PAD 6048.10 – Financing State and Local Government
There are right and wrong ways to pay for state and local government. You will learn them all in this class taught by a nationally known expert on state and local public finance. You will learn about this topic through the lens of the principles of sound fiscal policy - with a healthy dose of politics, economics, the law and other influences on the process. This course has inspired a whole generation of Trachtenberg students to enter into state and local public finance. *according to a poll of instructors who have taught this course at GWU for the past 20 years.
PPPA 6044.10 – State Politics and Policy
If you want to take a course that will further your understanding of how and why state public policy is developed and implemented, this course is for you. Learn the political, economic, and legal issues that influence the formulation of state regulatory. And this class is unique; Trachtenberg is the only school in the nation that offers the chance to learn about this topic. Register today and find out why alumni still talk about their experience.
PPPA 6085.13 – Workforce Development Policy
This course examines 1) how jobs, careers and the skills needed for them are changing; 2) how the institutions that provide those skills -- colleges, firms, apprenticeships, etc. -- are adapting; and what key stakeholders, including governments, are doing and could do to create a better system. Professor Crawford is a former director of a state workforce board and of the National Governors Association’s division of social, economic and workforce programs. Dr. Andreason is a VP of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and director of its Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity. Currently, Andreason and Crawford are leaders of the national Better Employment and Training Strategies taskforce.
PPPA 6032 – Managing Fundraising and Philanthropy
PPPA 6032, Managing Fundraising and Philanthropy, provides a comprehensive overview of fundraising for nonprofit organizations and institutions and knowledge that is essential to students planning a leadership career in the nonprofit sector. Topics include strategies and techniques for identifying, cultivating, and soliciting individual, corporate, and foundation donors; managing complex development programs; emerging trends in fundraising and philanthropy; ethical principles; and relevant policy issues. This course is offered at 6:10 pm on Mondays during the spring semester. It counts toward the nonprofit management field of study and the Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management, which can be earned concurrently with the MPA or MPP.
PPPA 6085.14 – Higher Education Finance and Policy, Stephanie Cellini, Mondays 6:10-8pm
This course provides an overview of the U.S. higher education system and current policy debates surrounding the value of a college education, who can afford it, and how we pay for it. The two primary goals of the course are to (1) familiarize students with the U.S. higher education landscape, systems of college finance, and key policy debates, and (2) develop the analytic tools to evaluate higher education policy. Policy aims we will explore include access, persistence, completion, equity, affordability, efficiency, innovation, and accountability. Specific policy areas include financial aid, student debt and repayment, free community college, state and federal support for colleges, regulation of the for-profit sector, affirmative action, college athletics, and others. There is no pre-requisite for this class and graduate students from all disciplines are welcome, however, the course is designed for MPA, MPP, and PhD students with a familiarity with policy analysis, economics, statistics, and evaluation. The course can be applied to the fields of education policy, program evaluation and policy analysis, and budget and public finance.
PPPA 6061.10 – Banking and Financial Institutions Policy, Spring of 2022 – Mondays, 6:10-8 pm
This course examines the broad range of policy issues applicable to banking and financial institutions -- including those related to financial stability, consumer protection, monetary policy, community reinvestment, and financial technology (“fintech”). This policy area includes a number of questions that are at the forefront of the current national policy debate about how to regulate banks and other financial institutions particularly during a financial crisis. No previous finance or banking policy experience is required. The course is taught by Joseph Firschein, a senior officer at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors who leads the Fed’s policy work on community development. The course counts towards the following concentrations: urban policy, regulatory policy, social policy, and public/private partnerships.
PPPA 6085 – Public-Private Sector Collaboration to Address Global Challenges
This course is designed to foster your creative and informed thinking about how to bring seemingly divergent interests—i.e., government, nonprofits, and the private sector—together around common goals, and how to piece together respective strengths and weaknesses to address and maybe even solve global challenges. You will learn about the comparative advantages of each sector, when and why collaboration may be helpful (or unavoidable), and specific ways cross-sector collaborations are engaged to address complex challenges. Teams are a microcosm of what cross-sector collaborations aim to do: make the most of what each member has to offer to achieve a common goal. You will work in teams to design a hypothetical cross-sector collaboration to address an issue area of your choosing, grounded in a real organizational context. Aspirational goals for students in this course include to: gain a sophisticated understanding of the different paths, actors, and combinations of how change is made in the world; think beyond the obvious solutions or usual ways of doing things to propose creative and impactful approaches to addressing complex challenges; and become the individual in your professional context who has that unique idea that no one else thought of but that everyone agrees is the obvious way for all to benefit independently and collectively.
