Courses

Corporate social innovation is an evolving practice of organizations of varying size and purpose to adapt to business activities with mission-driven models that produce social and environmental outcomes. The course will rigorously explore the evolution and modalities of corporate social responsibility, with particular attention to cross-sector collaboration with government and civil society, often using innovative social finance mechanisms, impact measurement, to get there.

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.

Cross-sector collaborations are a response to the increasing recognition that many of the pressing challenges of our time are complex and requires a systems approach. Such challenges must involve multiple stakeholders, guided by principles of inclusion and equity, and draw on a full range of resources to achieve results that cannot be achieved by working in silos, including stakeholders’ expertise, experience and insights, relationships and networks, and financial contributions.

This course will explore the fault lines within the field of philanthropy and prepare students to effectively leverage resources for their organizations. The course will examine different approaches to grantmaking including: social entrepreneurship, effective altruism, venture philanthropy, social justice grantmaking, and strategic philanthropy.  Students will learn the differences across these conceptual frameworks and understand how they influence the ways in which foundations establish goals, develop strategies, evaluate grantees, and determine grant awards.

Spirituality & ethics is an integral segment of every religious tradition, along with sciences like that of theology and jurisprudence. In recent yearsIslamic spirituality has often been described as somehow separate from Islam itself. In this course we will investigate the historical origins of Islamic spirituality and look at a sampling of the major concepts and figures from pre-modern tradition.

In the coming decades, water will be the central issue in global economic development and health.  With one in six people around the world currently lacking access to safe drinking water (1.2 billion people), and more than two out of six lacking adequate sanitation (2.6 billion people), water is already a critical factor affecting the social and economic well-being of a sizable proportion of the world's population.  However, with the world's population projected to double in over the next fifty years, and with rapidly dwindling water supplies becoming both more scarce and more vol

This course examines how government agencies implement plans, policies, and projects under real-world constraints. Government agencies are some of the largest and most consequential organizations shaping contemporary life, especially for the poor. Their importance is even more evident now, as governments around the world continue to mishandle the pandemic, slide towards authoritarianism, and abuse the rights of vulnerable people. Surprisingly, their outsized influence is rarely matched by an adequate amount of attention.

Over the last few decades, disparities in income, wealth, and mobility have widened in the United States, but the U.S. fares worse in wealth inequality than income inequality. Wealth, in particular, is crucial to many functions across the life course and between generations, including but not limited to: spending on healthcare and education, acquiring and retaining investments for profit, weathering unexpected expenses or shocks, ascribing social status, and transferring assets to children and/or other family members.

The last three decades have witnessed a global proliferation of public sector restructuring, decentralization, and democratization in developing countries. Traditional development planning has adapted (unevenly) to these trends as they have unfolded. This course presents an overview of the evolution of the theory and practice of planning in developing countries with a particular focus on subnational governments.

This course examines the special mix of tools, tactics, theories and trends that shape and transform cities.   It will be grounded in case studies that look at both successful and unsuccessful urban revitalization strategies in places ranging from Times Square (in different decades) to the Bronx River to Singapore to Atlantic City.  Seasoned guest speakers, who in the past have included “Broken Windows” author George Kelling, the Director of the Brownsville Partnership, a NYPost columnist, the Director of a Public Art initiative, a former Atlantic City public official, and th

This course is designed to give you a better understanding of the legal and administrative framework used to regulate land use at various levels of government, and the relationship of the planner to the law. We will cover basic legal procedures as well as statutory and regulatory materials relating to zoning, urban renewal and eminent domain, regulatory takings, inclusionary housing, historic preservation, and environmental law.

This course will provide undergraduate students with an understanding of the political and governmental processes that influence New York City. The course will explore the structure of the municipal government, the role of the mayor and city council, the way in which state and regional agencies affect public services, and the role of the media in the political life of New York City.

The Doctoral Research Colloquium incorporates the NYU Wagner Seminar series at which prominent researchers present current work on pressing social issues. The speakers represent a range of disciplines and methodological approaches, and are affiliated with institutions from around the country. Doctoral students registered for the colloquium will actively engage with the seminar speaker both during and after the presentations. Course requirements also include written critiques of the presented papers.

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.

Healthcare Reimbursement Strategies is designed to familiarize students with the various health care payment systems that are used by various healthcare payers. The course focuses on Medicare's prospective payment systems for hospital and other provider type reimbursement. It also covers New York State Medicaid reimbursement issues and provides a general understanding of the healthcare charge structure. The course will also focus on the fundamentals of establishing a compliance program to identify and prevent fraud and abuse issues.

This graduate 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.

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.

Cross-sector collaborations are a response to the increasing recognition that many of the pressing challenges of our time are complex and requires a systems approach. Such challenges must involve multiple stakeholders, guided by principles of inclusion and equity, and draw on a full range of resources to achieve results that cannot be achieved by working in silos, including stakeholders’ expertise, experience and insights, relationships and networks, and financial contributions.

This course will explore the fault lines within the field of philanthropy and prepare students to effectively leverage resources for their organizations. The course will examine different approaches to grantmaking including: social entrepreneurship, effective altruism, venture philanthropy, social justice grantmaking, and strategic philanthropy.  Students will learn the differences across these conceptual frameworks and understand how they influence the ways in which foundations establish goals, develop strategies, evaluate grantees, and determine grant awards.

We enter any subject of investigation filled with learned viewpoints, opinions, and select facts that we choose to employ. This helps to make the task of uncovering what we mean by Jewish and Jewish community fraught with unusual difficulty. Whatever our background, it will be hard to shake preconceived positions. In addition, the Jewish community seeks to nurture purely voluntary association at a time of little support in the popular culture for sustaining communal norms, existing institutions or unenforceable obligations.

An understanding of government budgeting is critical to understanding the policy process and the workings of government. This course covers the theory and practice of government budgeting at both the national and subnational levels. It reviews how governments raise revenue, the process and procedures by which they allocate funds, and the various budgetary institutions that shape fiscal outcomes.

This course builds on the material from the core Financial Management class to further develop skills in managerial and financial accounting. The course covers the recording process (journal entries, T-accounts, adjusting entries, and closing entries), financial statement modeling, and financial statement analysis. In addition, students will learn more about for-profit accounting and corporate structure, as well as how financial management differs across the government, not-for-profit, and for-profit sectors.

This short course will explore the concept of accountability within humanitarian intervention. In particular it will look at the contemporary significance of accountability for humanitarian response – when and why it has become an important concept for humanitarian intervention, and specific events that have led to a shift from donors to recipients of aid as the agents of accountability. 

 

Key questions that will be explored include: