Courses
The following is an alpha listing, by subject, of courses offered by the School for Graduate Studies. It is important to note that not all courses are offered every term. Please refer to the registration information at www.esc.edu/MyESC for the term offerings.
ADL-680100 RETHINKING EXPERIENCE AND LEARNING IN ADULTHOOD
3 credits
Course readings and assignments bring students' experiential learning and professional practice into dialogue with academic and scholarly approaches to adult learning. Students engage with theories of experiential learning, explore the multiple social locations within which adult education is practiced, and analyze debates concerning the relationship between experiential and formal learning. Students read broadly in the field, hone graduate level skills of academic and digital literacy, and work via cohort learning and e-portfolios.
ADL-680101 LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEMPORARY ADULTHOOD
3 credits
Through this course students develop an understanding of adult life in multiple personal, social, historical, and cultural contexts and examine and critique a variety of theoretical schools concerning adult development, learning, and identity in young, middle, and late adulthood. Biological, psychological and socio-cultural perspectives on adulthood are explored.
ADL-680102 STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE ADULT LEARNING
3 credits
Grounded in theoretical underpinnings of learning and development, students acquire an understanding of the principles and theories of effective design, pedagogy, and curriculum for face-to-face, technology mediated and blended learning environments. Student’s projects within the course are based on individual goals and will focus on various pedagogical approaches and learning design methodologies, with multiple opportunities to investigate a range of information and communication technologies (ICTs).
ADL-680103 APPROACHES TO CRITICAL INQUIRY AND RESEARCH
3 credits
Students explore the variety of analytical and research modalities that characterize research in adult learning -- including social science research methods, critical theory, problem-based learning, social networking analysis and participant research -- and draw connections between these modalities to their own sites of practice and learning goals as well as use them for programmatic assessment. Through a series of structured activities, they identify topics for research, conduct literature reviews, and identity the research methods relevant to their topics, apply a variety of critical lenses to their area of interest, and produce a research paper. They then draw on the insights thus gained and the three previous courses to articulate the focus for their degree. Viewing the various group and individualized offerings available, they draft a degree program and program rationale that identify their elective studies, explores those choices in terms of their personal, social and professional goals, and points toward the final project.
ADL-680104 ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE
3 credits
This course examines the specific body of knowledge that relates to organization development and change such as an historical perspective, theoretical foundations, models and areas of practice (application), its purpose and specific issues or challenges related to the function of those practicing in the field, with an emphasis on the role of adult learning. Specifically, students will study an overview of organization development and change; process of organization development; human process, techno-structural and human resource management interventions; and the future direction of organization development.
ADL-680105 ADULT LITERACY FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE
3 credits
In this course students will be introduced to the field of adult literacy and explore some of the current themes and issues within the field. We will read, discuss and write about the adult student, our own and society's assumptions about literacy, educational theory, and strategies and philosophies of teaching practice. Students will be encouraged to volunteer in a community based program site as a way to gain some experience about the field. The focus of the class may move between broader issues of literacy, power, privilege and education theory and more specific questions and issues that students are encountering in their sites of practice. This class is intended to be a collaborative project where we will share, question, and explore based on the work and teaching we have each done that week.
ADL-680107 LEARNING AND EDUCATION IN THE WORKPLACE
3 credits
The changing nature of work has created the need for lifelong learning in the workplace at all levels of the organization. Workforce development needs range across issues such as literacy, management development, the cultural diversity of the workplace, internationalism and the changes brought about by technological changes. Students explore learning at the workplace from several vantage points: human resource management, work satisfactions and personal development, and public policy, and economic competitiveness. The course also takes a critical historical view of the relationship between knowledge, power, and workplace organization. Following general readings and assignments in which a variety of perspectives are brought into dialogue, students have the opportunity to focus on the needs for education and training in their own workplace.
ADL-680108 THE EXPERIENCE OF ADULTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
3 credits
Students examine the range of issues adult learners face as they engage in higher education. Students will examine frameworks within which decisions about programming for student success must be made. Within the larger context of the national demographics and institutional constraints, students will gain experience in analysis and decision-making around cases designed to provoke thoughtful consideration of salient issues.
ADL-680109 PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ADULT LEARNING
3 credits
This course will reflect on the ways in which practitioners think about their practice as being part of a larger philosophy. Students will look at the six schools of philosophy and place them in a context of their own site of practice and reflect upon the origins and reasons behind the way they do things, and to bring some clarity and purpose to their everyday activities. The six schools of philosophy are liberal, progressive, humanist, behaviorist, radical, and analytical. Students will identify which aspects of their practice are situated in which schools and the implications and worldviews undergirding these schools. Philosophic issues in the field include the definition of adult education, the place of the needs and interests of adults, contrasting views of method and content, the concept and relevance of adult development, programs and objectives, the teaching learning process, and education for social change.
CAED-611003 PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
3 credits
This course will incorporate the subjects of two distinct, yet related bodies of literature. One addresses community development and, the other, economic development. The course will highlight the importance of linking these two concepts in a model that integrates the economic development of a community with the development of social capital and community capacity and functioning. Students will examine theoretical concepts in these two domains as well as real-world economic development models that attempt to move beyond the traditional factors of production and examine ways in which real communities have tried to produce positive economic outcomes through community development.
CAED-611595 FINAL PROJECT
6 credits
The student will prepare a culminating final project, a guided independent study, dealing with some aspect of community and economic development. This study will be completed under the direction of the program’s faculty, with one faculty member serving as the first reader and another faculty member serving as the second reader. The purpose behind this study is to provide an opportunity to integrate the learning acquired in this program and to apply that learning in the development of a relevant project or community plan, in working for an organization or agency in a practicum related to community development or in the completion of a theoretical study.
ECO-651551-3 MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS
3 credits
In this course the student will examine the behavior of markets and firms in a capitalistic economy. The student will explore the use of marginal analysis in making optimal choices about the allocation of scarce resources. The student will also analyze demand and cost of production, the structure of markets, strategies for competing in the market place, and government regulation in the economy. In addition, the student will examine the design of organizational architecture as a major determinant of the behavior of employees within an organization and develop tools of analysis that will help him/her make good managerial economic decisions. Students enroll in all three modules unless they have assessed out of a particular module.
ECO-651601 ECONOMICS OF STRATEGY
3 credits
This course builds on a basic understanding of microeconomics and managerial economics to investigate and analyze a number of important issues related to firms, markets, and competition. The topics examined include the boundaries of the firm; market structure and how it affects competition among firms; strategic interaction among firms such as entry, pricing, investment, and exit; and competitive advantage. Students will study and consider these topics using a combination of economic analysis, game theory, and case study analysis. Through this course, students will gain a better understanding of competition in markets and how firm behavior and market structure interact to influence the economic performance of firms.
ECO-651608 ANALYSIS OF HEALTH CARE MARKETS
3 credits
This course will investigate and evaluate the roles of markets, public policies, and organizations in the health care sector. Students will examine the functions and effects of private and public health insurance on access, cost and market efficiency, and quality of health care. Evolving organizational and contractual forms in health care will be considered and analyzed from different perspectives. Students will study the major public insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid, and consider various proposals for reform of the health care system in the U.S. Students will investigate several topics in health care markets in some detail. These may include the pharmaceutical market and patents, financing long-term care, medical malpractice, and paying for care for the uninsured.
ECO-651647 ECONOMICS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE
3 credits
This course explores the interdependence of country-wide economies. This interdependence is determined by exchange rates, prices, interest rates, income, wealth, and the balance of trade between countries. Instead of focusing on the behavior of the firm, the focus in this course is on the behavior of governments, and the way that their behavior affects the economic performance of a particular country and the world economy. Among the questions that this course explores are: Is a country better off when it joins a monetary union, or is maintaining an individual currency preferable?, What role does the international debt burden of a country play in determining economic performance?, and What is the best response to a foreign currency crisis such as one that struck Asia in the 1990s? The student will learn how the world economies are linked together and what policy tools are available to individual countries and to international bodies in order to deal with problems that arise from these linkages.
EDU-660501 MAT RESIDENCY SEMINAR ONE
3 credits
The residency experience and seminar develop the student’s teaching repertoire and ability to analyze and modify teaching strategies in relation to the student’s classroom responsibilities and certification area. Students develop and use methods and materials appropriate to their teaching assistant assignments and the certifications sought, and begin work on a Teaching Portfolio that continues through the two residency semesters. The seminar involves collaboration among students, critic teachers and ESC faculty. In the first residency term, mentoring and supervision of teaching and the seminar emphasize: - integration and reflection on the educational foundations addressed in the introductory year coursework - incorporation and use of technologies in teaching - development and implementation of a unit plan based on NYS and Common Core standards that will meet the MAT exit portfolio requirements - development on a teaching rationale that will be refined throughout this 6 credit seminar as well as the 3 credit spring seminar and will ultimately become part of the MAT exit portfolio seminar topics will include teaching, curriculum, educational evaluation, literacy, school safety and classroom management. Note: This seminar is for students enrolled in the Residency Model of the MAT program.
EDU-660502 MAT RESIDENCY SEMINAR TWO
3 credits
The residency experience and seminar develop the student’s teaching repertoire related to actual teaching responsibilities and certification area. Students continue to develop and use methods and materials appropriate to their teaching assignments and the certifications sought, and continue their work on the Teaching Portfolio. The seminar involves collaboration among students, critic teachers and ESC faculty. Students will work in conjunction with their Educational Evaluation course to design and refine an assessment plan for the MAT exit portfolio. In the second residency semester, mentoring and supervision of teaching and the seminar emphasize analysis and application in the following areas: - teaching, curriculum, educational evaluation, literacy, school safety and classroom management; analysis of examples and case studies from the students’ experiences is emphasized. This seminar is for students enrolled in the Residency Model of the MAT program.
EDU-660503 MAT RESIDENCY TEACHING PORTFOLIO
3 credits
In the final term, the student completes the teaching portfolio, which is the final project for the MAT degree. The student must include: annotated resources for instruction in the certification area; demonstrate advanced-level learning in the content area; demonstrate integration of educational theory and practice and the capacity to reflect on and improve practice; demonstrate appropriate uses of technologies for teaching and learning in the certification area; demonstrate an understanding of urban education; demonstrate an understanding of the impact of S.T.E.M. initiatives across the curriculum, demonstrate an understanding of working with English Language Learners and students with disabilities, and articulate an understanding of his or her professional identity as a teacher. Avenues, responsibilities, and strategies for on-going professional development will be stressed in online course discussions.
EDU-660511 CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT
3 credits
This course covers child and adolescent development in the context of social and cultural influences. Topics include: physical, psychological, and cognitive development; theories of learning and language acquisition; genetic and environmental factors affecting development, especially in multicultural urban settings; individual differences in abilities and differences in developmental patterns; developmental issues and learning needs of students with special needs; and cognitive, social, motor skills, and technology. Students complete at least 12.5 hours in an urban classroom (appropriate to the certification area) working with a certified teacher to explore the relevance of the topics they are studying to a classroom setting. Observation assignments will integrate theoretical and research-based concepts with classroom practice.
EDU-660512 TEACHING DIVERSE LEARNERS
3 credits
This course addresses diversity in contemporary urban schools, the ways children and families from various cultures are affected by and affect urban schools, and the role of the teacher and the curriculum in creating an open and tolerant environment conducive to learning. Students understand how to adapt instruction to the needs of diverse learners. Topics include: immigration, global issues, and education; cultural, ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic diversity; related behaviors, attitudes, family structures, and expectations; community contexts of local schools; teaching, curriculum, and diversity in the student’s certification area; and equity and cultural issues in computer use. (The classroom observation component is not required for non-matriculated students). Individuals registering for this course will do so by location. Course includes on-line work with some scheduled face-to-face meetings held at Empire State College centers in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Latham (Capital District), New York City (Manhattan) and Hudson Valley (Hartsdale)
EDU-660513 TEACHING AND LEARNING
3 credits
This course examines the complex relationship between teaching and learning; relationships between various teaching strategies and students’ learning styles and needs; different teaching strategies that work with children of different ages; and relationships between students’ assumptions, beliefs and attitudes and their own teaching styles. Students reflect on their own experiences as learners to gain insight into these issues. The study of teaching methods and micro-teaching sessions is related to the student’s area of certification. All students study special issues facing children learning English as a second language. Topics include: theories and research related to teaching and learning; general teaching methods and materials, and developing instructional objectives; advantages and disadvantages of various teaching methodologies; instructional and behavioral components of classroom management; techniques of self-assessment and assessment of student learning; and uses of technology to enhance learning, including computers as an interactive medium and as a tool, and the cognitive and social aspects of technology mediated learning. Students complete at least 12.5 hours in an urban classroom (appropriate to the certification area) working with a certified teacher to begin developing their own approaches to teaching. Observation assignments will integrate theoretical and research-based concepts with classroom practice. Students will present at least one lesson. Individuals registering for this course will do so by content area.
EDU-660514 EXCEPTIONALITIES: INDIVIDUALIZING LEARNING
3 credits
This course provides an overview of theories and research about students with special needs and a range of exceptionalities, as well as issues and strategies in developing educational programs and adapting instruction to meet the needs of all students. Students develop awareness of and sensitivity to individual differences and learn how to individualize instruction in the context of their certification areas. Topics include: physical, emotional and learning disabilities; gifted and talented students; gifted and talented students and computers; individualizing instruction for all students; uses of assistive and adaptive technologies and computers to meet special needs; inclusion; and assessing behavior problems and planning, implementing, and evaluating interventions. Students complete at least 12.5 hours in an urban classroom (appropriate to the certification area) working with a certified teacher to explore the relevance of what they are studying to a classroom setting. Observation assignments will integrate theoretical and research-based concepts with classroom practice. Students will present at least one lesson. Nonmatriculated students do not participate in the field experience.
EDU-660515 EFFECTIVE URBAN SCHOOLS
3 credits
This course critically examines the philosophical, historic, social and legal foundations of education, as well as contemporary structures, functions and issues in American urban educational systems. The course provides additional historical context for the subsequent course, Teaching Diverse Learners. Topics include: broad historical and social contexts within which American schools developed; present and historical relationships between schools and communities; diversity, equity, individuality, and schooling; schooling and democracy/citizenship; social structures and cultures of schools; teachers as members of learning communities; computer use in schools; rights and responsibilities of education stakeholders; and contemporary debates and alternative visions of schooling. Students complete at least 12.5 hours observing or participating in school and community-based experiences in settings where their schools are located. Individuals registering for this course will do so by location. Course includes on-line work with some scheduled face-to-face meetings held at Empire State College centers in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Latham (Capital District), New York City (Manhattan) and Hudson Valley (Hartsdale)
EDU-660521 TEACHING AND CURRICULUM
3 credits
This course examines research-based approaches to curriculum development, the relationships between curriculum and classroom management, and the relationship between the curriculum and students’ individual differences and capabilities. Students learn how to use their subject matter knowledge to develop instructional objectives, and to develop or adapt instructional materials appropriate to the grade levels they are teaching. Students learn how to use technology for both instruction and information management, and to identify use and evaluate technologies appropriate to the subjects and levels taught. The study of curriculum is related to the students’ areas of certification. Topics include: research and theories related to curriculum and instructional strategies; curriculum construction, development of instructional objectives and materials, lesson planning and presentation; pupil evaluation; and technology mediated methods and materials.
EDU-660522 MENTORED TEACHING ONE
3 credits
The mentored teaching experience and seminar develop the student’s teaching repertoire and ability to analyze and modify teaching strategies in relation to the student’s actual teaching responsibilities and certification area. Students develop and use methods and materials appropriate to their teaching assignments and the certifications sought, and begin work on a Teaching Portfolio that continues through two years of mentored teaching. The seminar involves collaboration among students, mentor teachers and Empire State College faculty. In the first in-service term, mentoring and supervision of teaching and the seminar emphasize integration and reflection on the educational foundations addressed in the introductory year course work. Incorporation and use of technologies in teaching topics will include: teaching; curriculum; educational evaluation; literacy; school safety and classroom management. These topics will be addressed with a focus on information gathering by the students. Students must hold an approved teaching placement in order to take this course.
EDU-660523 EDUCATIONAL EVALUATION
3 credits
This course develops skills in evaluating both student learning and teaching effectiveness. The course emphasizes using research-based inquiry into one’s own practice as a teacher to improve curricula, teaching, and learning. Topics include: principles and forms of assessment of student learning, especially in relation to the certification area; uses of technology in the assessment of student learning; national, state, and local instruments for assessing student learning and their use in enhancing student learning and teaching effectiveness; and principles and forms of classroom research.
EDU-660524 MENTORED TEACHING TWO
3 credits
The mentored teaching experience and seminar develop the student’s teaching repertoire related to actual teaching responsibilities and the certification area. Students continue to develop and use methods and materials appropriate to their teaching assignments and the certification sought, and continue their work on the Teaching Portfolio. The seminar involves collaboration among students, mentor teachers, and Empire State College faculty. In the second in-service term, mentoring and supervision of teaching and the seminar emphasize analysis and application in the following areas: teaching; curriculum; educational evaluation; literacy; school safety; classroom management and incorporation and use of technologies in teaching. Analysis of examples and case studies from the students' experiences is emphasized. Students must hold an approved teaching placement in order to take this course.
EDU-660529 CONTENT AREA STUDY
3 credits
An array of content area topics will be available to enable candidates to strengthen their content area background. While learning new content, students will develop lessons, teaching methods, and materials for use with their own pupils. Students are encouraged to link their content across disciplines.
EDU-660531 LITERACY
3 credits
An array of content area topics will be available to enable candidates to strengthen their content area background. While learning new content, students will develop lessons, teaching methods, and materials for use with their own pupils. Students are encouraged to link their content across disciplines.
EDU-660532 MENTORED TEACHING THREE
3 credits
The mentored teaching experience and seminar develop the student’s teaching repertoire related to actual teaching responsibilities and certification area. Students continue to develop and use methods and materials appropriate to their teaching assignments and the certifications sought, and continue their work on the Teaching Portfolio. The seminar involves collaboration among students, academic advisor teachers and Empire State College faculty. In the third in-service term, mentoring and supervision of teaching and the seminar emphasize reflective practice, integration and innovation in the following areas: teaching; curriculum; educational evaluation literacy; school safety; classroom management; and incorporation and use of technologies in teaching. A reflective orientation is emphasized. Students must hold an approved teaching placement in order to take this course.
EDU-660533 LITERACY ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
3 credits
This course examines the role of reading, writing and language within the curriculum and the impact of literacy on specific content areas. Students develop strategies and skills in exploring relevant content literature and using technology to acquire and manage information. Students gain experience in designing and implementing literacy lessons within the content area.
EDU-660534 MENTORED TEACHING: MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING PORTFOLIO
3 credits
The mentored teaching experience and seminar develop the student’s teaching repertoire related to actual teaching responsibilities and certification area. The seminar involves collaboration among students, mentor teachers and college faculty. In the final term, the student completes the Teaching Portfolio, which is the final project for the M.A.T. degree. The student should: include annotated resources for instruction in the certification area; demonstrate advanced level learning in the content area; demonstrate integration of educational theory and practice and the capacity to reflect on and improve practice; demonstrate appropriate uses of technologies for teaching and learning in the certification area; demonstrate cultural competence; and articulate an understanding of her/his professional identity as a teacher, and responsibilities and strategies for on-going professional development. Students must hold an approved teaching placement in order to take this course.
EDU-660601 INTENSIFIED MENTORED TEACHING ONE
3 credits
This intensified mentored teaching experience develops the student’s teaching repertoire and ability to analyze and modify teaching strategies in relation to the student’s actual teaching responsibilities and certification area. Students develop and use methods and materials appropriate to their teaching assignments and the certifications sought, and begin work on a Teaching Portfolio that continues throughout this year of mentored teaching. The seminar involves collaboration among students and mentor teachers in the school district, and students and ESC faculty. This seminar emphasizes analysis and application in the following areas: teaching; curriculum; educational evaluation; literacy; school safety; classroom management; and incorporation and use of technologies in teaching. Analysis of examples and case studies from the students’ experiences is emphasized. Two face-to-face meetings and participation in six webinars are required for this course. Eight mentored teaching observations are also required, three of which can be video-taped.
EDU-660602 INTENSIFIED MENTORED TEACHING TWO
3 credits
This mentored teaching experience and seminar continue to develop the student’s teaching repertoire related to actual teaching responsibilities and certification area. Students continue to develop and use methods and materials appropriate to their teaching assignments and the certifications sought, and continue their work on the Teaching Portfolio. The seminar involves collaboration among students and mentor teachers in the school district, and students and ESC faculty. During this term, mentoring and supervision of teaching and the seminar emphasize reflective practice, integration, and innovation in the following areas: teaching; curriculum; educational evaluation; literacy; school safety; classroom management; and incorporation and use of technologies in teaching. A reflective orientation is emphasized. Two face-to-face meetings and participation in three webinars are required. Seven mentored teaching observations are also required, two of which can be video-taped.
EDU-661100 BULLYING: PREVENTING THE PROBLEM
3 credits
Developing strong and positive connections with families and communities is critical in our educational settings today. This course explores and discusses critical perspectives on school-community relationships. This course is designed to provide enough variety in the readings, activities, reflections and discussions that each participant should find practical value in the diversity of perspectives. The final project will be a portfolio of issues and activities that related to a model of one's choice, combined with an action plan. At the end of the course participants will have a collection of tools, resources, and documents that will be helpful in creating positive collaboration between schools and their communities.
EDU-661102 INTEGRATED CO-TEACHING: STRATEGIES ENHANCING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
3 credits
This course is designed for all K-12 educators who are or will be working with a co-teaching model. The course will investigate the pedagogical and practical facets of a co-teaching approach that provides academic instruction to a diverse community of learners (i.e., students within general education, special education, ESL and gifted programs) so that each student may find success. It will cover topics such as: the background of inclusive teaching, legalities in NY state, a definition of co-teaching, a description of what co-teaching entails, investigation of issues and solutions of co-teaching, as well as, hands-on practical co-teaching strategies.
EDU-661103 SHOWING EVIDENCE: TEACHER PERFORMANCE AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
3 credits
This course will provide participants with a professional community in which they will acquire both practical knowledge and theoretical approaches to portfolio assessment in education. Reflective practice tools and assessments based on NY state standards for teaching will be presented in formats that promote self-reflection and career goal setting. Seminal and contemporary educational research and literature that address the issues of curriculum, instruction and assessment of diverse learners will accompany the presentation of the tools and strategies of authentic performance assessment. The steps and processes for creating and maintaining portfolios of student achievement will provide a basis for teachers to effectively communicate student progress with families. The procedures for creating and maintaining their own portfolio of professional efficacy or "evidence container" will enable participants to become articulate in advancing their teaching efficacy and professional authority.
EDU-661104 DATA MINING OF ASSESSMENTS TO IMPACT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
3 credits
This course will provide participants with a better understanding of the realities of data use and will empower users to identify and use data more appropriately to identify school wide priorities, inform instruction and enhance student learning.
EDU-661105 EDUCATORS TAKING THE INITIATIVE FOR CHANGE
3 credits
The course is designed as an introduction to the scope of conceptual frameworks around teacher leadership: systems thinking, individual skills and dispositions, education policy creation, and tolls and models for building personal leadership. Course participants will explore current thinking about educational/teacher leadership, the change process, the impact of context on change, case studies in leadership, tools for building support and a primer on education policy. Educators will select a leadership initiative of high interests and need, and building an action plan.
EDU-661106 STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND STANDARDS-BASED LEARNING
3 credits
Using a standards-based approach as its foundation, Student Engagement and Standards-Based Learning is a Performance Learning Systems course that explores high-impact learning activities designed to help teachers optimize student learning. Participants will use standards as a basis for designing learning activities, assessments, and scoring guides and will prioritize learning based on curriculum. Using alignment criteria and the POINT design components, participants will evaluate, modify, expand, and design standards-based learning activities in order to maximize student learning, engagement, and achievement. A variety of learning activities aligned to standards and the QFL (Questions for Life) Process Skills are featured in this course as participants learn to address the needs of 21st Century Learners and foster progress toward deeper retention and transfer of learning.
EDU-661107 RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION
3 credits
Response to Intervention is a framework for school improvement that involves tiers of increasingly intensive interventions. As students are identified by curriculum based measurement as exhibiting risk for school failure, they are instructed using interventions designed to eliminate or correct the cause of failure. Their progress is monitored using simple assessment tools. Participants will understand the RTI process, its impact upon teaching and learning, and apply strategies and data-based decision-making in process implementation.
EDU-661108 COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY FOR STUDENTS: PREPARING MINDS FOR THE FUTURE
3 credits
Collaborative Inquiry for Students: Preparing Minds for the Future is a Performance Learning Systems® course that provides educators with research-based strategies for designing and implementing collaborative inquiry for students. The strategies are based on the 4-Ds of Appreciative Inquiry. Collaborative inquiry fosters the skills students need now and in the future to develop a deeper understanding and mastery of content knowledge and skills. Participants will explore and experience the collaborative inquiry models of problem-based learning, hypothesis-based learning, project-based learning, Appreciative Inquiry, and performance-based learning. Participants will develop standards-based essential questions, assessments, and rubrics; design strategies for teaching collaboration and teamwork; and explore the components of facilitative leadership, debriefing, and feedback.
EDU-681100 LEARNING WITH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: THEORY AND PRACTICE
3 credits
As innovative technologies continue to emerge, new ways of improving the teaching and learning process are possible. George Veletsianos claims in his book, Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, that emerging technologies may or may not be new, are evolving entities, experience “hype cycles” and can be disruptive. He describes a need for more research and understanding to reveal the untapped potential of these emerging technologies in ways that transform instruction and deepen understanding. In this course, we explore a variety of learning theories, best practices and instructional design frameworks that can help guide educators’ through a process of researching and vetting emerging technologies. We examine how it is essential that educators design instruction and evaluation using a lens that includes learning theory, best practices and instructional design frameworks to discover and exploit affordances of emerging technologies in ways that promote the acquisition and refinement of 21st century skills in both formal and informal learning environments. Some consideration will be given to assistive technologies that address the needs of students with disabilities, and the scope of both the American Disabilities Act and recommendations of professional organizations including the National Council of Online Learning.
EDU-681101 NEW MEDIA AND NEW LITERACIES
3 credits
This course is designed to explore the implications of new media and new literacies in social, political, economic, and personal spheres. Students will investigate theories and research related to meaning-making in and around the contexts of contemporary social media. In addition, students will work collaboratively and collectively to build their knowledge in how these media are created, used, interpreted, and re-used by themselves and others. They will explore how affinities for these media enable us to think differently about what it means to read, write, listen, speak, view, and participate in often over lapping, and at times juxtaposed, communities of practice. Rather than focus on producing new media, this course will explore the impact new media and the resulting new literacies have on membership in existing and emerging communities of practice.
EDU-681108 PRACTICUM: VIRTUAL WORLDS
3 credits
Practicums allow students to team up with faculty in designing, launching and/or evaluating a project connected with either Empire State College, or the student's professional context. This learning opportunity mixes experiential and academic learning, and provides practical, hands-on experience that students can transfer to their own professional needs. The practicum "virtual worlds" is intended to provide participants with an opportunity to study virtual worlds as they are used currently in a variety of applications and to explore and begin developing virtual experiences to support different achievements and objectives. The rapidly emerging and complex nature of developing, supporting, using, integrating, and expanding virtual worlds and systems requires also an understanding of the larger institutional “envelope” and need within which the virtual experiences will function.
EDU-681109 GAME-BASED LEARNING
3 credits
This course is designed to explore games and simulations in an educational context —the learning processes, practices, and events associated with integrating/developing educational game-based learning in the program and or professional practice. What are games and simulations? How do learners/students in the program feel and think about games and simulations? How do games and simulations inform their development as learners and or professional practitioners in their field of expertise? Do they see games and simulations as potentially beneficial in the program and or professional endeavors? In summary, this course will challenge students to investigate the learning processes, practices, and events associated with integrating and developing games and simulations.
FIN-650607 INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the economic theory underlying international finance and to have him or her study the instruments and techniques of finance within the context of globalization. The student will make calculations and determine appropriate products from the perspective of the financial manager of a multinational corporation. Students will become familiar with spot and forward currency markets, how changes in the exchange rate between two countries’ currencies are determined by the relative differences in the nominal interest rates and inflation between the two countries.
FIN-650608 QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN FINANCE
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to expose students to modern data analysis with an emphasis on a specific domain of application: Finance. Students are expected to have an understanding of basic statistics, since concepts such as random variables, expectation, correlation, and statistical inference (estimation, hypothesis testing, and confidence intervals) are fundamental to the analyses addressed in the course. It is also expected that students have a basic understanding of linear algebra. The course relies on real financial data and uses spreadsheets and statistical software to cover a range of topics from exploratory data analysis techniques, simulations, to regression analysis methods, with a strong emphasis on their application.
FIN-651511-3 ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE
3 credits
This course focuses on the decision-making process in the acquisition of short- and long-term assets. The student will come to understand the criteria by which investment alternatives are evaluated – net present value and internal rate of return. The student will also use accounting methods as the language for understanding the consequences of those decisions. The understanding of risk and its effect on the evaluation of alternatives will be an important managerial undercurrent throughout the course. Students enroll in all three modules unless they have assessed out of a particular module.
FIN-651645 PUBLIC FINANCE
3 credits
Public finance is the study of the theory and practice of how governments raise revenue and make expenditures. The goals of this course are to acquaint students with a range of issues and problems in public finance. This will include the theory and practice of taxation at the federal and state level and the theory and practice of public spending, primarily at the federal level. In investigating and analyzing issues in taxation and public expenditures students will consider both fairness/equity and efficiency criteria. On the taxation side, students will learn about the incidence of taxation, how taxes affect the efficiency of markets, and the structure of the federal tax system for individuals and corporations. On the expenditure side, students will learn about the theory of public goods and externalities as well as specific spending programs in health care and income security. In addition, students will investigate an area of taxation and an area of expenditure in detail.
FIN-651648 FINANCIAL ANALYSIS AND CONTROL
3 credits
This course intends to provide to students the necessary management control tools needed, in order to make far more persuasive business proposals, business cases and strategic recommendations. A particular focus is on learning to use financial information to support strategic decisions and improve operating results. This includes: How to use financial analysis concepts and methods to help prepare business cases or funds approval requests; How to use decision models for key issues such as: adding or dropping business lines, make or buy decisions, accepting special orders, constrained resource utilization, sell or process further; Capital planning and capital asset selection: How to make the right capital investment decisions; Preparing financial plans and budgets: Principles that can be used to create accurate budgets.
FIN-651699 FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: PRACTICES AND STRATEGIES
3 credits
The learning objective of this course is to build on the foundations developed earlier in the pre-requisite Accounting and Finance course and to integrate the best practices and strategies in the world of Corporate Finance. Through the analytical use of financial case studies, this course seeks to develop a deeper understanding among the students by engaging them with the application of financial models to real-world problems. The pertinent financial topics will include long-term investment and financing decisions, leverage and optimal capital structure decisions, dividend policy, and working capital management, as well as some advanced topics, which include initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, firm valuation and risk management and hedging. Student’s grasp and learning will be enhanced through a structured financial analysis of business cases, involving problem identification, scanning the business environment, and selection of a financially optimal solution among available options, inculcating vital skills towards professional performance and future career development. This course has several pre-requisites
FIN-651700 INVESTMENT ANALYSIS
3 credits
The learning objective of this course is to develop investment and financial modeling skills through an analysis of financial data with the help of spreadsheets. The students will develop a better understanding of the investment environment, and the functioning of different asset classes and financial instruments, that include the money market, the bond market, the equity market, and financial derivatives. The course will engage students with procedures and tools to evaluate financial assets and to analyze the risk and return characteristics of equity, fixed income securities, and derivatives, and to undertake portfolio analysis. The core contents of the course focus on analytics and portfolio optimization within the risk-return preferences. This course aims at developing a structured framework of investment analysis by requiring students to complete a set of assignments and to undertake a term project of tracking a selection of stocks and presenting a term paper in the context of firm analysis. While not required, it is recommended that FIN-650608 Quantitative Methods in Finance be taken prior to this course. This course also has a pre-requisite.
HCM-651632 HEALTHCARE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
3 credits
Students taking this course will be able to make sound decisions that promote the financial well-being of a healthcare organization. The course starts by introducing the basic assumptions and concepts underlying the preparation and measurement of financial data, measurement of business operations, business valuation, financial reporting, budgeting, cost allocation, service and product costing, and special reports for managerial purposes. It then progresses to analyze the principles governing the health care industry, rules and regulations in collecting, preparing and presenting financial data for health care providers. As the students comprehend the accounting and financial reporting aspects of healthcare organization, they will move on to cover the financial decisions relevant to operating budget, capital budget and the right mix of cash flows and outflows to create values for the organization. Various learning activities may include readings, research, presentations, case studies, discussion, and financial market analysis.
HCM-651633 STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION IN HEALTHCARE
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Health Care Management. The U.S. established the most comprehensive healthcare system in the world during the twentieth century. The continuous change experienced by this system dramatically affected who has access to healthcare, the U.S. economy, and national politics. The history of the healthcare system, its dynamics, its economic character, its varied constituencies, and the prospects for systemic change serve as a backdrop for our study of strategic communication in health care. Initially, we will develop a foundation of understanding of the healthcare industry by exploring its history and current issues related to healthcare reform. We will investigate the mission and fundamental purpose of healthcare institutions and their relationship to the industry’s complex network of diverse stakeholders. The bulk of the course will focus on an examination of communication on three critical levels in healthcare: interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication. In each, we will examine relevant stakeholders’ responsibilities for managing communication. Particular attention will be devoted to the role of the manager in communicating strategic issues and goals in healthcare contexts.
HCM-651649 HUMAN RESOURCE COMPETENCIES IN HEALTHCARE
3 credits
This course focuses on the challenges and proficiencies related to the management of human resources in health care organizations. Employing a competency-based approach, students will study the complex demands associated with, and skills necessary for, the recruitment, management, and development of a workforce in an industry experiencing significant policy and economic change as well as substantial consumer base growth. A central theme of the course is how to align the Human Resources function with organizational mission and strategy and ensure that Human Resources functions and processes support organizational goals. We will examine how this can occur in an industry characterized by uncertainty and flux; a highly diverse labor market; realignment of organizational systems; technological advancements which influence the management of information, human capital, and clinical activity; shifts toward systemic integration; and the adoption of best practice models which place an increasing emphasis on quality of outcome. Students will explore and apply strategies related to critical HR functions and matters, including performance management systems, staffing, selection, incentive structures, employee and team development, policy and legal issues, and ethics.
HCM-651652 HEALTHCARE QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND COMPLIANCE
3 credits
Healthcare has been recently exposed to public scrutiny. Providers have been financially rewarded for complying with best practices standards. Therefore, quality management is strategically central to the work of all professionals in healthcare services. This course is an application of quality management theory and knowledge in healthcare practice. It also explores regulatory, managerial, organizational, and compliance issues relevant to quality control, maintenance, and improvement. The course covers various methods and tools currently utilized in measuring, assessing, and improving healthcare services with practical real-life applications and case studies. Among various topics to be covered are, but not limited to, managing the use of healthcare resources and quality management environments, performance improvement tools, quality project teams, measuring and improving patient safety, measuring and evaluating quality performance and continuous improvement utilizing various managerial and statistical techniques such as total quality management, balanced scorecard, six sigma, and applying the concepts of organizing for quality. In addition, the course will cover compliance laws, policies and procedures for various healthcare organizations. The course pedagogy is based on mini lecture, power point presentation, streamed videos presenting interviews of principles in the healthcare field, practice with workbooks for students’ reflection on learning, discussion of the concurrent issues relevant to quality management, and case studies.
LAB-630501 LABOR EMPHASIS SEMINAR
3 credits
The purpose of this study is to introduce students to the study of labor and policy. First, it will introduce students to some the fundamental characteristic of the American working class and unions. Secondly, it will introduce students to a variety of labor problems that have arisen in the past twenty years due to the global economy, new technology and other developments. Thirdly, the course will develop the students’ skills in writing at the graduate level, in doing academic book reviews, and in doing policy analyses. This course is residency based.
LAB-630503 POLICY FORMATION IN UNIONS
3 credits
For the past decade, unions have faced difficult times: declining memberships, corporate re-structuring, demands for concessions, hostile government policies, failures of labor law, open union busting, foreign competition, new technology, and growing numbers of women, minority, and part-time workers. The purpose of this course is to examine some of the recent problems faced by union policy makers and some of the new policies that they are developing to deal with these problems.
LAB-630507 SOCIOLOGY OF WORK: HUMAN RESOURCES
3 credits
The course will provide the student with an overview of some of the main topics associated with the social organization of work. We will begin by exploring the historical foundations of the contemporary workplace and draw on the theories of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Frederick Taylor and Harry Braverman, who will provide a conceptual understanding of workplace relations. In the second part of the study, we will look at the question of social class and how this structures one's opportunities in the workplace and outside it. We will also explore the question of the global economy, types of work and the routinization of work. In the third part of the study, we will then turn our attention to exploring contemporary research on the workplace as it affects family life, and think about the ways in which inequality is perpetuated through contemporary arrangements of paid and unpaid labor, as well as more generally, the question of balancing work and family life. A guiding question throughout the study will be to ask what is the impact of work on human relationships, and in particular, how forms of social inequality are produced and perpetuated in the workplace and how human relations are structured in these workplace settings.
LAB-630520 COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
3 credits
This course is designed to provide an overview of bargaining in the public sector. It deals with major policy issues related to public sector bargaining, with the environmental factors influencing public sector bargaining, with bargaining techniques, and with dispute resolution in the public sector. This course is required for the Public Sector Labor and Employment Policy Advanced Certificate program.
LAB-630521 CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
3 credits
This course is designed to help students explore current trends in collective bargaining. Students will be encouraged to explore such issues as concession bargaining, changes in bargaining structure, new bargaining strategies and tactics and such new bargaining issues as two tier wage systems, changes in work rules, job security, quality of work, technological change, women's concerns, and safety and health.
LAB-630522 LABOR AND INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY
3 credits
This course studies the place of labor within the international economy and the history, development, and formation of that economy since 1945. We will examine the historical development and then look at the consequences for labor of economic development especially as this involves the place of manufacturing in national economics and global investing, especially the current expansion of foreign investment within the United States.
LAB-630526 READINGS IN LABOR AND POLICY
3 credits
This course will examine recent studies on labor and industrial relations and labor and policy. The student may choose his/her own readings in consultation with the mentor. Strongly recommended are the following: Steven Fraser and Joshua Freeman, eds. Audacious Democracy, John Sweeney, America News a Raise, Ruth Milkman, Farewell to the Factory, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Organizing to Win, Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics, Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World, and Lester Thurow, The Future of Capitalism.
LAB-630530 PROMOTING LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS THROUGH ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING
3 credits
This course is designed for those interested in the area of training from a union, business or educational perspective. The focus will be on both the individual adult and on organizational issues of promoting and managing a learning organization through the training, career development and education functions. The course will help students to understand theories of adult development and adult learning and the implications for designing educational programs and plans for participants. Current theory and principles of practice of learning organizations will be reviewed. Depending on the needs of the students enrolled, the focus of the contract can be directed more toward understanding the individual or the organizational perspective. In addition to the readings and writing assignments, students will be expected to complete an investigative project analyzing an organizational approach to training design and evaluation.
LAB-630531 STAFFING THE ORGANIZATION
3 credits
This course examines the nature, role and strategic implications of the recruiting and selection process within an organization. Emphasis is placed on the role of the human resource function in obtaining, developing, and retaining a qualified work force. Current related theory and research is analyzed and used as the basis for recommended practices. Topics include: legal issues, strategic human resource planning, recruitment, selection, orientation and socialization, and performance assessment. Though not required, prior experience/coursework in human resource management is helpful.
LAB-630532 OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY IN THE MODERN WORKPLACE
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to understand the place of occupational health and safety in the modern workplace. The student will gain insight into the economic, political and social forces that impact worker health and safety. Through directed readings and a major research project the student will develop an in-depth knowledge of the health and safety issue of his or her choice. Some possibilities for this project are ergonomics, indoor air quality or violence.
LAB-630533 LABOR ARBITRATION
3 credits
This course is relevant to both the public and the private sector. We will consider the principles and parameters of arbitration and the guiding principles which govern arbitration decisions. We will examine both investigation for, and preparation and presentation of arbitration cases. Students will develop a supplementary contract with the mentor which will allow them to focus on a particular aspect of arbitration, such as the principles and practices governing discipline and discharge, or on a more general consideration, such as the values which underpin the arbitration process, or arbitration as a form of dispute resolution and its relation to other forms of dispute resolution such as mediation. We will also consider arbitration as it relates to the resolution of disputes concerning matters of interest, as well as matters of right.
LAB-630534 LABOR LAW
3 credits
This course considers the history and principles of federal labor relations law and its relevance to both private and public sector labor relations. The text is prepared by the Labor Law Section of the American Bar Association and is the standard authority in the field. We will gain an overview of the labor law and the parameters of decision making, as established legislatively, and by the National Labor Relations Board and the Courts, which have guided the course of labor law in the United States. The student will first do a paper demonstrating an understanding of labor law principles according to this overview of the law. The student and the mentor will advise a supplementary contract which will focus on a particular aspect of labor law relevant to the student. This is a required, residency-based course and available for matriculated Labor Policy students only.
LAB-630536 ENVIRONMENT, LABOR AND THE COMMUNITY
3 credits
This course will explore the economic, political and social forces that influence the environmental policies of labor unions and community organizations. The student will study worker and community struggles for environmental quality, as well as corporate threats that make coalitions difficult. In a major research paper the student will develop an in-depth understanding of the environmental issue of his or her choice. Some possibilities for this project are environmental justice, toxic waste or lead contamination.
LAB-630539 THEORIES OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT
3 credits
In this course we will examine a wide variety of theories that attempt to explain why labor unions have arisen, why they take the form they do, why they behave the way they do, and what role they have under capitalism. We will consider such theorists as Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, John Dunlop, Selig Perlman, Thorstein Veblen and Pope Leo XIII.
LAB-630541 LABOR RESEARCH METHODS
3 credits
This course focuses both on academic as well as professional research. Students will emerge from this course with techniques for application to their course work; to begin developing a strategy for their capstone experience; and for developing skills which they can use in a professional labor environment, such as gathering data and input from membership. This is a required, residency-based course and available for matriculated Labor Policy students only.
LAB-630542 HISTORY OF LABOR AND POLICY
3 credits
This course is designed to familiarize students with the political institutions, processes, and values of the American political system. More specifically, it will use contemporary issues and policies to demonstrate and explore the relationship between the American labor movement, political parties, the electorate, and the national government. The course is also designed to give students experience in researching the formation, implementation and impact of federal labor policy. This is a required, residency-based course and available for matriculated Labor Policy students only.
LAB-630543 CURRENT ISSUES FACING LABOR
3 credits
How is labor dealing with the new challenges it faces in organizing, bargaining, servicing members, and acting politically? Among the challenges are those posed by increasing numbers of immigrants, women, and young workers in the workforce. At the bargaining table, the challenges include demands for wage cuts, two-tiered wages and benefits, cuts in healthcare and other benefits. There are new demands from employers and employees for family care and flex-time. There are bargaining partners who face bankruptcy and government and union-sponsored bailouts. The labor movement and its partners thus face a range of new and emerging issues. This is a required, residency-based course and available for matriculated Labor Policy students only.
LAB-630544 PUBLIC SECTOR LABOR LAW
3 credits
This course considers the history and principles of federal labor relations law and its relevance to both private and public sector labor relations. The text is prepared by the Labor Law Section of the American Bar Association and is the standard authority in the field. We will gain an overview of the labor law and the parameters of decision making, as established legislatively, and by the National Labor Relations Board and the Courts, which have guided the course of labor law in the United States. The student will first do a paper demonstrating an understanding of labor law principles according to this overview of the law. The student and the mentor will advise a supplementary contract which will focus on a particular aspect of labor law relevant to the student. Students will be evaluated on the basis of their understanding of the law and its principles, and the quality of their two papers. This course is required for the Public Sector Labor and Employment Policy Advanced Certificate program.
LAB-630548 HIGH PERFORMANCE WORKPLACE
3 credits
In this course we will first examine the form, structure, and connections of the high performance workplace and the roles of information technologies in and beyond the workplace. We will examine the possibilities and challenges which creates for workplace arrangements, communication, and labor-management participation. We will consider the importance of quality, value, core competencies and strategic planning with regard to a service-based economy. We will then consider the impact of these developments for employment relations by comparing and contrasting labor-management relations in different countries.
LAB-630568 COMPENSATION, MOTIVATION AND PERFORMANCE
3 credits
Compensation is one of the most important elements of the workplace. In this course, the subject of compensation is examined across a broad spectrum. The student will study new and innovative approaches linking compensation to organizational strategy and performance. Current theories, models, and concepts are presented and analyzed in an effort to provide the basis for the development of an equitable and effective pay system. Key topics included are motivation theory, job analysis and job evaluation, performance appraisal, legal bases for pay, and internal and external pay equity.
LAB-630594 RESEARCH PROPOSAL - LABOR
3 credits
This course is available to matriculated Labor Policy students only. The purpose of this course is to prepare students for the research and writing that they will undertake in their final project. The course will examine a variety of research approaches, including survey research, interviews, and historical research. The course will also acquaint students with the expectations of graduate research in terms of writing style and documentation. LAB-630595
LAB-630595 FINAL PROJECT
3 credits
Please contact your mentor to discuss your Final Project. The Final Project is unique to each individual. It will not appear in the on-line term guide, but will appear in your registration worksheet, once your mentor has added the course for you. You will then be able to register for the final project. Prerequisite: Approved Final Project Proposal must be on file in Graduate Studies.
LIB-640504 MODELS OF CRITICAL INQUIRY-SOCIETY, TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT
3 credits
This is a required course and is only available to matriculated MALS students. This track of Models of Critical Inquiry will focus on the relationship of culture to nature as that relationship has evolved, and continues to evolve, in history. In particular we'll look at the paradigm shift by which we may (yet) give up the notion that we can infinitely manipulate, control, and exploit natural processes for economic benefit. Students share a common core of readings on paradigm change and environmental history, then read a book from a list of works on Peak Oil, and complete a research paper on an environmental problem or issue area of their choice. There is a residency requirement with this course.
LIB-640505 MODELS OF CRITICAL INQUIRY: LANDSCAPES OF LEARNING
3 credits
This is a required course and is only available to matriculated MALS students. This version of Models of Critical Inquiry focuses on the relationship between schooling and society, and introduces students to major competing traditions of educational and social research. Students explore different perspectives on the dynamics of learning, and consider the role of race, class, ethnicity, language and gender on the experience of students and teachers. We learn how the assumptions one makes about the nature of knowledge influence our choices of what to focus a study upon, how we study it, and what interpretive framework we use to draw conclusions. Students read a set of assigned authors who take different theoretical perspectives as they study the learning process among diverse populations. Students then have the opportunity to write a research paper on a topic based on their own pressing question or concern. There is a residency requirement with this course.
LIB-640506 MODELS OF CRITICAL INQUIRY: ETHICS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES
3 credits
This is a required course and is only available to matriculated MALS students. This course addresses contemporary social dilemmas through various paradigms of moral and ethical inquiry. Students explore a variety of classic and current moral theories, using feminist criticisms of contemporary moral theories as a critical lens. In the first assignment after the opening residency, Hilde Lindemann, An Invitation to Feminist Ethics sets the stage for a framework of contestation. Students then read sections of Judith Boss, Analyzing Moral Issues to contrast a variety of ethical paradigms concerning such social and legal issues as abortion, genetic engineering, euthanasia, the death penalty, drugs and alcohol use, sexual ethics, freedom of speech, racism and affirmative action, feminism, motherhood and the workplace, war and terrorism, and animal and environmental ethics. Each chapter in the text contains major readings from a wide spectrum of scholars as well as important information on relevant Supreme Court rulings. The term paper and literature review for this course allows students to do their major research on a contemporary ethical dilemma of their choosing. There is a residency requirement with this course
LIB-640507 MODELS OF CRITICAL INQUIRY: ART, AESTHETICS, AND THE BODY
3 credits
This is a required course and is only available to matriculated MALS students. This course examines ways in which knowledge is produced and how it has been used, comparing a classic framework from the history of science and ideas with counterpart developments in the Arts. Art's paradigmatic moves in the last 25 years challenge "high/low" aesthetics, what art is, and the sites of production and reception of the body, in a scene at once localized and distanced via media. There is a residency requirement with this course
LIB-640508 MODELS OF CRITICAL INQUIRY: RELATIONSHIPS TO THE PAST: HISTORY AND CULTURE
3 credits
This is a required course and is only available to matriculated MALS students. This course will examine the paradigm shifts in how history is understood, constructed, and viewed today as well as considering the concept of social construction in our discussions of history. We will be looking at primary source materials, most often in a comparative manner and will be considering the place of oral history and its related narratives as well. The course will allow each student to follow his/her own particular interests after engaging in reading and discussion of some common resources, both primary and secondary. The key concept guiding this course is that history is really “story” (history without the “hi-“), and the question is whose stories from where and when. There is a residency requirement with this course
LIB-640509 MODELS OF CRITICAL INQUIRY: SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
3 credits
This is a required course and is only available to matriculated MALS students. Science is a socially situated activity. In this course we will work to understand what that means for scientists and the rest of society. We will also examine why that simple statement has generated so much heat and controversy over the last decade. This study will discuss how politics and economics interact with science in the search for and production of knowledge. Some of the questions we will engage include: how do we know, and what can we know? What is objectivity? What is the interaction between knowledge and power? How should we understand current struggles around such issues as Intelligent Design, stem cell research, invasive species, or the 'homosexual gene'? Scientific studies occur in contexts. Researchers in racial science administered neural tests to various people, and African Americans’ response times, whether faster or slower, were always interpreted to mean that they were inferior to European Americans. At the turn of the 20th century men who suffered from neurasthenia were prescribed vigorous outdoor exercise to reconnect with nature, while women who suffered from the same disease were prescribed strict bed rest. As these examples reveal, it is not just the data that is important, it is how and why these data were collected, and how context may influence their interpretation. At the same time, the willingness of scientists to revisit and retest their studies makes science one of the most robust areas of inquiry. There is a residency requirement with this course.
LIB-640511 COMMUNITY PERFORMANCE
3 credits
To engage in this individualized graduate study, the learner should enter having identified a social, cultural, or community topic, issue, or stakeholder constituency’s point of view that she will explore through an embodied performance genre. Learners may enter with the intention of furthering their development and background in the literature from the perspective of organizers, writers/designers, or leaders/performers, whether in the performance disciplines of theater, dance, parades, demonstrations, live installations, or other genres. Each learner will first complete a combination of directed and self-directed reading selections and participate in discussions or written short commentaries on theory, concepts, and previous work in this area, building to two short essays and then developing a final study project. The project could be a proposal and method design, a realization, or a reflective or comparative commentary as a spectator, participant, or witness. The nature of a second essay and final project depends upon the particular interests, choices, and the competencies that the learner brings to the study. The course cannot be taken as a studio practicum only; critical writing is a required part of the learning activities.
LIB-640514 GENDER, RACE, AND NATION
3 credits
This course, which examines intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and the state, emphasizes a paradigm shift away from the hegemony of western liberal feminism to an exploration of indigenous transnational feminism. Students will read the work of such theorists as Anne McClintock, Jacqui Alexander, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty to gain an understanding of the relationship between feminist theory and praxis while engaging topics that include a critical assessment of the concept of “universal sisterhood” and the effects of globalization on women’s organizing.
LIB-640515 COLD WAR CULTURE
3 credits
In this course students will examine the period that brought America the utopian vision of Disneyland and the anxiety of the “duck and cover” campaign, the chaos of Rock’n Roll and the conformity of Levittown. Exploring such paradoxes in the films, music, and literature of the late 1940s -the early 1960s allows students to gain an understanding of how such events as the nuclear arms race, the black freedom movement, and the development of a distinct youth culture shaped the lives of Cold War Americans and left a legacy still felt today.
LIB-640516 READINGS IN EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY
3 credits
In this course, students will develop an understanding of the relationship between democracy and education. What tensions arise between different conceptions of the human condition, the social contract, and the role of education in developing particular behaviors, knowledge and skill sets among citizens in a democracy? What is the role of education in a democracy, and how is this different from other societies? What can schools do- and teach -to support democratic life, especially in our own, diverse society? In this course, students will consider major themes in democracy and education through their readings.
LIB-640540 PSYCHOLOGY OF ART
3 credits
In this course we will examine the human endeavor of art and the human experience of creativity through a psychological lens. We will study the psychological explanations for the processes and urge of creative artistic expression. The course is designed to begin with a common experience of learning from readings and discussion/written assignment, followed by extended individual inquiry. Students can choose their own path of inquiry or participate in an inquiry directed by the instructor. These individual paths may be structured as further exploration of a type of artistic endeavor or a particular inquiry – a question to be answered by this course.
LIB-640541 CULTURE AND DISEASE
3 credits
What is the role of culture in human beings’ understandings of themselves and their worlds of illness and health? How do cultural/subcultural understandings affect how individuals view their own illnesses and the ways others view them? Where do these converge and diverge? In this course, students will become oriented to the differences that culture can make in both self and other’s understandings of disease. Students will read texts and engage in discussion, write essay responses or keep a learning journal.
LIB-640542 ORAL TRADITION: HISTORY AND NARRATIVE
3 credits
For most people, it comes as a considerable surprise that writing and texts, the stuff and matter of the modern educational enterprise comprise relatively recent inventions in the overall span of the our species history, the last week of December were we to put them on an annual calendar as John Miles Foley suggests. The rise of studies outside the mainstream of Euro-centric male dominance in the last half century of historical studies has occurred in no small part due to the understanding that oral traditions have been held the history for by far the largest numbers of people of our globe: African, Native American, Pacific peoples, African American, Hispanic, women, and so on, while studies in narrative traditions, lately in writing, have shown a strong oral foundation, even for classics like the Homeric epics and the Bible. Exploring oral history and traditional narrative along with the performance – for orality presumes performance – will provide the substance of this course.
LIB-640543 THINGS OF VALUE: TOPICS IN MATERIAL CULTURE
3 credits
This course allows you to become acquainted with perspectives on material culture and a theoretical and methodological repertoire to realize new learning through investigation of particular subjects and issues related to your program. We begin with common readings and media, followed by choices among such focus areas as museum studies, consumption theories and patterns, the concept of cultural property, or a closer focus on a specialty topic, such as a particular type of material or artifact and its history, use, and interpretation.
LIB-640544 REPRESENTATIONS OF RACE AND GENDER
3 credits
How do advertising, film and television, the visual arts, computer-mediated communication, and scientific discourse tell us who we are? How do we learn to “be” women or men? How do we learn what it “means” to be categorized according to race and ethnicity? Is it possible that “gender” and “race” are what we do rather than what we are, characteristics that we perform, create, and recreate each day based on what our culture tells us is appropriate? This study will explore the ways in which social categories such as race and gender are defined by and through forms of cultural representation. Students will begin by exploring a variety of contemporary theories on the relationship between social categories and cultural representation. They will then draw on readings from Gender Studies, African-American Studies, and Lesbian and Gay Studies to view how a wide variety of theorists understand the relationship between cultural expectations and personal identity. Finally, each student will select a specific area for further research: film, television, advertising, the web, scientific imaging, technology, and the "fine" arts and the performing arts are all possibilities.
LIB-640546 ASKING QUESTIONS, FINDING ANSWERS: GRADUATE INQUIRY
1 credits
This course will assist the student in developing his/her skills in the craft of research and inquiry at the graduate level. The student will use the question, issue, interest, or concern that has led him/her to matriculate in the Master of Liberal Studies program as he/she learns and develops ways to approach that question, issue, interest, or concern. The goal of this initial course is to gain a comfort level with inquiry and how to do it.
LIB-640547 TOPICS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES
1 credits
Topics in Women’s Studies will focus on the themes of the Women's Studies Residency that will be held at a time and date to be announced, specifically how race and place intersect with gender. How has the dismantling and reconstruction of national/international boundaries and borders changed the conceptualization of women’s place and identities? How have such traditionally gendered categories such as “public space” and “private space” changed? What are the changing relationships between gender and the construction of internal and external structures of racial oppression? What is the role of women, especially women of color and “third-world” women, in the global economy?
LIB-640548 CRITICAL READING, CRITICAL THINKING
1 credits
This course will assist students in strengthening their skills in reading critically and honing the critical thinking skills needed for effective graduate study in the recognition that virtually no formal training in reading occurs in a student's career after elementary school. Thus, the overall goal for this course involves the development of a systematic plan for reading and evaluating what is read and includes the following objectives: 1. Improve critical reading through improvement in analysis 2. Improve understanding of the point of view 3. Gain knowledge and comprehension of the language and concepts of critical thinking 4. Develop a systematic plan for analyzing a piece of writing at multiple levels of analysis (concept, article, book, discipline).
LIB-640553 READINGS IN FEMINIST AND LESBIAN/GAY THEORY
3 credits
Is it true that, as Simone de Beauvois famously wrote, one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one? Is gender something that is our chromosomes? Our socialization? Our clothes? How does gender relate to ways of knowing, forms of power, relationships to the body and the earth? What is the relationship between gendered power dynamics and alternative sexualities? What does it mean to be "queer"? Contemporary feminist and lesbian/gay theory addresses these and many other questions concerning the experience and representation of sexuality and gender. This course will begin with a set of readings to familiarize students with a variety of important feminist and "queer" theorists. Each student will then identify a specific topic for further reading and research. The literature reviews and/or research papers thus generated will provide a resource for the class as a whole.
LIB-640554 MODERN GENDER AND SEXUALITY THROUGH SCIENCE FICTION LITERATURE
3 credits
This course will examine current issues of gender and sexuality in the humanities (literature, philosophy, history, etc.) through the lens of science fiction and fantastic literature (SFF). By focusing on specific key issues and texts in feminist SFF literature, and using additional readings from history and philosophy to put the main texts in an appropriate context, the student will gain an understanding of the complexities of gender and sexuality in US culture and society, achieve a deeper appreciation of the issues of representation in literature, and develop the skills of analysis and interpretation.