PPPA 6056 – Regulatory Comment Clinic
Much of public policy is developed and implemented, not by Congress, but by executive branch agencies through regulations. Understanding how those regulations are developed and how to make them as effective as possible is essential for achieving policy goals. In the regulatory comment clinic, you will learn the process by which agencies develop regulations, the analytical tools they use to predict their impacts, and how you can engage effectively, whether your career takes you into the federal government, to Congress, state or local government, or the private or nonprofit sector.
PPPA 6085.80 – Oil: Industry, Economy, Society
Petroleum is one of the largest and most controversial industries worldwide, and affects the fortunes of leaders, companies, and nations. Many of the largest firms in the world are in petroleum. This course takes a multidisciplinary approach (primarily political economy and management) to oil and its effects on governments, firms, and the world economy. The first half of the course adopts a top-down viewpoint, examining the global oil environment. The second half is more bottom-up, using cases to grapple with issues such as governance, transparency, and security. The course is conducted in a mixture of seminar and lecture formats. A group proposal, paper, and presentation, as well as active class participation are expected, and constitute over half the assessment. A copy of a past syllabus can be found here.
PPPA 6085.12 – Strategic Grantmaking
The Strategic Grantmaking Course will cover a variety of mechanisms and rationales for grant-making processes and recipients. The class has $40,000 to give away in grants and will examine how we might strategically define our goals and defend our choices of recipients. We'll report back to the foundation providing the grant funds (foundation is particularly interested in organizations that incorporate community voice in their decision-making). In addition, we will look at the variety of types of organizations involved in grant-making and the pros and cons of various options taken by them. Students will advance their ability to strategically seek out and administer grants and other forms of funding, primarily through nonprofit organizations (course is less relevant to government and business grant-making). Assignments include: reflection on our grantmaking process, critical presentation on one grant-making mechanism/strategy/organization type, and secondary research on a potential grant recipient and argument for funding the researched organization. If you have specific questions, please let Prof. Mary Tschirhart know.
PPPA 6085.10 Civil Rights and Economic Inequality
This seminar explores novel ways to address enduring issues of economic inequality by drawing upon approaches historically used to advance racial justice. The class will examine lessons from the civil rights movement and consider how the approaches employed in Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, affirmative action in higher education, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, could be applied on behalf of poor and working-class people of all races. The course is taught by Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. The course counts towards the following fields of study: education policy and social policy.
PPPA 6033 Nonprofit Enterprise
The course will be structured around three elements:
1. Entrepreneurship
2. The social enterprise ecosystem
3. The mechanics, tensions, and realities of starting and/or managing a nonprofit or social enterprise
In this class, students learn by doing. Students will work in small groups with local nonprofits and develop their social enterprise ideas or with students' ideas about creating their own social enterprises. Social entrepreneurship is a rapidly developing and changing field in which business and nonprofit leaders design, grow, and lead mission-driven enterprises. As the traditional lines blur between nonprofit enterprises, government, and business, it is critical that students understand the opportunities and challenges in this new landscape. In this course, students will explore this emerging field by teaching students to be entrepreneurs and how to manage social enterprises. A large component of this course is utilizing the lessons from our classroom discussions to inform practice.
EDUC8321 Economics of Education
Thurs 5-7pm Spring-2022 Instructor: Y. Nakib
This seminar introduces graduate students to economic analysis as it pertains to educational systems and their policies. The course provides an overview of basic theories in economics which apply to education problems such as human capital, productivity, economic growth, efficiency, and cost-benefit/effectiveness analysis. Students are introduced to the various approaches to analyzing the effectiveness of recent education reforms and the complexities of replicating seemingly successful policies. Contemporary education policies that intend to improve educational outcomes for low performing students and their complexities are then analyzed tapping into current research. Those include policies of teacher recruitment and pay, accountability in educational systems, school choice, class-size reduction, school funding equity, higher education access and resource allocation.