Courses

This course intends to negotiate the intersection of law, race, and education by considering their multiple layers and cross-cultural history in education in the United States. We will strive to teach beyond—and perhaps constructively disrupt—the racial binary of Black and white that has historically muffled more comprehensive discussions of law, race and education.

Continuation of CAP-GP 3401. For MPA-PNP students.

Continuation of CAP-GP 3801. For MPA-Health students.

This course should help those who believe that the United States must reduce its pollution responsible for climate change. The course will provide an overview of climate science and politics. Next, we will examine the “theories of change” concept, and identify new theories of change and their policies to reduce climate pollution. Additionally, we will learn to design issue advocacy campaign plans that would create the political space essential to adopt these policies.

As part of the core curriculum of the NYU Wagner Masters program, Capstone teams spend an academic year addressing challenges and identifying opportunities for a client organization or conducting research on a pressing social question. Wagner's Capstone program provides students with a centerpiece of their graduate experience whereby they are able to experience first-hand turning the theory of their studies into practice under the guidance of an experienced faculty member.

This course, taught jointly by faculty members across the university, offers doctoral students an opportunity to learn about the latest theoretical and empirical research on critical urban issues. The course is not taught in a lecture format. Rather, the colloquium focuses on discussions of academic works in progress by scholars from around the country, working in such disciplines as sociology, history, planning, law, public health, public policy, and economics.

This course, taught jointly by faculty members across the university, offers doctoral students an opportunity to learn about the latest theoretical and empirical research on critical urban issues. The course is not taught in a lecture format. Rather, the colloquium focuses on discussions of academic works in progress by scholars from around the country, working in such disciplines as sociology, history, planning, law, public health, public policy, and economics.

From the non-stop subway ride to the “infamed” jaywalking, from the well-acclaimed Citi bike to delivery on almost anything, from the iconic yellow cab to the fist fight over a parking spot, from the Chinatown bus to congestion pricing, this course investigates the kaleidoscope of travel behavior by New Yorkers and their essential connection to the functionality of the City. It explores the unique transportation infrastructure behind these behaviors as well as the policies and rules that provide them and regulate their usage.

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.

How to make decisions in light of pervasive uncertainties? How to think about incentive structures faced by decision-makers, and think through unintended consequences of one’s decisions? Economics, for better or worse, is organized common sense. No more, also no less. This class makes use of the toolkit given to us by economics and applies them to real-world policy problems.

This course will explore how technological innovation has historically shaped and reshaped the American city in order to shed light on how these newest waves of technology are likely to impact our future. We will explore technologies that were profoundly revolutionary at their time, such as the electric light and the automobile, and examine the demands they created for new kinds of infrastructure, like our electric grid and national highway system, and how that infrastructure in turn created new forms of urban development. The course will focus on archetypal U.S.

More U.S. residents have been killed with guns since 1968 than died in all the wars since the country’s founding. Addressing this crisis means solving tenacious public health problems in the realms of science and of politics. In this course we will review the epidemiology of gun violence and the empirical foundations of efforts to address it through policy, study design, programmatic interventions, and environmental/physical design.

For MPA-Health Management and Health Financial Management students. Students experience the challenges of executive leadership and strategic decision-making in a complex, multi-health system marketplace. Students will have an opportunity to integrate the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the program and apply them to a set of challenging problems in healthcare management via a strategic simulation. The technology provides students real-time feedback on processes and performance in the field.

The global movement for truth, accountability, and reparations has a history that begins with the human rights movement in Latin America and includes (ongoing) struggles to address genocide, human rights abuse, and crimes against humanity in countries as diverse as Liberia, East Timor, Argentina, South Africa, and the United States.

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 four-day course aims to develop your ability to build, lead, and participate in high-performing teams. We will draw from research in psychology, management, strategy, behavioral economics, and sociology to discuss best practices for designing, launching, participating, and coaching in-person and online teams.

This four-day course aims to develop your ability to build, lead, and participate in high-performing teams. We will draw from research in psychology, management, strategy, behavioral economics, and sociology to discuss best practices for designing, launching, participating, and coaching in-person and online teams.

This course introduces students to the discipline of emergency management to better understand the urban planning and public service approaches necessary to prepare for, respond to, recover from and mitigate future emergency and disaster impacts. Focusing primarily on natural disasters, the course uses case study examples and recent events to expound upon the historical and conceptual frameworks that have and continue to shape this field.

Key to the planning profession is engagement. Most of a planner’s work necessitates engagement of institutions and of people in order to effectuate change, and change (or prevention thereof) is the planner’s currency. Specifically this course will look at community engagement, or engagement of the public within a defined geography. What is community? How is it defined? What does it look and feel like? And how does it manifest itself, or not, as part of the planning process? Communities in the United States are rarely equitable, particularly as it relates to planning.

Emergency events are disruptive. Whether acutely impactful and short-term, negligible and protracted, or any mix thereof, these incidents alter healthcare organizations’ abilities to consistently deliver safe and effective care. While potentially devastating, emergencies are also unique opportunities for exemplary leadership and unprecedented innovation. COVID-19, ransomware, and active shooters are, respectively, a few of the myriad natural, technological, and intentional emergency events that healthcare organizations, and their leaders, face.

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.

Open only to students in the MSPP program. Students will learn the fundamentals of budgeting and accounting for public, health, and nonprofit organizations. Through readings, lectures, real-world case studies, and assignments, students will gain an understanding of how to use financial information in organizational planning, implementation, control, reporting, and analysis. In addition, students will have the chance to develop their spreadsheet skills by using Excel to perform financial calculations and create financial documents.

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.

What would the best healthcare system look like? How would you know it is the best? What systems in wealthy nations today come close to matching this ideal? We begin this class with short documentary films that cover some of issues raised by these questions. We read and discuss articles about conventional health system models around the world and alternative perspectives for studying them and evaluating their performance. We discuss how so much of the literature draws on selective evidence to evaluate health care systems in the U.S. and abroad.