LIB-640558 AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
3 credits
From the earliest American literature to latest names for SUVs, the frontier plays an important role in the conception of what it means to be an American. This course will engage the role of the wilderness and the frontier in the myth and reality of American identity and experience. We will examine challenges and contests over the meaning of such concepts as wilderness, “virgin” land, management, and preservation. We will pay particular attention to the ways that the conception of the American environment and landscape have interacted with dominant American ideas of race, gender and citizenship. We will start by examining the differences between European colonizers and the Native population in their attitudes toward the environment and work our way through to the role of agriculture in “taming” the west in the 20th century. This study is part of the Adirondack Residency and will require attendance at the residency in October.
LIB-640570 ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS
3 credits
This course examines the emergent new paradigm in economic theory, ecological economics. Unlike the prevailing neoclassical model of economics, Ecological Economics takes seriously the laws of thermodynamics, and sees economic activity as taking place within (and as exchanging matter and energy across a boundary with) a larger environment. It thus is the theoretical perspective within which the major issue of our era--the unsustainability of our economic practice--can most successfully be addressed. Following closely the structure of a new text, Daly and Farley's Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications, and drawing on additional readings, the course covers this difference in theoretical perspective and then applies this new perspective to traditional economic theory and to the micro- and (especially) macro-economic problems that economics customarily addresses. The text and course also address many issues that traditional economics usually shunts aside as being beyond the purview of economists: issues in distribution of wealth (and in negative environmental impacts), and in general the integration of politics and economics in a new approach to political economy. The text and the course are designed as an introduction to the subject of Ecological Economics, and do not require previous coursework in economics.
LIB-640571 CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBALIZATION AND SOCIAL EQUITY
3 credits
This course will explore the boundary between concern for the global environment on the one hand and concern for the welfare of the global poor on the other. It explores the nature and impact of globalization in the context of the realities of climate change and the roles both rich and poor play in that process. Students will begin by reading two books, James Gustave Speth's Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment and Joseph Stiglitz's Making Globalization Work. They will then explore specific aspects of the issues raised by these authors in the context of a 'developing' country or region chosen in consultation with the tutor. Their independent research projects will result in a case study that explores both globalization and climate change, as they are manifest in a single country or region.
LIB-640572 CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING
3 credits
Creative Nonfiction: Like journalism it traffics in reality, reporting, and facts; unlike journalism, it values honesty over objectivity. Another essential difference is that creative nonfiction writers may not find themselves directed by the requirements of argument, but struggling with metaphor, dialogue, point of view, and other elements of composition associated with poetry, fiction and drama to create and explore their experience. Where standard nonfiction likes explanation or exposition that focuses on concepts, ideas and facts, creative nonfiction uses story, imagery, quotations, descriptions and the personal voice of the engaged author to bring experience to the reader. The assignments are designed to help students learn to function like working writers: that is, as they compose their works, they are also studying other writers and specific sub-genres as well as familiarizing themselves with specific elements of nonfiction (literal vs. invented truth, voice, memory, composing processes, relationship to other genres).
LIB-640573 STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
3 credits
Individualized elective topics possible (within this topic area) include Modern American Literature, Women Writers, American Renaissance, Literature of New York, Literature and the American Dream, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Hawthorne and James, Self and Society, Love and Death in the Novel. (Students should expect to identify and study a sub-topic as an individualized elective.)
LIB-640574 FICTION WRITING
3 credits
The goal of this course is to help students develop and expand their abilities as writers by looking at some of the essential elements of fiction in greater depth. This course is intended to provide advanced students of fiction with the opportunity to diversify, extend and deepen their work. Students in this study will focus on both the craft and process of creating a compelling story, using intuition, attention to detail and fiction writing techniques. Experimentation with language and writing techniques is encouraged.
LIB-640576 WOMEN AND HUMOR
3 credits
What is women’s humor? Why has humor by women been largely resisted or overlooked? This study will examine women’s use of humor as a form of social protest. In particular we will look at the movement away from domestic humor of 19th century writers like Fanny Fern and Francis Miriam Whitcher toward the use of satire by such 20th century women of wit as Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Alice Childress, Betty MacDonald, Jean Kerr, and Erma Bombeck. Students will gain knowledge of theories of humor and satire as well as an understanding of the changing role of women in America from the 1850s to the 1960s.
LIB-640577 HISTORY AND CULTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT AND/OR MESOPOTAMIA
3 credits
While each interested student should consult with the mentor on this course, its basic concerns will examine the history and culture of pharaonic Egypt and/or Ancient Mesopotamia with the goal of both gaining greater knowledge of one or the other or both of these ancient civilizations with the goal of strengthening the approach and appreciation of the histories involved. Beginning with an overview of the ebb and flow of the culture's history, the student will then examine selected themes within the culture, some of which might include its religion and mythology, the foundations of functions of its leadership, its social values, and its relationships with contemporaneous civilizations or cultures. The student will consult with the mentor about exactly what he/she wishes to cover, why, and how.
LIB-640578 ANCIENT LITERATURE: EGYPTIAN AND/OR MESOPOTAMIAN
3 credits
While each interested student should consult with the mentor on this course, its basic concerns will address the literature of ancient Egypt and/or that of ancient Mesopotamia, looking at various types present, their use, their historical position, and their relationship to other aspects of the culture. Texts will be read in translation and, where available, commentaries will be used. The student will consult with the mentor about exactly what he/she wishes to cover, why, and how.
LIB-640579 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION AND/OR MYTHOLOGY
3 credits
While each interested student should consult with the mentor on this course, its basic concerns will cover the major myths and religious practices of pharaonic Egypt including creation, gods and goddesses and their activities, kingship and queens, basic beliefs of the people and mortuary beliefs and practices. Special attention will be paid to women. As a whole, this study will permit the student to gain a significant knowledge of beliefs and practices of a culture from a different time and place from their own as well as learning appropriate approaches to take in such encounters. The student will consult with the mentor about exactly what he/she wishes to cover, why, and how.
LIB-640590 AMERICAN HISTORY, CULTURE AND THE ARTS
3 credits
This course will examine American history through the lens of American art and culture. By focusing on specific key issues in American history since the Civil War and engaging a broad variety of primary and secondary sources, the student will gain an understanding of the complexities of US culture and society, achieve a deeper appreciation of art and culture, and develop the skills of a practicing historian. This course will examine US history since the Civil War through an investigation of American arts and culture. Students will read books and essays that link US history to specific aspects of US art and culture, as a way to examine the construction of American society. The student will explore the critical developments of urbanization, technology, political reform, and the expanding role of the United States internationally. Special attention will be given to issues of American identity and aspects of race, gender, and ethnicity, as Americans embraced or reacted against the currents of modernism and modern social transformation.
LIB-640591 RACE AND GENDER IN US HISTORY SINCE THE CIVIL WAR
3 credits
When Frederick Douglass took the podium to address the 1848 Seneca Falls convention in support of a platform demanding suffrage for women, it marked a high point of unity between US movements for racial justice and sexual equality. However, since the Civil War’s end, and particularly since the Fifteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution, the two movements have not generally been marching forward together. What progress each movement has achieved has often been made separately and at times made at one other’s expense. As the US reconfigured its identity after the war and became a more imperial power, concerns of place added to the dialogues of race and class and national identity at home. Movements in the Midwest expressed their concerns differently than parallel movements in the south, while overseas the Philippine occupation shaped American ideologies of domesticity. The intent of this course is to investigate the complex ways in which gender, race, and national identity are articulated in US culture and society and to examine how that has historically shaped the social movements that challenged the prevailing order.
LIB-640592 AMERICAN MODERNISM
3 credits
This course will examine the rise of modernism in American history with particular attention to issues of art and culture. The student will explore the critical developments of urbanization, technology, political reform, and the expanding role of the United States internationally. Special attention will be given to issues of American identity and aspects of race, gender, and ethnicity, as Americans embraced or reacted against the currents of modernism and modern social transformation. By focusing on specific key issues in American history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and engaging a broad variety of primary and secondary sources, the student will gain an understanding of the complexities of US culture and society, achieve a deeper appreciation of art and culture, and develop the skills of a practicing historian.
LIB-640596 EXAMINING AND EXPANDING THE DICHOTOMY OF GENDER
3 credits
This course is available for graduate students with required attendance at the Women's Studies Residency. This course will examine the social construction of the dichotomy of gender. The history of gender roles and prescriptions will be studied, differentiating the concepts of biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The course will cover the recent transgender movement, which expands gender beyond the binary categories of female and male. Students will be introduced to the basic concepts, issues, and challenges of transgender identities. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which oppression intersects with female, male, and transgender identities. Students will also be encouraged to examine the ways in which gender prescriptions inform their own lives and to question perspectives of gender that are typically accepted as fact.
LIB-640597 DIAGNOSING DESIRE: GENDER AND MEDICINE IN US HISTORY
3 credits
From the 19th century on in the US, the profession of medicine has played an increasingly important role in naturalizing the social constructions of gender and sexuality. From the development of mid-19th century gynecological surgeries and treatments to curb female sexual drives which were perceived as socially dangerous, through the forced sterilizations of the eugenics movement, to the involuntary treatment of intersex infants in the present, medicine has had an important role in regulating gender and reinforcing social gender roles. At the same time, medicine has had potentially liberatory effects on social sexual restraints and provided a public arena to contest repressive social practices. From the development of birth control to the women's health movement, medicine has been used to reframe social debates on acceptable sexual beliefs and practices.
LIB-640600 NARRATIVE IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE
3 credits
This course will explore narrative in human experience, in which the perspective of “story” serves as a metaphor to examine human experience and behavior. It is an interdisciplinary perspective concerned with the process of meaning-making, a framework for conceptualizing identity and lived experience. The concept of self as a narrative construct is a holistic one: a self story is an interactive narrative, an intricate interweaving of individual and context (arising from the way people interpret the role they play in the stories they live and the way those stories either nourish or diminish them). A self narrative is only relevant in the context of the larger stories within which it lives and breathes; we are all born into stories that began long before we arrived, and we become self within their borders: stories of culture and religion, of family and workplace, of politics and ideology. Objectives of this course are to become knowledgeable about the perspective of narrative in human experience, and to explore possible applications of this perspective in various contexts (personal, academic, professional). The course may focus on human development and identity, aging, illness, or other aspects of human experience depending on the student’s needs and interests.
LIB-640601 NARRATIVE COUNSELING
3 credits
This course will explore narrative approaches to counseling, which view the self as a narrative shaped by society and therapy as a space in which to “re-story” the self. The “facts” and events that compose a life do not change, but meanings and perspectives can and do. The narrative perspective frames human experience and even the innermost sense of self as an internalized story; thus, counseling may be viewed as a process of story revision. This course will encompass an overview of historical, philosophical, and ideological aspects of narrative and social constructionist perspectives, and a focus on counseling practices that use narrative techniques. Objectives of this course are to become knowledgeable about the perspective of narrative counseling, and to explore possible applications of this perspective in various contexts (personal, academic, professional).
LIB-640602 NARRATIVE RESEARCH
3 credits
Telling stories (to self and others) is one of the ways that human beings organize their experience and sense of self. Narrative research is a qualitative approach where stories are the primary research methodology. In some cases, stories are collected and then analyzed to produce data; in other cases, data is collected and stories are produced (oral history, biography). Often, life stories are the primary focus, but narrative research has also been used in organizational studies and educational inquiry, as well as ethnographic studies. Objectives of this course are to become knowledgeable about the perspective and methodology of narrative research, and to explore applications of this perspective in various research contexts.
LIB-640603 URBAN YOUTH: EVERYDAY LIVES AND DEVELOPMENT
3 credits
Urban Youth are teens coming of age in predominately ethnic minority urban neighborhoods where resources are as scarce as stereotypes are rampant from both popular and professional sources. These young women and men are typically [mis]perceived through the lens of sexism, racism, and classism as deficient--predisposed to school dropout, teen pregnancy, violence, drug use, and/or other social problems. In this course, we will confront the stereotypes by examining research and scholarship that show the everyday lives and development of these teens: the diverse ways these youth prevail over challenges to development, their resiliency in the face of adversities, and the vulnerabilities for the coming generation.
LIB-640604 CONTEMPORARY CUBAN SOCIETY
3 credits
This course provides students an opportunity to explore a wide variety of social and cultural issues in contemporary Cuban society. This course will be tailored to address students' specific interests in Cuban culture and society with a particular emphasis on revolutionary Cuba including the current post-Soviet period. Possible areas of focus might include: Cuban health care, women in Cuba, race relations, tourism and its social impact, music and dance, sexuality, religion, or politics.
LIB-640605 TOPICS IN ECOLOGY
3 credits
Studies may include a range of current topics in theoretical and empirical ecology, including: competition, predation, succession, population growth, dispersal and community assembly. Students may also choose to examine ecological thought from a variety of postures, including those of ecosystem, landscape, community and population ecology.
LIB-640606 LITERARY THEORY
3 credits
Literary Theory will provide an overview of the major schools of thought used in contemporary literary criticism: Formalism, Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Post-Structuralism, Feminism, Queer Theory, and Critical Race Theory. Students will work together to review and apply each school to specific works of literature. They will then work on their own on the major course assignment, either a literature review or a research paper. This course can also serve as a methodology/theory elective for students in appropriate fields of Cultural Studies.
LIB-640607 PSYCHOLOGY OF CONSUMPTION
3 credits
Our consumer lifestyle is part of our sense of self, our social identity, and our satisfaction with life. In this course, we will examine the meanings of money and possessions, the process of shopping and spending, different populations of consumers, advertising, the relevance of consumption for self-definition, and the role of consuming in the search for well-being and happiness.
LIB-640608 POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE GOOD LIFE
3 credits
What is happiness, who is happy, and can we become happier? Along with analyzing the readings, we will examine the assumptions behind measures of well-being and values, learn about theories and research on happiness, about money and materialism in relation to happiness, and how the themes of the study apply to our lives.
LIB-640611 LANGUAGE AND PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN MOVEMENT: ANALYSIS AND EFFICIENCY
3 credits
In this course students will learn a system of movement analysis that focuses on experiencing and perceiving movement behavior by identifying body movement in space with different qualities of movement. With understanding of these basic elemental building blocks to all movement we can better appreciate human communication through non-verbal expression and physical performance. Bartenieff Fundamentals facilitate deep bodily connections to support expression, movement, and health. We will explore Bartenieff’s concepts of breath and core support, weight transference, spatial intention, dynamic alignment and body organization.
LIB-640612 HUMAN MOVEMENT DEVELOPMENT: A PHYSIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
3 credits
In this course, students will come to understand the impact of early childhood movement experience on motor learning and perceptual development using Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) and Bartenieff Fundamentals. Each system incorporates neuro-maturational and dynamical systems approaches to motor learning theory. Practice movement patterns, reflexes, and righting reactions--the building blocks of motor co-ordination and discuss how they relate to child and adult behavior. The second part of the course teaches anatomy and physiology (a study of organ, glands, fluids, muscular, skeletal nervous systems) through didactic and experiential means.
