MPA Electives

We offer more than 50 elective courses that cut across eight, nationally ranked specializations to mix and match the classes you need to prepare you for your career. Not every elective will be offered each year.

Deepen your skills in analysis and evaluation beyond the foundations of our core closes. These courses are designed to help students develop the skills needed to implement analysis and evaluation in a broad set of institutional contexts and prepare students for careers in which these skills can be applied to a wide variety of policy areas. Students obtain more than just familiarity with the methods of analysis and evaluation, they are trained to implement these advanced methods with expertise.

Gain the tools, methodologies, interdisciplinary perspectives, and topical knowledge necessary to become an analyst, manager, or leader at organizations addressing an array of environmental and natural resource issues. These electives provide you with a deeper understanding of policy analysis, environmental economics, the role of scientific knowledge in decision-making, and the design and management of governance systems.

Prepare to address issues of global poverty, economic development, environmental policy and management, and human rights and civil society development as analysts and development managers. In these courses, you develop strong analytic skills, an understanding of the importance of local context and culture, and the ability to connect local issues to national and global developments.

Learn to understand and manage organizations, take initiative, and act with integrity. You will develop tools to manage and lead from many types of positions within organizations. These electives engage you in topics and skills ranging from individual leadership and decision-making to stakeholder engagement, collaborative partnerships, negotiation and mediation, risk assessment, and performance management.

Help you develop the management and leadership skills and substantive topic knowledge necessary to be successful managers and leaders in nonprofit, philanthropic, and social sector organizations. You learn both the specialized skills needed to lead nonprofits, including financial management and fundraising, board governance, grant making, and community collaboration, as well as how to track and analyze policy affecting the sector.

Provide you with essential tools for managing public resources. You will develop a proficiency in a range of analytical methods, including cost analysis, budget planning and oversight, public sector accounting, financial statement analysis, tax policy design and evaluation, revenue administration, investment analysis, and debt management. These competencies are vital for developing organizational strategies, informing policy decisions, and advancing societal objectives.

Prepare for careers in government and nonprofit organizations involved in the design, implementation, management, and evaluation of education and social policies. Develop your ability to bring policy analysis and management tools to bear on issues in education and social policy.

Helps you with policy, planning, management, and service delivery for urban and suburban regions and prepare for careers within regional and city government, as well as nonprofit organizations concerned with urban and regional problems and solutions. With an emphasis on equitable solutions, these electives focus on regional development, housing, education policy, workforce development, community and economic development, immigration, poverty, criminal justice, and urban environmental resource management.