Courses

Using “business as a force for good”, social entrepreneurs implement innovative private sector approaches to solve social, cultural and/or environmental problems.  Surviving start-up and scaling to maximize impact is both an art and a science, especially when attempted without outside investments.  Statistics show that approximately 10% of small businesses surpass $1 million in revenues, while only 0.5% surpass $10 million.  Fundamentals of Social Entrepreneurship will draw upon the real-life successes and challenges faced by the professor and other social entreprene

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.

Students will learn the fundamentals of web development with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and github.   Using Free and Open Source Spatial Data tools, students will learn to bring their maps to life on the web as interactive experiences.  Use tools like QGIS, CartoDB and PostGIS.  Final project will be an interactive web map around an Urban topic of your choosing.

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.

This course is appropriate for students interested in the role that leadership plays in advancing social innovation and social change in the context of democratic governance.

This course introduces students to basic statistical methods and their application to management, policy, and financial decision-making. The course covers the essential elements of descriptive statistics, univariate and bivariate statistical inference, and introduces multivariate analysis. In addition to covering statistical theory the course emphasizes applied statistics and data analysis, using the software package, Stata.

In the context of a growing number of intersecting local, national, and global crises, each warranting political strategy, operational responses, and humanitarian planning across a range of states, agencies, movements, technical and political actors, this course focuses on exploring: the relationships between and among decision-makers and affected populations; the political economy of resource mobilization and distribution; the practical tools, frameworks, and blueprints used for response; questions of power in the context of emergency, and; historical determinants of humanitarian need, res

This non-credit course is an excellent opportunity for all incoming Wagner students to jump-start their academic journey relative to both the foundational content as well as the classroom experience of Wagner graduate coursework. It is required of all students who did not complete their bachelor's degree at a four-year institution in the U.S. and is open to all entering Wagner students.

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?").

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of U.S. workers involved in work stoppages in 2018 reached its highest point since the mid-1980s. The resurgence of the use of strikes and worker activists withholding labor is set against the backdrop of enormous societal challenges like wealth and income inequality, climate change, and a lack of affordable, quality health care.  

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 examines historic and contemporary patterns of racial and ethnic stratification often found at the center of disputes concerning urban development, the allocation of city resources and unequal distributions of power. Also embedded throughout the course are ongoing analyses of the ways in which structural inequalities often function in class and gender-specific ways.

The consequences of disastrous events are escalating globally in terms of lives lost, injuries, adverse social conditions, economic costs, and environmental destruction. Furthermore, the rapidity of action required when an emergency arises poses unique challenges to traditional planning and the provision of public services.

This course examines the nature and extent of poverty primarily in the U.S. but with a comparative perspective (developed countries in Europe). To start, this course will focus on how poverty is defined and measured. It will proceed to explore how conceptions of poverty are socially constructed and historically bounded; examine what the causes and consequences of poverty are and discuss how these are complex and interwoven; and show how people can experience poverty at different points in their life course—some groups experiencing poverty more so than others.

This course will explore best and evolving practices in the financial management and impact measurement of social enterprises.  The class will be taught from the perspective of the social entrepreneur and social enterprise manager and introduce cases to assess financial challenges, fiscal performance and financing strategy of pioneering firms with a social mission.

In this course, students examine the challenges and opportunities of national development. Following Lant Pritchett, we define national development as the lockstep improvement in (i) economic productivity, (ii) political representation, (iii) public sector’s administrative capacity, and (iv) respect for minority rights. In contrast to targeted or piece-meal policy interventions that strive to improve conditions in one sector or alleviate the poverty of a chosen group, the pursuit of national development promises sustained gains to the entire nation.

This course is designed to help students learn the process of social innovation and the role of social enterprises in implementing private sector approaches to solve difficult social, cultural, and environmental problems. Students will learn how to launch and scale innovative social enterprises and use business as a force of good.

International development assistance has evolved considerably in the post WWII period. Although some of the initial development agencies are still operating and remain influential, the way they function has evolved and important new players have entered the field. This course provides an overview of contemporary debates in international development assistance with a detailed review of the major actors - multilateral, bilateral, and nongovernmental.

The word "design" has traditionally been used to describe the visual aesthetics of objects such as books, websites, products, interiors, architecture, and fashion. But increasingly, the definition of design has expanded to include not just artifacts but strategic services and systems. As the challenges and opportunities facing businesses, organizations, and society grow more complex, and as stakeholders grow more diverse, an approach known as "design thinking" is playing a greater role in finding meaningful paths forward.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) involves the use of microeconomics to formally assess the costs and benefits of different projects or investments. CBA is required for major regulations in the United States and is frequently used as a key input into major policy decisions. Understanding its advantages and limitations, and being able to distinguish well-conducted from poor analyses, is an important skill for a policy analyst.

In this course students will learn the fundamentals of financial institutions and markets, along with risk measurement and management. Through readings, lectures, real-world case studies, and assignments, students will gain an understanding of how financial institutions and markets work, the basics of how financial instruments are priced, and then primarily through case studies examine how risk measurement and management failures led to disasters in financial markets, institutions and/or products. 

All public and nonprofit organizations must assemble and report information on their performance. The need for performance measures goes beyond legal and regulatory requirements. To provide services effectively and efficiently, managers need information to make decisions. This course focuses on what performance measures are needed, how they should be created and what forms of communication are most effective.

This course serves as an introduction to those evaluation tools most commonly used to assess the performance of programs, services, and policies in both the public and private sectors. Topics include needs assessment; explication and assessment of program theory; implementation and process assessment; research design, measurement, and sampling for outcome and impact evaluation; and the ethics of conducting program evaluation. The focus is on critical analysis and understanding of both the underlying programs and their evaluations.

All public and nonprofit organizations must assemble and report information on their performance. The need for performance measures goes beyond legal and regulatory requirements. To provide services effectively and efficiently, managers need information to make decisions. This course focuses on what performance measures are needed, how they should be created and what forms of communication are most effective.