LIB-640614 FUNCTIONAL AND EXPRESSIVE ASPECTS OF HUMAN MOVEMENT IN CULTURAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTEXTS
3 credits
In this mixed-mode course (in-person workshop component) students will learn to use their own kinesthetic awareness and as well as cognitive understanding of human movement to assess movement style and meaning based on gender and culture. We will also delve into efficient or inefficient human movement patterns through the lens of different cultural contexts and professional fields related to their own areas of interest and research. Theories learned in the pre-requisite course - Language and Philosophy of Human Movement will be used to help critique health, art, and educational practices. Conversely, Laban Movement Analysis and Irmgard Bartenieff’s theories of movement will be assessed through various social science viewpoints
LIB-640616 ASSESSMENT IN SOMATIC STUDIES AND MOVEMENT PERFORMANCE
3 credits
This course meets periodically over 12 months and is an opportunity for students to demonstrate, question and finally, confirm their theoretical and embodied knowledge of somatic movement principles. The course material focuses on individualized learning but also includes a dyadic component during which students demonstrate how they will work with other people in relevant one-to-one settings (e.g., teaching, therapy, health, anthropological applications).
LIB-640617 COMMUNICATION THROUGH MOVEMENT
3 credits
In this course we explore the questions, “What is effective communication? How does bodily movement best support expression?” It takes themes and principles from disciplines such as the Action Profiling, Laban Movement Analysis, Ideokinesis, Kestenberg Movement Profile, and Movement Signature Analysis and puts them in the historical context of the early kinesics studies of R. Birdwistell, M. Davis and P. Ekman. It also includes discourse on the body-mind-emotion-spirit paradigm. We practice speaking about thoughts and feelings that arise from embodied practices.
LIB-640618 THEORIES OF WELLNESS: EMBODIED APPROACHES
3 credits
In this course students define the wellness industry; identify major components of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Field and review these in light of the new field of somatic movement education. Honing in on a specific research question, there is an opportunity to compare areas of interest from the vantage point of different fields and when and whether it is appropriate to apply somatic wellness practices in specific health, education, and cultural settings.
LIB-640619 ADVANCED SEMINAR IN SOMATIC INTEGRATION
3 credits
In this mixed-mode course (in-person workshop component) students explore the scope and standards of the new field of somatic movement education and compare it with other similar fields that may be part of their research or applied work. They discuss professional issues of being a registered somatic movement therapist or educator, somatic psychologist, or a professional in a related field.
LIB-640620 SOMATIC APPLICATIONS
3 credits
This course focuses on the application of somatic education approaches in the student’s area of research inquiry. The weekly class meetings are structured to challenge the students’ practical and theoretical knowledge of somatic theory and application within their chosen domain.
LIB-640621 CULTURAL THEORY OF DANCE
3 credits
The goal of the course is to gain a current understanding of modern, postmodern, and contemporary theatrical dance studies from cultural theory, embodiment, and a chronology of social and aesthetic shifts from the 20th century through recent decades. Readings address modernism, postmodernism, difference, and cross-cultural issues of movement in performance.
LIB-640622 HERITAGE PRESERVATION: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
3 credits
The goal of the course is to become acquainted with current cultural, policy, and philosophical aspects viewed across several types of museums and festivals, focusing on their role in society and the nature of decisions involved in selection, stakeholders, audiences and publics, and presentation.
LIB-640623 Dis/Ability Art and Humanity
3 credits
Through the activities of this study students will consider the image, experience, and embodiment of disability through the arts as well as the contemporary making of art from a disability point of view. We will examine issues of identification, access, and performance as well as the subject and object positions and content of art that depicts, refers to or is made by people with a disability
LIB-640625 ORAL HISTORY: THEORY AND METHODS
3 credits
This course is required for the Certificate in Public History. Oral history is the process of interviewing people to record their memories of events that occurred in the past and to analyze the meaning and value of those memories. In one sense, an oral history interview is a primary document much like newspapers, photographs, or diaries. As with all documents, the oral historian must take care to critique the interview and put it in context with other data and documents. In another sense, the oral history is very different in that the oral historian and the interviewee are creating an historical document that did not exist before. In this course, we will learn the basic methods associated with setting up and conducting oral history interviews.
LIB-640627 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
3 credits
From Freudian slips to cantankerous kitchens: psychology of everyday life What are the psychological experiences of everyday lives that go unnoted in our busy worlds? In this study students will deepen their understanding of who we are and what we like, by analyzing everyday activities that seem too commonplace to offer insight into ourselves and our worlds. The guides for this analysis will be scholarly writings from psychology, sociology and design, beginning with the classics, i.e., Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, but focusing on the contemporary work of Don Norman on the psychology of everyday objects such as Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles.
LIB-640628 MUSEUMS AND PUBLIC HISTORY: THEORY AND PRACTICES
3 credits
This course is required for the Certificate in Public History. Historical societies and museums historically emerged as entities with particular authority and expertise to preserve, educate, and display. However, new modes of making, telling, and rereading public history have emerged that deserve attention, and a literature of theory of museums and exhibitions as powerful social forms raises previously unexamined questions about the sources, uses, and impacts of this authority. This Web-supported course, one of four MALS courses that focus on public history, takes up historical and cultural theory to examine how people, organizations, and institutions co-create history and public memory with communities. Through readings, research, discussion, and use of on-line resources, students in this course explore institutional and exhibitionary histories and trends in the thinking and practices of academic and museum professionals. A major focus will be on identity, authority, and representation. In readings and viewing of exhibits we will trace shifts in correspondent communities' and public expectations, with comparative views of venues and performance that represent history outside established institutions, including cross-cultural examples. We will also consider how technology has changed certain museum practices and functions, in particular through the appraisal and comparison of on-line virtual museums and live visits to museums.
LIB-640629 CULTURE OF THE JAZZ AGE
3 credits
This course will look at the culture of America in the 1920s known as the “Jazz Age.” We will look at the emergence of what Gertrude Stein termed the “lost generation” writers after World War I such as Ernest Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot; the flowering of African-American literature and culture known as the “Harlem Renaissance” with such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen; and the artistic contributions of such jazz legends as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Dizzy Gillespie and blues singers Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker, and Billie Holiday.
LIB-640630 READINGS IN MATERIAL AND VISUAL CULTURE STUDIES
3 credits
What does a wooden bowl say about a particular society? How can a photograph be read? In this course, students will examine the manner in which objects and images are used as cultural creations and primary source materials. The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of Material and Visual Culture Studies will be considered, as will the traditions of Culture Studies more generally. Among the texts to be considered are those by John Berger, Arjun Appadurai, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, Marianne Hirsch, Kristin Hass, Mike Wallace, and Jules Prown.
LIB-640632 AGROECOLOGY AND FOOD SUSTAINABILITY
3 credits
Agroecology is an emerging interdisciplinary field that assumes a significant role for traditional cultural practices in modern agriculture. It has gained prominence in part as a response to industrial agriculture, which largely views food as a commodity to be manufactured with minimal consideration given to environmental and social concerns. Students will learn biology and agronomy as applied to agroecology. Students will also examine the intersection of agroecology and discussions of food sustainability, another interdisciplinary framework that places social and environmental concerns on equal footing with economic productivity.
LIB-640633 STUDIES IN ANCIENT AND TRADITIONAL EPICS
3 credits
Epics, long poetic or prose poems, have formed part of the traditions of cultures from very early times up into the modern era. This course will focus on the early and traditional examples ranging from the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh from the eighteenth century BCE up into the Greco-Roman era in the first centuries CE, along with the possibility of exploring traditional epics from the Celtic, Norse, Indian, and/or African worlds. The content of the course will involve both reading the epics themselves (in translation) as well as exploring the structure, purpose, literary composition, and cultural aspects of the epics chosen for study. Among the theoretical concerns will be the epics’ intertextuality, audience, and their fictionality as well as their function within the culture and other narrative issues such as orality. The student and the mentor will consult and determine the exact content of the course in accordance with the goals and objectives for engaging in it. Student demonstrations of learning will be determined by mutual agreement with the mentor. The student needs to contact the mentor, as soon as possible after registering; even better, make such to contact prior to completing the registration.
LIB-640634 ARCHIVAL THEORY AND PRACTICE
3 credits
This course is required for the Certificate in Public History. This course will introduce students to the history of archives and the basic theories and practices of administering archives and manuscript collections (appraisal, acquisition, arrangement and description, reference, and preservation). As well, the course will draw on several academic disciplines to address the public dimension of archives and their use in research, outreach programs, and historic editing and publishing. Finally, the course will cover ethical and legal issues and the ways new information technologies affect archival administration and use.
LIB-640635 EXHIBITION: PLANNING AND INTERPRETATION
3 credits
This course is required for the Certificate in Public History. Building on the theory and practice learned in Museums and Public History, this course will ask students to work within a history museum (or equivalent collection) to produce an exhibition. Working within a museum setting will allow students to put their theoretical knowledge to practical use. Geographical considerations will determine the specific organizations with which students may work. However, online exhibitions will be possible.
LIB-640636 PUBLIC HISTORY INTERNSHIP
3 credits
This course is required for the Certificate in Public History. In line with recommendations of the National Council on Public History, the mission of the internships are as follows: “Internships are an important part of public history education that allow students to gain new insights into the nature of public history practice by engaging in meaningful work under the mentorship of experienced and knowledgeable public history professionals. Successful internships provide students with work experience combined with structured opportunities to reflect on their activities and connect their practical experience with the skills and knowledge gained in their public history training.” NCPH Curriculum and Training Committee, May 2008. Students will participate in a one-semester internship of 150 hours with a public history institution such as a museum, historical society, archives or library. The purpose of the internship is to provide students with an opportunity to observe and reflect on public history as practiced and apply skills learned in the certificate program. Students will work with the instructor to identify an appropriate institution, field supervisor, and specific responsibilities for the internship. This course has pre-requisites.
LIB-640637 EXPLORING JUNG'S ARCHETYPES
3 credits
Carl Jung’s work, always of interest to scholars and practitioners of psychology, is currently enjoying a resurgence of wider interest both popular and academic. No doubt this is due in part to the recent publication of the Red Book, a compendium of his work heretofore unavailable. But in addition, because his theory, particularly his theory of archetypes, seems to offer scholarly insight for those seeking to explain current popular experience, for writers from positions as diverse as historical scholarship and political punditry. In this study, we will be intrigued by Jung’s theory of archetypes, from original depiction to recent illustrations; beginning with examination of the theory and ending with application to contemporary representations. Jung’s work on archetypes often melds analytic thinking with visual depictions. This study, grounded in psychological theory, includes examination of visual images. Students might find this inquiry into Jung’s work of interest from intellectual and/or visual perspectives.
LIB-640639 HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD IN AMERICA
3 credits
This course assesses the often neglected histories of children and youth in the United States since the colonial era. Among other issues covered in the course, students will evaluate the ways that children have experienced the process of growing up in a variety of social, regional, and demographic contexts; how cultural understandings of childhood has been shaped by science, religion, literary and visual arts; and how children have been incorporated as political subjects in a democracy managed by adults.
LIB-640640 SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS BODY
3 credits
The Socially Conscious Body brings awareness to the body as a source of embodied knowledge and inspiration for social action. We discuss and experience physical awareness and its relationship to psychological and societal injustice, community-building skills for transforming the sedentary to the responsive, embodied leadership for tackling today’s issues, and 'tracking' human dynamics. Activism requires energy and courage, elements that are expressed from the body. Learners discuss how the body is socially manipulated, gain bodily consciousness through self-observation and become compassionate witnesses of others. We use movement techniques for strengthening our physical instruments for action. Experience healthy and peaceable decision-making from a unified field of physical and social awareness. Discover how these skills can address the need of diverse learners including performing artists, fitness trainers, and wellness coaches who want to play a part in social change. Gain new models for integrating bodily discipline into social awareness and activism. Please note: There is a face-to-face study group component; meeting times to be determined by the instructor.
LIB-640641 SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3 credits
This course will assist students in designing a research strategy appropriate for a variety of social science questions. The student will examine issues of social inquiry, operationalization of social theory, as well as procedures for gathering and organizing data including surveys, interviewing, focus groups and participant observation. The student will then examine procedures to analyze their data such as hypothesis testing, analysis of data, techniques for generalizing from samples to populations, and finally pursue strategies for reporting their results.
LIB-640642 STUDIES IN TRADITIONAL FOLKTALES
3 credits
In this course, students will examine the history, meaning, and function of folktales, looking at them as cultural artifacts, as educational tools, as entertainment, and as cultural markers. They will consider various approaches to understanding and interpreting such tales such as feminist, structuralist, psychoanalytical, and more. The tales to be considered can range from ancient exemplars to traditional from indigenous cultures to those of modern cultures in Europe, Asia, India, etc., the choices to be determined by each student in consultation with the mentor. The study will involve gaining an understanding of oral transmission as well as how such tales have been used in other materials. Students may want to consider how numerous traditional tales have been presented in forms other than their original narrative form such as in film, television, plays, novellas, novels, poetry, and such. Students may also wish to look at variants of one or more tales across cultures, place, and time as part of the study. This course is an appropriate one to take for those interested in traditional societies, folklore and folklife, communication, early childhood, psychology/sociology, history of cultures, literature, education, and much more. To design an appropriate course, the student should contact the mentor at his/her earliest convenience.
LIB-640650 FROM CLASSROOM TO COMMUNITY: EXPLORING VIVIAN PALEY'S WORK
3 credits
Vivian Gussin Paley, master educator and teacher-researcher, offers among her writings and speeches, a provocative idea about how practices in classrooms affect societal structures. While her hallmark lies in the use of storytelling in early childhood education, her work is far-reaching: socialization into the world of schooling, instigating curiosity in a heretofore outsider child, harmful effects of exclusion, the struggle to overcome convention in promoting student-centered learning, diversity; all precisely described and analyzed. Paley always writes as a questioning investigator seeking to learn by working through bumps in effecting learning and self-development of her students. Her research method of recording observations subjected to intense analysis led to results containing educational and societal learning gems for the interested inquirer. In this study her method of inquiry will be employed to investigate her knowledge, to sleuth out nuggets of knowledge about learning, development, socialization, and effectiveness of her method of inquiry.
LIB-640651 SOCIOCULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE BODY
3 credits
The body, in particular the way it is constituted, performed, inscribed, and utilized as a site of discipline, identity, exclusion, transgression, and resistance, has been a major subject of contention and interpretation in the human sciences for over three decades. Students will demonstrate understanding and application of social and cultural theories of the body as they explore, discuss, analyze, and write about the socially constructed and performing body from multiple disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, philosophy, the humanities, the arts, and social sciences.
