A term-long assignment on a timely policy problem confronting the City of Baltimore results in a formal presentation to city leaders and a report published in the Institute for Policy Studies Occasional Paper Series . With several years of work experience in the private sector and a strong commitment to public service, I wanted a graduate program that provided a solid foundation in policy skills while at the same time allowing me the flexibility to pursue all of my interests. The MAPS curriculum enabled me to pursue a unique dual emphasis in nonprofit management and international environmental policy. Also, the opportunities available to me through an extensive alumni and professional network yielded numerous internship offers in my field of interest. The goal of this course is to communicate the basic principles of microeconomics by emphasizing applications to the solution of public problems.
Students examine how markets operate and how they fail.
This includes an analysis of the reasons for government intervention. This course addresses public vs. private goods, the problem of externalities and the pricing of public goods. This course sequence over two semesters teaches the application of statistical techniques commonly used in policy analysis and decision analysis including measures of central tendency, correlation, analysis of variance, and multivariate analysis. The course uses actual policy problems to demonstrate applications of techniques. This course examines the influence of political and organizational factors on the various stages of the policy process including problem identification, developing alternative responses, assessing the political feasibility of alternative responses, generating political support, budgeting and resource allocation, and implementing policy decisions through both public and private institutions.