Expand your leadership impact with an Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) from the nationally ranked University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. Designed for mid-career professionals, this 18-month program is rigorous yet practical, helping you immediately apply strategic leadership, decision-making, and organizational management tools to the challenges you face at work.

At the Evans School, leadership means driving results and advancing the public good. Our approach weaves equity and inclusion throughout our program because we know these are both moral imperatives and strategic advantages that lead to better decisions, stronger teams, and deeper community trust.

Whether you are learning about leading yourself, guiding organizational change, or shaping policy, you will develop the strategic mindset to navigate diverse perspectives and deliver lasting impact. This is leadership that creates lasting impact that communities can feel, and stakeholders can measure.

This accelerated 18-month leadership educational experience is designed for working professionals from across the country. The EMPA program builds advanced leadership and management skills beginning with a five-day on-campus Foundation Week as the cornerstone of your journey. The remaining courses combine a 2.5-day in-person session (Friday-Sunday afternoon) each quarter, complimented by online learning that blends independent assignments, real-time discussions with faculty, and collaboration with the people in your cohort. All dates of in-person and live online sessions are provided in advance so you can plan around your work and family commitments.

• Rigorous, practical curriculum designed to strengthen executive decision-making, strategic planning and team leadership.
• No exams or long research papers, your work focuses on solving real challenges.
• Apply your new tools and frameworks directly to your organization when you return to work on Monday.

Our curriculum is iterative and cumulative; topics are all approached from the perspective of higher-level management competencies: strategic planning, decision making, capacity building, and leadership development.

Our instructors are seasoned practitioners, experienced academics, and researchers. Their classes feature rich discussions of best practices drawn from the lived experiences of a diverse body of students.

Leadership growth is personal and the EMPA program includes four one-on-one coaching sessions throughout your EMPA journey to help you strengthen your leadership style and achieve your professional goals. Guided by EMPA executive coaches, you will refine the personal growth plan you create during Foundation Week and apply insights from the program to real challenges in your organization.

For questions and more information about the EMPA program and the application process, contact us at evansadm@uw.edu.

The Evans School of Public Policy and Governance offers graduate certificates for working professionals as well as for current UW graduate students.

The Evans School offers two graduate certificates designed for public sector professionals. Current UW graduate students are not eligible for these two certificates.

The Evans School’s new graduate certificate in Building Resilient Local Governments is designed to equip local government officials with the knowledge, skills, and tools needed to build organizational resilience and respond to the increasingly complex challenges they face.

The Evans School’s new graduate certificate in Leading Public Innovation provides practical knowledge, frameworks, and tools to public service leaders committed to improving the equity, inclusiveness, and effectiveness of systems that deliver public programs and services.

The Evans School offers two certificates for which all UW graduate students are eligible to apply. Each certificate includes required and elective coursework and a final portfolio and short analytic paper.

The International Development Policy and Management (IDPM) certificate offers students a foundation for addressing complex questions of poverty and development. The certificate has been earned by more than 225 UW graduate students from 14 departments and Schools, and allows students to study current topics in international policy, management, and economics in a disciplinarily diverse classroom.

The Nonprofit Management Certificate (NPMGT) certificate gives you the tools and framework needed to meet the increasing challenges facing the nonprofit sector today.

Are you interested in using sophisticated research methods and an interdisciplinary perspective to study society’s most significant challenges? Do you want to use data and evidence to improve policy decisions and the management of public organizations to improve the life of individuals and communities?

The Evans School Ph.D. program is a rigorous and supportive educational experience for those interested in pursuing applied research careers in academic, government, and nonprofit organizations. We train sophisticated analysts and scholars with a deep understanding of the institutional, historical, normative, and economic factors shaping policy design, implementation, and evaluation.

Policy and management research examines:

• the effects of laws and regulations on people, communities, and organizations;
• processes for creating equitable and inclusive democratic governance;
• management of multi-sectoral (government, nonprofit, and private) partnerships, and;
• equitable provision of public goods and services.

The Evans Ph.D. program is in a top-ranked school of public affairs within a preeminent university. The Evans School—top 10 among public affairs schools in the U.S.—promotes values of equity, service and courage by educating leaders, generating knowledge, and hosting communities. We have a diverse body of students from around the world who bring interdisciplinary backgrounds. The University of Washington—#8 among global universities—is a vibrant, diverse public university committed to education and scientific knowledge.  

The Evans Ph.D. trains students to be leaders in public policy and management research. The core curriculum provides a foundation in microeconomics, statistics, institutional and public administration theories, policy making processes, and more. Students then work closely with faculty advisors to select electives that provide depth in policy fields, methods, and theories of their choosing. 

The Evans Ph.D. offers all students secure funding. We admit a small cohort of 4-5 new students each year. Each admitted student is offered a five-year financial support package—including tuition, stipend, and health insurance—through part-time employment as a research or teaching assistant. We also offer travel support for professional conferences.

The Evans Ph.D. provides team mentoring from world renown scholars of policy and management. Students are assigned a primary advisor but encouraged to develop advising and mentoring relationships with multiple faculty members at the Evans School and across the University of Washington. The Evans School faculty includes highly-regarded scholars of social, environmental, and criminal justice policy, budgeting and contracting, leadership and equity, and international development.

At the Evans School, doctoral students acquire a broad and deep set of skills essential to understanding policy and management, including: 

• advanced data, methods, and data science techniques through classes at the Evans School, the  Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, and the Paul G Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, 
• depth in an area of specialization chosen by the student from offerings anywhere on campus, including top-ranked programs in education, computer science, public health, social work, and sociology,  
• teaching experience as teaching assistants or instructors of record, and 
• professional and career development skills, including networking, publishing, grant writing, and conference presentations. 

Evans Ph.D. students also have the option to pursue a credentialed degree option in Data Science or Advanced Data Science through the eScience Institute or a UW graduate certificates in over 50 topics. Students also benefit from additional training through UW research initiatives including the eScience Institute, Ocean Nexus, the Population Health Initiative, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and the Program on Climate Change. 

Starting in the first year of the program, Evans Ph.D. students work closely with internationally recognized faculty to research pressing policy and management topics, including:  

• economic benefits of empowering women in agriculture 
• managing risk from simultaneous wildfires
• economic impacts of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance
• perceptions of earthquake risks and disaster prevention
• decision-making in US philanthropies
• collaborative governance of natural resources

Before graduating, Evans Ph.D. students publish in academic and popular media outlets, such as: Housing Policy Debate (Fowle), Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (Scott, Tyler), Journal of Environmental Management (Hsueh), The Conversation (Finchum-Mason, Freitag), and The Washington Post (Sederbaum). 

Our Ph.D. graduates hold positions as:

• academic faculty, teaching and conducting research in departments of public policy, public administration, political science, environmental science and policy, and business administration at Arizona State University, KDI School of Public Policy, Pennsylvania State University, University of California, Davis, and University of Michigan;
• government analysts at the US Government Accounting Office, the Oregon Department of Revenue, and the San Francisco Unified School District;
• researchers at contract research and advocacy organizations, including MDRC, Oxfam, and The Nature Conservancy.

If you have questions after reading through all of the online materials, please contact us at evansadm@uw.edu.