LIB-644500 SEMINAR IN LIBERAL STUDIES (EAST)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. Seminar in Liberal Studies is designed to introduce students to interdisciplinary graduate-level study in the liberal arts. Learning goals include: introduction of various perspectives on the nature and value of liberal study in order to help students begin to envision and articulate possibilities for their own work in this program; introduction of a range of critical theories to enable students to bring new perspectives to their intellectual inquiry; sharpening close reading and critical reading skills in order to make students more literate readers of a wide variety of cultural texts; introducing students to the specific challenges of academic writing; and encouraging them to explore the relationship of cultural difference to different kinds of knowledge. There is a residency requirement with this course
LIB-644502 PERSPECTIVES ON INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY (EAST)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Study examines the concepts of interdisciplinarity, laying a theoretical foundation for each student’s educational plan. The course utilizes both group work through the residencies and in dialogue with the course instructor and individual consultation between students and their academic advisors. This course also enables students to explore the dimensions of their areas of interest, to examine possibilities for interdisciplinary study, and to conduct extensive bibliographical research in their fields. This exploration culminates in the development of a degree program and rationale essay and a literature survey. There is a residency requirement with this course
LIB-644595 FINAL PROJECT
3 credits
Please contact your academic advisor to discuss your Final Project. The Final Project will be created by you and will be unique to you. Once your academic advisor has added the Final Project to your registration worksheet, you will be able to register for it. Prerequisite: Approved Final Project Proposal must be on file in Graduate Studies.
LIB-645500 SEMINAR IN LIBERAL STUDIES (WEST)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. In this blended course of face-to-face meetings and on-line communications through the Web environment in Course Space, we will examine liberal learning and the purposes of education, the influence of culture on knowledge, and alternate sources of learning. Students will explore different perspectives on privilege and meaning afforded to cultural texts of different varieties, and receive an overview of theories of literature. There is a residency requirement with this course
LIB-645502 PERSPECTIVES ON INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY (WEST)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. This course examines the concepts of interdisciplinary, laying a theoretical foundation for the student’s educational plan. It culminates in the development of a degree program and rationale essay, carried out with the student’s academic advisor. Beginning at the Residency, it includes a few common readings and some discussion of research in the new millennium including the use of the Internet. It allows and encourages students to explore the dimensions of their field and examines possibilities for interdisciplinary studies in their particular area of interest. There is a residency requirement with this course.
LIB-645595 Final Project
3 credits
Please contact your academic advisor to discuss your Final Project. The Final Project will be created by you and will be unique to you. Once your academic advisor has added the Final Project to your registration worksheet, you will be able to register for it. Prerequisite: Approved Final Project Proposal must be on file in Graduate Studies.
LIB-646500 SEMINAR IN LIBERAL STUDIES (DOWNSTATE)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. In this course, students will explore the relationship between formal liberal study and individual inquiry and experience. We will focus on the power struggles that have emerged from this relationship and consider how such struggles have affected the meaning of liberal study in American universities and in society. Students will have the opportunity to develop their own historically informed analysis of liberal study, its relationship to their lives, and its potential applications to their specific learning goals. There is a residency requirement with this course.
LIB-646502 PERSPECTIVES ON INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY (DOWNSTATE)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Study examines the concepts of interdisciplinary, laying a theoretical foundation for each student’s educational plan. The course utilizes both group work through the residencies and in dialogue with the course instructor and individual consultation between students and their academic advisor. Perspectives enables students to explore the dimensions of their areas of interest, to examine possibilities for interdisciplinary study, and to conduct extensive bibliographical research in their fields. This exploration culminates in the development of a degree program and rationale essay and a literature survey. There is a residency requirement with this course.
LIB-646595 FINAL PROJECT
3 credits
Please contact your academic advisor to discuss your Final Project. The Final Project will be created by you and will be unique to you. Once your academic advisor has added the Final Project to your registration worksheet, you will be able to register for it. Prerequisite: Approved Final Project Proposal must be on file in Graduate Studies.
LIB-649500 SEMINAR IN LIBERAL STUDIES (CENTRAL)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. In this course, students will explore the history of liberal studies and the controversies surrounding its composition and meaning in American universities and society. Students will have the opportunity to develop their own historically informed approaches to liberal study and apply their learning. There is a residency requirement for this course.
LIB-649502 PERSPECTIVES ON INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY (CENTRAL)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated MALS students only. Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Study examines the concepts of interdisciplinary, laying a theoretical foundation for each student’s educational plan. The course utilizes both group work through the residencies and in dialogue with the course instructor and individual consultation between students and their academic advisor. Perspectives enables students to explore the dimensions of their areas of interest, to examine possibilities for interdisciplinary study, and to conduct extensive bibliographical research in their fields. This exploration culminates in the development of a degree program and rationale essay and a literature survey. There is a residency requirement with this course.
LIB-649595 FINAL PROJECT
3 credits
Please contact your academic advisor to discuss your Final Project. The Final Project will be created by you and will be unique to you. Once your academic advisor has added the Final Project to your registration worksheet, you will be able to register for it. Prerequisite: Approved Final Project Proposal must be on file in Graduate Studies.
MGT-610522 CORPORATE STRATEGY
3 credits
Senior managers are charged with the mission of setting and achieving the goals of the organization. In that capacity, the decisions they most often make are made in the face of significant uncertainty. Further, their decisions often involve multiple functions of the organization. For example, a simple investment in manufacturing capacity might well impact not only the firm’s manufacturing environment and market share, but its capacity to stay abreast of the latest technology, its financial health, and the financial markets willingness to extend credit for future projects, its tax and environmental liabilities, its multinational stature, and its domestic competitiveness simultaneously. As the subject of corporate strategy treats the high-level strategic choices senior managers make in the face of real-world complexity, the study of corporate strategy seeks to integrate Operations, Finance, Marketing, Economics, etc., into one coherent approach to complex, multidimensional real-world problems.
MGT-611004 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
3 credits
Strategic planning and management are increasingly essential in this world of rapid change and complexity, relentless competition for funding, and increasing demands for accountability. In Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, you will explore the critical issues related to and the process by which organizations and agencies can gain advantage and optimal long-term performance in such an environment. This process is rooted in the organization’s mission and values, is dynamic and changes with changing circumstances, integrates plans and actions, and leverages strengths and resources to take advantage of the organization’s opportunities. This course has a strong theoretical component; it also has a practical component with student interaction; it culminates in an integrative final project.
MGT-611007 STAKEHOLDER-SENSITIVE BUSINESS MODELS
3 credits
A critical step in strategic management involves scanning the economic environment which, in turn, requires an assessment of an organization’s relationships with various stake-holders. Effective decision makers understand the importance of balancing and protecting the interests of various stake-holders, including investors, employees, the community, and local and state governments, suppliers, funding sources, various interest groups and, of course, the client or customer. This course will examine the role that stakeholder analysis plays in all aspects of the management process including the use of resources, capabilities and operations to establish competitive advantage and sustainability. Topics will include the connections between organizations and the natural, social, and financial environments, illustrating how all three must be maintained in balance to sustain current and future generations. The course will also look at the role of leadership in creating value for each stakeholder through strategic alignment and ethical decision making.
MGT-650601 DYNAMICS OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
3 credits
The main focus of this course is the investigation of the global environment and its impact on international strategy development and implementation. The course includes consideration of ethical issues, impact of technological innovation, forming of alliances and the shrinking of world markets.
MGT-650606 STRATEGIC CORPORATE COMMUNICATION
3 credits
This course covers communication systems required to help support the mission and goals of the organization. Broader topics cover: a.) how managers communicate, b.) communicating corporate culture, c.) effective feedback systems, and d.) communicating change across the organization. Within these topics, specific issues such as how well the formal systems of communication work, directions of organizational communication, type and effectiveness of communication networks, assessment of and methods for overcoming communication breakdowns, and ethical dilemmas in managing through communication, are also covered. Students also learn to use audit tools and methods to improve management communication practices.
MGT-650611 STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Human Resource Management. The role of Human Resources in organizations today is one of strategic business partner and change agent in which HR members participate in developing the strategic direction for the human capital of the organization. Emphasis is placed on the way in which the global economy, technology, and business activities such as joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions impact traditional human resource activity such as recruitment and selection, employee training and development, performance management, and career development. Topics covered in this course include developing HR strategy, measuring HR outcomes, applying Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), exploring the role of HR in downsizing and mergers and acquisitions, examining the role of HR in the global environment, and examining HR challenges associated with technology-intensive organizations.
MGT-650613 HEALTHCARE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
3 credits
The U.S. healthcare system is immensely complex, and there is mounting industry-wide pressure to address the challenges of and opportunities for instituting significant operational improvements. Within the healthcare sector, operations management has several goals, including reducing costs, improving patient throughput, strengthening efficacy of workflow and task management, contributing to quality improvement initiatives, enhancing customer service, and increasing profitability. This course is designed to focus on the approaches and strategies for achieving these operational goals to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare systems. The course will help students to become familiar with the concepts, tools, and techniques for improving operational processes, such as lean processes, six sigma, flowcharting, and statistical tools, and provide them the necessary knowledge and skills to run efficient and effective healthcare systems.
MGT-650618 STRATEGIC COST ANALYSIS
3 credits
This course focuses on the analysis and reporting of resources costs and resource consumption explicitly directed at strategic management. The key elements to be studied are cost structure, value chain analysis, strategic cost management, and cost driver analysis in support of strategic and operational decisions.
MGT-651500 EXECUTIVE ASSESSMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only. This course has the dual role of orienting students into the program's theoretical framework and facilitating the development of their degree and performance plans. This course is also the starting point for initiating the independent direct assessment for which students are awarded credits for advanced standing in the program. The first half of the course concludes with the creation of an academic portfolio or educational plan that guides students in their interactions with advisors and in making plan adjustments to their degree programs. The portfolio then becomes a living document and a frame of reference that follows the student until graduation. The second half of the course builds on the Competing Values Framework to help students assess their weaknesses and strengths and design a developmental plan that addresses their professional growth. Together, the academic portfolio and the developmental plan enable students to align their educational goals with their managerial performance and career expectations. This course has a residency that overlaps with the residency for Scanning the Business Environment.
MGT-651510 MANAGERIAL REASONING
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only. This course integrates the eight universal managerial roles into a multidimensional framework called competing values. This framework enables the student to develop dialectical and nonlinear problem-solving skills. Using this framework, students will learn to diagnose their strengths and weaknesses and develop a plan to remedy deficiencies and enhance competencies. This course combines strategic conceptualization and assessment of the context of managerial behavior with concrete applications and reasoning involving the choice of leadership roles utilized to optimize managerial performance and enhance organizational effectiveness. This course is residency based.
MGT-651520 STRATEGIC EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
3 credits
This residency-based course is a required capstone course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only and the final study in the program. This course brings together in a unified, integrating manner the leadership emphasis of the M.B.A. program. The organizing theme of this course is business strategy: its formulation, its implementation, and all the supporting analysis and strategies needed to accomplish the mission of the organization. Students will learn how to assess the environment for existing and potential opportunities, evaluate existing and potential capabilities, and how to effectively design and implement a strategy that matches organizational strengths to future opportunities.
MGT-651524 MANAGEMENT INFORMATION ASSURANCE
3 credits
This is an elective course for M.B.A students only. Information assurance investigates computer security, software assurance, hardware assurance, the risk management and security management of information resources from a technical and management perspective. Topics include security architecture, security models, access control systems and methodology, applications and systems security, operation security, database security, cryptography, physical security, network and Internet security, business continuity planning, and law and ethics in information assurance.
MGT-651525 STRATEGIC ANALYSIS AND EXECUTIVE CHOICE
3 credits
Strategic Analysis and Executive Choice is designed to integrate the functional and managerial skills of the competency-based MBA before students commence with their final projects in Strategic Executive Leadership (SEL). Topics include those traditionally treated in business policy courses, but the goal of the course is more pragmatic. In this course, students will study the history and practice and senior executive strategic thinking and processes, formulate corporate and nonprofit organizational strategies, conduct environmental analyses and design implementation plans appropriate for those strategies. Successful students will become competent in the methods of strategic planning analyses and processes, familiar with the varieties of senior executive decision making and capable of designing a coherent strategy along with the supporting documents and analyses expected of successful strategies in professional organizations. Strategic Analysis and Executive Choice must be completed in the term prior to taking Strategic Executive Leadership. Strategic Executive Leadership must be taken last.
MGT-651531-3 OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only. This course examines how firms actually produce goods or deliver services. The organizing framework for the study is the management of quality. Students develop the ability to apply not only the analytical tools of quality control, but also the managerial tools to promote continuous improvement of processes and products throughout the organization. Students also develop the ability to bring together personnel, equipment and materials to ensure efficient production processes. Students register for up to a total of 3 credits.
MGT-651557 CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: A GLOBAL MARKETING PERSPECTIVE
3 credits
This course is required for the Global Brand Marketing Certificate. This course will focus on the advance study of the buying behavior of customers in the consumer market. Drawing on previous studies of the role of consumer behavior on marketing strategies, the student will identify the effect on strategy and policy based on the buying process of various market segments. Further in-depth analysis of both internal and external influences on the buying process will be applied to changes in strategy and outcomes in the global market environment. Emphasis will be placed on cultural variations in consumer behavior, changing demographics, the impact of reference groups, and prior customer-attitudes and learning on the buying process. Case study by the Harvard Business School Case Study Method will be used to apply these concepts to strategy development and subsequent marketing programs. Ethical and legal implications on strategy and policy will be emphasized in these case studies, selected from the required text.
MGT-651561-3 MANAGERIAL DECISION MAKING
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only. This course focuses on the three dimensions of executive decision-making: normative thinking (how managers should make decisions), descriptive thinking (how managers do make decisions) and prescriptive thinking (how managers can make decisions by blending insights gained from the former with the reality of the latter). Students examine tools that include logic and statistical methods for improving the analytical rigor of their decision-making and review cognitive psychological research on so-called heuristics (short cuts) that sometimes help, but often distort decision-making capabilities. Students are expected to significantly improve their decision-making competence through a combination of acquiring good analytical tools and developing insight into common managerial biases and distortions. Students register for up to a total of 3 credits.
MGT-651571-3 HUMAN SYSTEMS AND BEHAVIOR
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only. This course focuses on the growing importance of human capital and intangible assets in today's organizations by emphasizing the vital role of human resources in acquiring and/or developing this new form of organizational assets, and by providing students with theoretical concepts and practical tools for effective assessment, measurement, and leveraging of human capital systems in organizations. Too often, HR managers strongly believe that their functions have a potentially important role to play in organizational success, but that their contributions are often an afterthought when overall organizational strategy is developed. Too often, it seems the HR function has turned into a “regulation enforcement/accounting” role, when it should be focused on pro-actively assessing and growing the organization’s human capital needs. Therefore, the integrating theme of this study revolves around that question of whether Human Resource departments should be more consistent with roles and skills described by the HR quadrant in the CVF model, rather than their current similarities to the Internal Control quadrant. Students register for up to a total of 3 credits.
