Courses in contemporary policy studies fulfill the exploration dimension concerned with social policy, values, and decision making. Under faculty guidance, groups of students engage in multi-disciplinary studies to deal with real problems and develop recommendations for improvement. A problem-solving model is utilized by teams of students, faculty, and resource persons. Examples of topics include violence, terrorism, environmental issues, equal opportunity, health care, peace and conflict issues, and the United Nations. Special attention is given to ethical considerations, collaborative learning, group decision-making processes, community involvement, and responsibility of students for their own learning.
Students can design their own course in consultation with the director of the program.
Besides student-originated studies, other alternatives include internships and selected departmental courses. A minor in policy studies is available to bridge real world problems in policymaking and a student's major. A regular course, a student-originated study, or an internship that considers a contemporary problem and develops recommendations for addressing the issues involved. May be repeated when topic varies. Basic social science statistics used to summarize data, describe relationships between variables, and make inferences from samples to estimate population parameters.