Courses

Management and Leadership is designed to empower you with the skills you will need to make meaningful change in the world—whether you care about bike lanes, criminal justice, prenatal care, community development, urban planning, social investment, or something else. Whatever your passion, you can have an impact by leading and managing. In this course, you will enhance the technical, interpersonal, conceptual, and political skills needed to run effective and efficient organizations embedded in diverse communities, policy arenas, sectors, and industries.

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.

Advocacy Lab is for those who could imagine working in national or local advocacy organizations that make change happen or anyone who wants to understand the art of issue advocacy as a theory and method of social change. An advocacy campaign attempts to impact public policy, most often through changes in regulations and/or legislation.

Rooted in Hannah Arendt’s 1946 concept of “The Right to Have Rights,” this course will focus on the ways in which the 21st century emergence of states and nationalities globally created both structured approaches to citizenship, along with a wide range of permissions and restrictions governing it.

This course provides an introduction to the political institutions and processes through which public policy is made and implemented in the United States (although the key concepts are applicable to other political systems as well). The course also introduces students to the tools of policy analysis. The first half of the course presents the major models of policymaking and policy analysis. The second half of the course applies these concepts to specific policy areas such as health, education, and environment, as illustrated by real-world case studies.

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 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 offer an introduction to transportation planning, including both theoretical and practical approaches.  This course will provide an understanding of the evolution and role of urban public transportation modes, systems and services.  Additional topics will be introduced, depending upon speaker availability. Subjects in general will include characteristics of different modes (rail, bus, air), scheduling, budgeting, Federal grants, modeling, route design considerations, transit oriented development, public involvement, and project development.

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.

This course provides an introduction to the impact investing landscape and its evolution, players, and tools. After situating impact investing vis à vis both other forms of investing and other social change tools, we explore what makes an investment impactful - and how one would go about determining that and measuring it. Through a combination of readings, case studies, class discussion, and projects, students will gain deep insight into the perspective of the impact investor and consider how it relates to other stakeholders and to social change writ large.

Continuation of CAP-GP.3601.

Open only to students in the MSPP program. Multiple regression is the core statistical technique used by policy and finance analysts in their work. In this course, you will learn how to use and interpret this critical statistical technique. Specifically you will learn how to evaluate whether regression coefficients are biased, whether standard errors (and thus t statistics) are valid, and whether regressions used in policy and finance studies support causal arguments.

This course examines pressing public service challenges through a rotating focus that responds to current developments and instructor expertise.

The goal of this course is to establish a first-principles understanding of the qualitative and quantitative techniques, tools, and processes used to wield data for effective decision-making. Its approach focuses on pragmatic, interactive learning using logical methods, basic tools, and publicly available data to practice extracting insights and building recommendations. It is designed for students with little prior statistical or mathematical training and no prior pre-exposure to statistical software.

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.

Capital is but a tool – one that can be used for many different purposes. This course critically examines the role of capital and its appurtenant power as drivers of societal outcomes, providing a framework to interrogate finance as both a locus of and an instrumentality for social change.

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.

This course offers a hands-on opportunity for doctoral and advanced masters students to experience the practice of qualitative research. We will address the nature of qualitative research in the administrative and policy sciences, with ample opportunities to discuss the implications of the choices made in designing, implementing and reporting on the findings of a “mock” project which we will determine in class, with your input.

This course explores the political and economic policy issues surrounding hunger and food security, drawing on many case examples. The course will provide an overview of some of the core dimensions of global hunger and food security policy issues, including debates over reconfiguring food systems to address health, equity, and sustainability; a new green revolution; food aid; fair trade, and role of the food system in addressing climate change.

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.

Corporate philanthropy and engagement is an evolving space which is critical to the existence and operation of nonprofit organizations. The role of the private sector in helping nonprofits achieve their mission, serve their clients and realize their expected goals and outcomes is unique and very different from the role that government funders and individual major donors play.

This course offers a policy lens on two of the most consequential and contested issues in American governance: policing and incarceration. Students will examine how the modern police institution emerged and whether it actually reduces crime, why police violence and misconduct have proven so difficult to curb, how the United States came to imprison people at such high rates, and what drives the stubborn persistence of these systems despite widespread calls for change.

Effective development, planning execution and communication of special projects are critical to all types of public service organizations. Service organization, health providers, nonprofits and government organizations constantly pursue new initiatives and projects to address the demands of their constantly changing environment. This course offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods for directing projects and provides students with tools that prepare them for success as a project manager.