Courses

Restricted to students in the Executive MPA Program.

This course is designed to create an “action learning” community in which students will integrate their professional experiences, and other graduate course work, with a final exploration of leadership concepts, theory and applied practice.

This course is a general introduction to nonprofit management, with heavy emphasis on practical application. How do nonprofit organizations actually function? How do they attract “customers?” How do these companies grow when there are no owners with financial incentives to grow the business? What are the core elements of a “good” nonprofit company? What are the metrics for determining the health of a company without profit?  And, what, exactly does nonprofit even mean?

Public service work involves some amount of writing and communications. But the tools for success have dramatically changed in the last few years with the development and deployment of Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence. This communications course will equip students with the skills to leverage AI tools, such as GPT, GrammarlyGo, and other AI products, to produce compelling and persuasive communication  deliverables.

As a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico is a critical site for exploring public service leadership challenges and opportunities in a contemporary colonial context. This course explores leveraging leadership for resilience and success during fiscal, environmental, and social crises. This seven-day trip will require site visits with leaders in the nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sectors at organizations that provide opportunities for real-time perspective-taking and knowledge exchanges.

In this course, students will be introduced to methodological and practical issues involved in carrying out spatial analyses when planning for (and emerging from) an emergency or disaster. The course is, therefore, composed of lectures, discussions, and technical exercises pertaining to data collection, analysis, and interpretation for disaster management. Along with demonstrating the analytical capability of GIS for planning, risk, and vulnerability assessment, this course introduces students to different tools required in hazard mitigation, risk analysis, and mapping.

Introduction to Public Policy covers a wide range of topics, from the norms and values informing democratic policymaking to the basics of cost-benefit and other tools of policy analysis. Though emphases will differ based on instructor strengths, all sections will address the institutional arrangements for making public policy decisions, the role of various actors-including nonprofit and private-sector professionals-in shaping policy outcomes, and the fundamentals (and limits) of analytic approaches to public policy.

Couples with CAP-GP 3802. For MPA-Health students.

Couples with CAP-GP 3402. For MPA-PNP students.

Introduction to Public Policy covers a wide range of topics, from the norms and values informing democratic policymaking to the basics of cost-benefit and other tools of policy analysis. Though emphases will differ based on instructor strengths, all sections will address the institutional arrangements for making public policy decisions, the role of various actors-including nonprofit and private-sector professionals-in shaping policy outcomes, and the fundamentals (and limits) of analytic approaches to public policy.

This course introduces students to the main areas of corporate finance and how they relate to policy issues and discussions. The course covers topics in the three main areas of corporate finance: 1) capital structure (financing choices), 2) valuation (project and firm valuation) and 3) corporate governance (optimal governance structures). We will analyze how public policy, through taxes, public expenditures and regulation, affect these aspects of corporate finance.

This is a course in Contracts for the non-lawyer.  Every day we see contracts and may have to read them, sign them and/or perform them.  Many organizations are not large enough to have their own in-house counsel and calling outside counsel is expensive.  Thus, more and more executives and their staff have the responsibility of understanding the day to day contracts with which they come in contact.

Inequality and poverty are outcomes of social choices and economic relationships. Understanding their causes and implications points to ways that economies and societies fit together—as well as who wins and who loses from economic and policy choices, and why.  The seminar draws on research in the social sciences with an emphasis on economics. The aim is to explore research questions, with a mix of early studies and recent empirical approaches, together with perspectives on policy.

Open only to students in the MSPP program. Communication Skills for Policy Analysts is a seminar course that simulates a fast-paced public policy environment where different stakeholders require a constant flow of written and oral communication work products. Each work product assignment will be treated as a case with a specific audience, background information and real-world situation and will require outside research and collaboration. MS in Public Policy students will draw on knowledge and techniques being learned in their other Fall coursework.

Research is an important part of the policy process: it can inform the development of programs and policies so they are responsive to community needs, it can help us determine what the impacts of these programs and policies are, and it can help us better understand populations or social phenomena. This half-semester course serves as an introduction to how to ethically collect data for research projects, with an in-depth look at focus groups and surveys as data collection tools. We will also learn about issues related to measurement and sampling.

This course explores ethical dilemmas in creating health policies and running health systems, though the ethical dilemmas have relevance beyond the health sector and non-health students are welcome as well. We begin with two policy-making sessions, taking up the question: under what conditions can one violate their personal values in an effort to get a policy deal that would benefit many done?

Though the policymaking process is complex, with a host of actors and competing interests, public policy is traditionally shaped by elected officials, administrative agencies, and organized interest groups. There are many avenues for policies to be informed by the lived experience of members of low-income and marginalized communities; however, their participation is often hidden and/or undervalued.

Climate change is one of the defining public policy challenges of the 21st century. This course begins by reviewing the essential climate science most relevant to policymakers before turning to policy responses and the political challenges of implementation. The first part of the course focuses on decarbonization, or how societies can transition away from the use of fossil fuels to renewable energy.

This one-week travel class to Amsterdam offers an immersive journey into the heart of sustainable urbanism. The course offers a unique opportunity for students to delve deep into the city's pioneering approaches to sustainable mobility, climate adaptation, and urban tech.

This is an advanced course for students who plan to become policy analysts.  Students (a) extend their familiarity with methodologic issues, including research designs, measurement problems, and analytic approaches; (b) get hands-on experience with management, analysis, and presentation of data; and (c) develop skills in reading, critiquing, and reporting on policy-relevant research.

This course addresses the macro and micro effects of gender in the workplace, from the complicated reasons for the lack of representation of women in senior leadership across sectors to the dynamics of individuals of various genders working together. The landscape of the workplace has changed dramatically over the last few decades, and with a shift towards a more diverse and global workforce, understanding the intersection of work dynamics and gender is critical.

This course focuses on the three sets of key questions: (1) mission and vision ("What areas or activities should we be working in?"); (2) strategy and operations ("How can we perform effectively in this area?"); and (3) leadership (“What leadership skills are needed to develop and implement strategies effectively?”).  We will cover both strategy formulation ("What should our strategy be?") and strategy implementation ("What do we need to do to make this strategy work?"). 

This half-semester course will focus on the analysis of data. We will discuss cleaning raw data – including trimming, variable transformations, and dealing with missing data – before turning to complex survey data. We will discuss how regression analysis differs when using complex survey data. Students will take real data and produce a cleaned version, as well as perform simple analyses using multiple regression. One key skill you will learn in this class is Stata, a commonly used statistics package.

The NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) is a unique inter-disciplinary, experiential learning course that exposes students to the work of an early-stage impact investor, from crafting an investment thesis to sourcing companies, performing due diligence, and ultimately executing an investment.