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Graduate Certificate in Public Management
The Graduate Certificate in Public Management is designed to: 1) Provide students with the intellectual foundation to become a public manager; 2) Provide currently employed individuals a means to demonstrate to their agency that are they undertaking and have achieved individual staff development; 3) Be a mechanism to attract students to the Master of Public Administration program.
It is envisioned that the Certificate program will provide individuals who have recently moved into a management position of or are desiring to move into a management position the knowledge skills and abilities to be an effective manager. The pool of candidate entering the program will have had widely different undergraduate education experiences. Some students may have been civil engineers, others social workers, and still others criminal justice majors. Few will have had public management training. The program provides all of the students a common academic core in public management.
Many individuals find the prospects of returning to school after a long period out of the academic community a daunting task. The Certificate Program allows them to test the intellectual fit between graduate course work and their abilities in a non-threatening environment. Moreover, the current Master degree requires a significant research component to it that students do not believe would be appropriate for them. If after completion of the fifteen hours required in the certificate program a students does not believe that the degree is an appropriate goal, they will be able to demonstrate through the Certificate that they have undertaken a significant level of individual development. Moreover, the Master of Public Administration is designed currently to take a minimum of two and a half years. The Certificate program provides individuals the ability to earn recognition for their academic work in a shorter time horizon.
As it currently is configured, admissions into the certificate program is only permitted if a student enters a cohort that is being sponsored by a government agency.
The degree builds on the intellectual base of the current graduate degree. There is an added dimension of technical knowledge being provided to students that has not been a part of the existing graduate degree through the one credit courses.
Certificate Requirements
Required (12 credits)
a. PUA 701 Principles of Public Administration
b. PUA 713 Seminar in Organizational Theory
c. PUA 714 Seminar in Fiscal Administration
d. PUA 718 Seminar in Public Personnel Administration
Three credits from the following one credit courses:
a. PUA 792 Current Issues in Public Administration: Grant Writing
b. PUA 792 Current Issues in Public Administration: Strategic Planning
c. PUA 792 Current Issues in Public Administration: Lobbying
d. PUA 792 Current Issues in Public Administration: Information Presentation & GIS
e. PUA 792 Current Issues in Public Administration: Ethics
f. PUA 792 Current Issues in Public Administration: Performance Appraisal
Environmental Scan Project (Capstone Experience)
Capstone Paper:
Certificate program students will submit a final project paper (10-12 pages). The paper will be an evaluation of an organizational structure, process, or other challenging issue in a public or nonprofit organization. Students should gather information from published documents, interviews, and other sources that will permit them to describe and evaluate the issue in the selected organization. Students can select the project topic based on their research and professional interests. Students may select a project topic from the list provided below:
a. How is he organization meeting the needs of the public that it serves? If one looks at the Florida state child protective services as an example, one can talk about defining performance measures of studying the organization’s performance measure to see how successful or unsuccessful they are in meeting those standards. Another way to look at this is to survey the public and determine the public’s attitude toward the provision of services.
b. What is a major internal issue for the organization? How is the analysis of the need assessment being handled? How are policies developed? What alternatives are proposed b the student’s research paper and what alternatives have the best potential both form a rational and a political viewpoint?
c. How has technology impacted services provide in a public sector agency? What modifications in personnel, agency structure and work have resulted from the technology? What have been some of constraints and challenges on the use of technology related to budget and personnel?