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The Master of Public Affairs (MPA) requires 42 semester hours. As an interdisciplinary program, courses are offered by the School of Planning and Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science, as well as from other units such as Management and Organizations in the Tippie College of Business, Strategic Communications in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and the Larned Waterman Nonprofit Resource Center in the College of Law.
Required Curriculum
8 core courses (20 s.h.)
1 internship (3 s.h.)
5 electives (minimum 15 s.h., including 9 s.h. taken within a concentration)
a one-semester capstone project (4 s.h.)
Students may select from a concentrations in Public and Nonprofit Management or Public Policy. For a full list of concentration courses and course numbers, students should refer to the Student Manual MPA section on Areas of Concentration.
For the capstone project students will engage in analysis of a contemporary public policy problem plus development of recommended action steps. This will be done in tandem with the University’s Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities (IISC) which for has been providing public consultation to communities in Iowa for over a decade.
Core Curriculum |
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PBAF:5117 | Bureaucratic Politics and Public Administration | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:5120 | Public Policy Process | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6200 | Analytic Methods I | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6205 | Economics for Policy Analysis | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6208 | Program Seminar | 1 s.h. |
PBAF:6225 | Applied GIS for Planning and Policy Making | 1 s.h. |
PBAF:6233 | Public Finance and Budgeting | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6240 | Public Management | 3 s.h. |
Typical Schedule for Full-Time Students
First Semester | |||
---|---|---|---|
PBAF:5120 | Public Policy Process | core | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6200 | Analytic Methods I | core | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6205 | Economics for Policy Analysis | core | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6208 | Program Seminar | core | 1 s.h. |
Second Semester | |||
---|---|---|---|
PBAF:5117 | Bureaucratic Politics and Public Administration | core | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6225 | Applied GIS for Planning and Policy Making | core | 1 s.h. |
PBAF:6233 | Public Finance and Budgeting | core | 3 s.h. |
PBAF:6240 | Public Management | core | 3 s.h. |
Concentration or Elective | elective | 3 s.h. |
Third Semester | |||
---|---|---|---|
PBAF:6335 | Internship | core | 3 s.h. |
Concentration or Elective | elective | 3 s.h. | |
Concentration or Elective | elective | 3 s.h. |
Fourth Semester | |||
---|---|---|---|
PBAF:6210 | Public Affairs Capstone | capstone | 4 s.h. |
Concentration or Elective | elective | 3 s.h. | |
Concentration or Elective | elective | 3 s h |