Courses Typically Offered in the Spring

The Realities of Managing Complex Health Systems

The Realities of Managing Complex Health Systems course is designed to provide students with an up close perspective of how large health systems operate. Using real life case studies, expert insight, and relevant reading materials the course will outline the problems, issues, and possible solutions for essential areas of management, operations, and finance such as:

Constructing National Development Strategies

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.

Data Visualization and Storytelling

In our increasingly data-reliant and data-saturated society, people who understand how to leverage data to generate insights have the power to change the world. Data visualization and storytelling is a crucial skill for policy and data analysts, communications and marketing professionals, and managers and decision-makers within nonprofits, social organizations and the government. With the advent of visualization tools that do not require coding, data storytelling in the digital age is also an attainable skill set for people with varying levels of technical ability.

Understanding Social Enterprise

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.

Advanced Data Analytics and Evidence Building

The goal of this course is to develop the key data analytics skill sets necessary to inform evidence-based policy. Its design offers hands-on training in how to make sense of and use large scale real world heterogeneous datasets in the context of addressing real world problems. Students will learn how to scope a policy problem, understand the data generation process, how to manage, combine, and structure data, and how to create, measure and analyze the effect of different data decisions.

Introduction to Data Analytics for Public Policy, Administration, and Management

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.

Introduction to Database Design, Management, and Security

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.

Capstone: Advanced Lab in Social Innovation II

Couples with CAP-GP.3301

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 working on a pre-approved, team-generated project in which they develop a business case or prototype to create social impact or launch a social enterprise.

Strategic Management for Healthcare Organizations

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?").

Large Scale Data Analysis with Machine Learning I

The past decade has seen the increasing availability of very large scale data sets, arising from the rapid growth of transformative technologies such as the Internet and cellular telephones, along with the development of new and powerful computational methods to analyze such datasets. Such methods, developed in the closely related fields of machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence, provide a powerful set of tools for intelligent problem-solving and data-driven policy analysis.

Large Scale Data Analysis with Machine Learning II

The past decade has seen the increasing availability of very large scale data sets, arising from the rapid growth of transformative technologies such as the Internet and cellular telephones, along with the development of new and powerful computational methods to analyze such datasets. Such methods, developed in the closely related fields of machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence, provide a powerful set of tools for intelligent problem-solving and data-driven policy analysis.

Introduction to Structured Finance: Strategies for Municipal, Health and Corporate Finance

This course examines the process by which financing objectives are transformed into municipal bond transactions and other opportunities to utilize structured finance products in the health and corporate finance sectors. The course will center on a case study of an actual bond transaction that financed multiple new money (construction) and refunding projects. We will learn the mathematics underlying financial structure and the governing conventions and vocabulary of structured finance. We will study the instruments of structured finance and how they manifest into structural form.