WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

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Yahong Zhang, Robert Lee and Kaifeng Yang First, MPA programs should maintain their efforts to enhance the practical components in the formal education. One way is to recruit more students with work experience in local government. These students are more likely to value structured learning because they can easily link theories with their work experience. They can also bring their experience and practical problems to classroom, helping peer students to understand the theories and issues. Another way is to work with professional organizations. For example, the Local Government Management Education Committee of NASPAA has closely collaborated with the ICMA Advisory Board on Graduate Education for years to build collaboration between practitioners and academics. Working with such professional organizations can help MPA programs find a large pool of public managers who can serve as adjunct faculty. The professional organizations can also provide resources of internships for MPA students (Facer & Owens, 2005). In addition, MPA programs may hire faculty members with practitioner background in local government, especially those with PhD degrees in public administration or public policy. Given equal scholarly training, their working experience with government should be particularly valued in the job market by MPA programs. These faculty members will be uniquely qualified to prepare future leaders in local government. Second, technical knowledge is still important to MPA students. Lazenby (2010) suggests that in a limited 2-year period, MPA programs ought to focus on key competencies. He sees policy analysis and analytical skills as less important than those on managing public organizations, and he recommends eliminating these courses from MPA curricula. However, Lazenby concentrates on managers’ administrative role while overlooking their policy-making responsibilities. According to this study, information technologies, local government structure, and analytical methods, along with budget and financial management, are among the most important knowledge and skills to managers, especially for their policy-making responsibilities. We suggest MPA programs continue to provide these courses. Finally, MPA programs may create innovative ways to incorporate people skills in their curriculum. This study identifies practical ethics and communication skills such as listening, compromising, negotiating, and consensus-building skills to be extraordinarily important to local government managers. It is traditionally perceived by many that these skills are primarily determined by individuals’ innate traits and cannot be effectively improved through academic training. However, O’Leary, Bingham, and Choi (2010) show that students can substantially advance their skills of negotiation, facilitation, conflict management, and other tacit skills through a specially designed course that provides students with collaborative practice. Another recommended way is to integrate people skills into core courses through case study, homework assignments, and in-class discussions. Kennedy and Malatesta (2010), for example, illustrate how ethics can be taught by this approach. 204 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Stories from Local Public Managers in Florida As a brief summary, this study finds that local government managers particularly need communication skills and technical knowledge when they participate in legislative policy making. Communication skills are particularly essential because managers need to skillfully listen to stakeholders, compromise, negotiate, and build consensus in order to achieve policy outcomes that represent the best interest of the community. The technical knowledge, including budgeting and financial management, information technologies, and analytical methods, equips managers to accurately understand policy issues and prescribe policy solutions. Therefore, MPA programs, especially those concentrating on local government, should maintain the emphasis on courses of technical knowledge while innovatively integrating communication skills in the curriculum. FOOTNOTES 1 For this reason, we do not differentiate the MPA and MPP programs. We use the general term “MPA programs” in this article to refer to graduate programs in public affairs and administration. 2 The quotations are from the 30 interviews. For confidentiality concerns, we don’t include the names of the interviewees. REFERENCES Box, R. C. (1992). The administrator as trustee of the public interest: Normative ideals and daily practice. Administration & Society, 24(3), 323–345. Boynton, R. P., & Wright, D. S. (1971). Mayor-manager relationships in large council-manager cities: A reinterpretation. Public Administration Review, 31, 28–36. Browne, W. P. (1985). Municipal managers and policy: A partial test of the Svara dichotomy-duality model. Public Administration Review, 45, 620–622. Cohen, S., Eimicke, W., & Ukeles, J. (1995). Teaching the craft of policy and management analysis: The workshop sequence at Columbia University’s Graduate Program in Public Policy and Administration. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 14(4), 606– 626. Denhardt, R. B. (2001). The big questions of public administration education. Public Administration Review, 61(5), 526–534. Dunn, D. D., & Legge Jr., J. S. (2002). Politics and administration in U.S. local governments. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 12(3), 401–422. Elmore, R. F. (1986). Graduate education in public management: Working the seams of government. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 6(1), 69–83. Facer, R., II, & Owens, B. (2005). Building solid links between managers and academics. Public Management, 87(3), 15–17. Journal of Public Affairs Education 205
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JPAE VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 JOURNAL OF
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Journal of Public Affairs Education
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FROM THE EDITOR In the symposium in
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NASPAA Presidential Address Annual
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Leading by Example: Modeling Global
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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR FROM THE GUES
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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR A SYMPOSIUM I
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on other fronts, certainly it can h
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Picasso, P. (1937). Guernica. Pictu
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A View from the 50th Street Gate on
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Reflections of a Working-Class Acad
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Reflections of a Working Class Acad
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Reflections of a Working Class Acad
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Class Rooms Kenneth Oldfield Univer
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Class Rooms although I did, but not
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Class Rooms GRADUATE SCHOOL I was u
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Class Rooms the odds this appointee
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Class Rooms The Great Leveler, too
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Class Rooms of higher learning and
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ook (Oldfield & Johnson, 2009). The
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Didactic Changes Class Rooms Pedago
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Admittedly, it will be difficult to
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hooks, b. (2000). Where we stand: C
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Shaw, G. B. (1928). The intelligent
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What’s a Girl Like You Doing in a
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What’s a Girl Like You For exampl
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What’s a Girl Like You and operat
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What’s a Girl Like You captured t
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What’s a Girl Like You full-blown
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What’s a Girl Like You inside). I
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What’s a Girl Like You and collea
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What’s a Girl Like You toward ser
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Blue-Collar Teaching in a White-Col
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Blue-Collar Teaching Half of my fam
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Blue-Collar Teaching from physics.
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Blue-Collar Teaching lifelong dream
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Blue-Collar Teaching Before him, in
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Blue-Collar Teaching One may argue
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Blue-Collar Teaching graduation in
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Blue-Collar Teaching advantages oth
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Carrizales, T. (2010). Exploring cu
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Oldfield, K. (2010). Socioeconomic
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Moving Forward by Looking Back Gary
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Moving Forward My father married my
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Moving Forward became apparent that
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Moving Forward to Duane, because he
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Moving Forward by this contaminant.
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Moving Forward quite by chance to b
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Moving Forward Federalist 51 detail
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Moving Forward their profession, in
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Moving Forward as the study shows,
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REFERENCES Ashwander v. Tennessee V
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics:
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Many researchers have explored the
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LITERATURE REVIEW Techniques in Tea
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics b
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics T
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Table 1. Downloads of Papers at Sel
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics o
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Felbinger, C. L., Holzer, M., & Whi
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Snee, R. D. (1993). What’s missin
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Are They Connected? Exploring Acade
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Exploring Academic and Social Netwo
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Figure 2. Career Advice Network Fig
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network density, and network recipr
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