficit, and other key macroeconomic variables. This framework is used to evaluate different macroeconomic policies in the context of different national economic environments.

This course aims to improve your ability to effectively manage and lead health service organizations.  We examine a range of key challenges that managers must address to optimize organizational performance, including questions of mission, vision, and strategy ("What areas or activities should we be working in?") and questions of organizational design and operations ("How can we perform effectively in this area?").

This course is designed for upper-class undergraduates who have a social innovation project, entrepreneurial business, or CSR idea to develop or implement. Also welcome to the course are students who would like to learn and practice success skills and employment strategies, and are willing to participate in class teams with other students who have project ideas.

This non-credit, 3-session module introduces students to the basic functionalities of Microsoft Excel such as basic formulas, absolute versus relative cell reference, formatting, and time-value of money financial functions. The module is held in a computer lab and every student has a computer. It is intended for students with limited or no Excel experience, and is designed to be taken concurrently with CORE-GP 1021 (Financial Management).

This course is designed for public and nonprofit leaders and managers rather than human resource professionals, and provides a broad overview of human resources and talent leadership. Regardless of the role you’ll play in the public/nonprofit sector, your ability to lead people will be a critical component of your and your organization’s success.  Topics will include basic human resources functions such as job design and recruitment; equity, diversity and inclusion; leading organizational change; professional development and employee engagement; providing feedback and managing performance.

Community Organizing is for those who could imagine running national or local advocacy organizations that make change happen or anyone who wants to understand the art of community organizing. It will provide an overview of and training in contemporary community organizing practice in the United States. This includes defining what community organizing is and identifying its value base; exploring the strategies, tactics and activities of organizing; and thinking about marketing, language and evaluation.

This course provides the core microeconomic theories and concepts needed to understand health and health care issues in both the developed and developing world. It describes how the markets for health and health services are different from other goods, with a particular emphasis on the role of government and market failure. In addition it discusses the theoretical and empirical aspects of key health economics issues, including the demand for health and health services, supply side concerns, health insurance, the provision of public goods, and related topics.

This course provides students with a rich sense of the institutional and political context within which policy is made and implemented. The course aims to give students exposure to important ongoing debates in international development and their historical context. The class will provide an overview of some of the major contemporary analytical and policy debates regarding the politics of development.

This course introduces the theory and practice of institutional reform in developing and transitional countries. It reviews the evolution of international development paradigms, examining how the role, structure, and management of institutions, the public sector, and non-governmental organizations have changed in response to shifting economic and political trends, with a particular emphasis on accountability. The focus is on major institutional and managerial reforms intended to promote good governance as less developed economies liberalize and their societies democratize.