MGT-651596 CORPORATE ADVERTISING AND BRANDING
3 credits
It can be argued that brands are the most important assets of corporations. Corporate advertising is the major communication vehicle in building, maintaining, re-positioning and developing brands. This course will provide students with an in-depth understanding of how corporations use advertising to create brand awareness and build brand image within their target markets. It will also introduce students to the techniques used to measure brand performance. Brand management is a key strategic marketing function and the methods used by marketing managers to communicate, internally and externally, about brands is very important to the success of their business. How do you create strong brands through advertising? How do you measure brand value? Why do great brands fail? How can a manager monitor and manage brands effectively? These are among the questions we will address in this course.
MGT-651602 ETHICS AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to study theories in ethics and apply them to achieve an understanding of moral philosophy with regard to the social responsibility of business and specific problems and issues facing business today. These issues include, among others, the rights and obligations of employers and employees; hiring, firing and discrimination; gathering, concealing and gilding information; issues in dealing with foreign cultures. Students will consider how organizations can be guided toward fulfilling their social responsibilities.
MGT-651603 STRATEGIES FOR MARKETING RESEARCH
3 credits
This course is required for the Global Brand Marketing Certificate. This three credit elective in marketing research will examine the research process as it relates to the specific problems faced in the marketing arena. The course will enable the student to understand and apply the basic concepts of marketing research as a component of business strategic decision-making. The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the logic and methodology of market research. By the end of this course, the student will be able to design a market research study, and evaluate and assess other research studies. Topics include the research process, methods of gathering primary and secondary data from both internal and external sources, designing and testing survey instruments, sample method design, interviewing techniques, and presentations of results, from tabulating and analyzing data.
MGT-651605 WOMEN IN MANAGEMENT
3 credits
The overall purpose of this course is to understand how perspectives and perceptions of male and female managers affect the workplace. This course will examine: gender inequality in organizations, links between work-life experiences, inter-group relations and exclusion from social networks, the role of women in multinational corporations and entrepreneurial businesses, the impact of both formal and informal mentoring programs, and participation of women in senior management.
MGT-651606 THE ENTREPRENEUR: CREATIVITY AND OPPORTUNITY
3 credits
The starting point for entrepreneurship is creativity. Through readings, course assignments, and interactions with faculty and other students, you will increase your understanding of the creative process, explore ways to enhance creativity, and evaluate some of the tools that can be implemented to stimulate and/or manage individual and collective creativity. Topics may include attributes of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial careers, the critical role of recognizing, creating and evaluating opportunities, writing business plans, and financing the venture.
MGT-651607 MANAGING HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Health Care Management. This course examines the various aspects of managing the complicated modern health care environment. The roles of payers, consumers, and suppliers of health care will be examined. Management and allocation of heath care resources and the impact of outcomes assessment on care delivery will be discussed. Additional topics for study will include communication in the health care environment, team building and conflict resolution.
MGT-651611 GLOBAL STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP
3 credits
This course provides an in-depth analysis of strategic global management. Drawing on previous studies of strategic management and scanning the business environment, the student will develop the essential skills needed to formulate and implement successful strategic moves in the competitive global environment. A key focus of the course is on the strategy implementation in the increasingly global environment. Topics include Culture and Multinational Management; International Negotiation and Cross-Cultural Communication; Organizational Designs; International Strategic Alliances; Small Businesses Going International and Global Entrepreneurship; Multinational E-Commerce; International Human Resource Management; Motivation and Leadership; Ethical and Social Responsibility in the Global Context. A final analytical research paper is required.
MGT-651612 BUSINESS ETHICS AND COMPLIANCE
3 credits
In this course, students will examine issues related to the ethical conduct of business and managing compliance. By exploring the basic theories of ethics, addressing stakeholder issues as well as obligations that businesses have to owners, customers, employees, the community and society, students will gain insight into how liability can be lessened if businesses managed beyond compliance and perhaps the letter of the law. Case studies will focus on the ethical and legal dimensions of corporate responsibility in today’s society.
MGT-651613 REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course explores how companies with strong and positive reputations are better able to attract customers, investors and star employees, and survive a crisis that might destroy weaker companies. Reputation management is an integrated approach that cuts across communications, strategy and marketing. This course examines those top companies that have been practicing reputation management, how to audit your own company's reputation, and how to use it to get the competitive edge.
MGT-651614 HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
3 credits
Generally speaking, organizations invest a great deal of their resources to obtain the necessary hardware and software technologies they need with insignificant investment made in the human aspects of those same technologies. The purpose of this course is to expand on this thought and consider the human side of information technology from both a management and qualitative business research perspective. Many of the management decisions made today concerning IT are based heavily on quantitative data and statistical analysis, viewed from a positivistic perspective. Often, this perspective proves to be inadequate when dealing with the human condition.
MGT-651615 BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY
3 credits
The overall purpose of this course is to examine issues of business sustainability - the long term, overall impact of a company’s actions on the environment. This course will explore the concept of business sustainability and how to evaluate how it is being pro-actively integrated into core business systems and strategies. The aim of this study is to better prepare managers to deal with this strategic issue. Students will have the opportunity to evaluate the state of environmental practice in their functional areas of expertise, e.g. marketing, finance, accounting, operations, and examine the complex environmental issues facing leaders in today’s global marketplace.
MGT-651616 MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATION
3 credits
This course covers communication systems required to help support the mission and goals of the organization. Broader topics cover: how managers communicate; communicating corporate culture; effective feedback systems; and communicating change across the organization. Within these topics, specific issues such as how well the formal systems of communication work, directions of organizational communication, type and effectiveness of communication networks, assessment of and methods for overcoming communication breakdowns, and ethical dilemma in managing through communication, are also covered.
MGT-651617 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Nonprofit Management. Strategic planning and management are increasingly essential in a world of rapid change and complexity, relentless competition for funding, and increasing demands for accountability. In Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, students explore the process by which organizations gain competitive advantage and optimal long-term performance in such an environment. This process is rooted in the organization's mission and values, is dynamic and changes with changing circumstances, integrates plans and actions, and leverages strengths and resources to take advantage of the organization's opportunities.
MGT-651619 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
3 credits
This course, explores the different cross-cultural studies, and compares the impact of these different cultures on communication in the work environment. The course will analyze the influence of culture on interpersonal interactions in a professional setting, and then explore how to apply a communication strategy that will bridge the gap between the cultures. It will also look at key environmental trends and potential international communication challenges a Global manager of the future will face.
MGT-651620 LEADERSHIP IN PUBLIC AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Nonprofit Management. In this course, students will explore leadership in public and nonprofit organizations. The course begins with a consideration of the nature of leadership, the tasks of leaders, and the traits of effective leadership. Next, students examine leadership theories, their particular application to the public and non-profit sectors and the challenges facing these sectors.
MGT-651626 CHANGE MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course is designed to help students apply change management concepts and tools in global business environments. Students will investigate, analyze and evaluate case situations and practical applications using conceptual models and relevant theories. Also included are diagnostic tools and intervention models for individuals, groups and large systems. Focusing always on the most effective pragmatic approaches to managing change, specific topics that will be addressed are: transition management, downsizing and realignment of structures, strategic leadership, global structures, and continuous learning.
MGT-651627 LEGAL ASPECTS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
3 credits
This course will examine the legal environment within which the entrepreneur must operate and evolve. Consequently and more specifically this study will survey the legal field and the parameters the entrepreneur must be mindful of in order to effectively initiate and develop a new venture, including business ethics and social responsibility as reflected through rules and regulations; statutory versus common law and its impact on the entrepreneur; dispute resolution; torts, crime and international law and its effects on the entrepreneurial scene and of course constitutional law and how it permeates essentially every aspect of American commerce and enterprise. This course will also look at Contract Law and the UCC [Uniform Commercial Code], Sales and Product Liability, Negotiable Instruments, Secured Transactions, Bankruptcy, Agency Law, Employment and Labor Law, Antitrust Law and Securities Regulations, Consumer Law, Intellectual Law and the prominent role they play for the entrepreneur. Lastly this course will also explore the legalities revolving around staring a business, the benefits of incorporating versus limited liability partnerships, and/or sole proprietorship, as well as the increasingly emerging areas of Cyberlaw and Environmental Law.
MGT-651628 HEALTH POLICY AND MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Health Care Management. Health Policy and Management focuses on the analytical tools necessary to evaluate the economics of health care policy and implementation. Through readings, discussions and written assignments students will develop a working understanding of federal and state health policy processes; examine critical health policy issues; use analytical models to explain health policy processes and apply those models to the analysis of health care formulation and implementation.
MGT-651630 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS LAW
3 credits
This course probes the global legal environment for international business. This is an area that every global manager must be familiar with given the complexity and interdependence of global markets. The course reviews international law and organizations, the process for international dispute resolutions, sales contracts and terms of trade, liability of air and sea carriers in the transportation of goods across the globe, bank collections, trade finance and letters of credit. This course also compares, contrasts and analyzes global, international and U.S. trade law as impacted by GATT law, the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, E.U. trade rules and regulations, unfair trade, and laws governing access to foreign markets and exports, as well as legal issues relating to global environmental, host-country tax, corporate, employment, privatization and currency risk.
MGT-651631 FAILURE AND CRISIS
3 credits
This course will examine evidence describing how and why even good and earnest decision makers fail to do well in the face of complex problems. The course is rooted in theory and evidence drawn from recent extensive simulations, and examines a wide range of problems and cases involving both public and private sector judgments, ordinary managers, chief executives, and political leaders and their staff.
MGT-651634 GLOBAL LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
3 credits
This course is designed to examine the contemporary styles of leadership to reveal their application to a more global vision of leadership. Students will explore and discuss how cultural factors influence the different facets of leadership, cultural differences in communication, global leadership in negotiation, how leaders manage diversity in global workplaces and how global leaders run their businesses internationally. Students will develop their cultural perspective and acquire global leadership skills through preparation of a scenario report on being a global leader and submission of an interview with an executive with international experience. Students will study multi-facets of the practice of global leadership and will acquire knowledge about effective performance in the global marketplace sustained through leadership.
MGT-651636 MANAGING HUMAN CAPITAL
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Human Resource Management. Beginning with an overview of Human Resource's roles in addressing the strategic needs of organizations, students explore topics that include, but are not limited to: workforce planning and talent management, thinking strategically about staffing and selection issues, acquiring competencies through training and development, succession planning, employment testing, successful employment interviewing, and organizational entry and socialization (on-boarding).
MGT-651637 PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND TOTAL REWARDS
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Human Resource Management. Performance management and total rewards systems provide a value proposition to both the organization and its employees by offering a package that should result in satisfied and productive employees that deliver organizational goals and objectives. This course examines how managing individual and organizational performance coupled with a total rewards system can play a strategic role in organizational effectiveness. The course includes an examination of performance management systems, compensation structure and systems design, benefit programs, and an examination of compensation and benefits legislation. The course will also include examination of the contrast between employee and labor relations, employment law and challenges associated with managing a diverse workforce. Managing individual and organizational performance to maximize business results and risk minimization through occupational health and safety will also be explored.
MGT-651639 SMALL BUSINESS ENTREPRENEURSHIP
3 credits
This course is designed to examine how entrepreneurs undertake the tasks necessary for developing entrepreneurial ventures, both independently and within corporate settings. Students will explore how entrepreneurs find, screen, and evaluate ideas and new business opportunities by developing a business concept. A business concept identifies particular customers and benefits and then specifies how these benefits are provided to customers through explicit channels of distribution. Through business planning, the process of determining the feasibility of an entrepreneurial venture is emphasized. A feasibility analysis helps an entrepreneur determine whether the conditions are right to go forward with the business concept. Students will study techniques that can identify customers, determine their needs, and estimate future sales. Students will gain insights into entrepreneurial marketing strategies and tactics and will learn techniques for analyzing the financial requirements of various venture opportunities. Students will also examine how financing deals are negotiated and structured, including the task of determining a valuation for a new venture.
MGT-651640 INNOVATIONS IN GLOBAL ENTERPRISES
3 credits
This course is designed to enable the students understand and apply innovation management concepts and innovation management processes in global enterprises. Students will explore and discuss the main sources of innovation from different perspectives, types and models of innovation, timing of entry of innovative products and services along with the possession of market dominance through building a position as a standard setting enterprise. Students will acquire skills for formulating innovation strategies through preparation of a report on R and D and innovation strategies of an enterprise. This report will cover the strategic preferences, exemplary practices and business models that sustain the innovation processes within the organization. Students will study different dimensions of the implementation of innovation strategies and will acquire knowledge about the organizational and managerial aspects of innovation management.
MGT-651641 CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATION
3 credits
This course is designed to teach graduate students how to save their brand when disaster strikes. Perhaps a plane crashes, an oil tanker runs aground, the local office burns, or the ground beef makes customers ill. Can you get a grip on the situation and perhaps turn it around amid a media firestorm, as Jet Blue did after stranding customers on parked planes for 9 hours? Students learn the necessary close interaction between management and communication project teams before, during and after a major disaster to identify key processes, best practices and stakeholder strategies that can reduce risk by anticipating and dealing with cataclysmic events in the marketplace. The timely expression of corporate values amid transparency to vital stakeholders can turn a life of death situation into a shining example of corporate leadership, or simply lead to deep failure.
MGT-651642 INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING
3 credits
In this course students learn to use tools that professionals need today for a better accommodation into the world in which they pursue their careers, a world essentially dominated by global business and cross-border investing. These tools should enable them to achieve a better understanding of internal and external financial communications. In order to achieve this purpose, the course introduces students to the international dimensions of accounting, financial reporting and financial control. More specifically it discusses various comparative accounting systems, and international accounting convergence, then it expands to the notions related to corporate governance, international auditing, and reporting and disclosure practices spanning both developed and emerging market countries.
MGT-651643 ECONOMICS FOR GLOBAL MANAGERS
3 credits
This course will give the student an understanding of the global economy and the ways that international firms function within it. Why do firms export their products? The course covers the theories of comparative advantage, factor endowments, and monopolistic competition. When a firm sells its product abroad it must decide whether to export it or produce it there and whether to open a subsidiary or license the product to a local firm. Students will learn the calculations involved, including labor costs and technology transfers, and the consequences of the decision for the foreign country, the firm and the domestic labor force. In addition, foreign trade involves foreign currencies; the student will learn how the values of foreign currencies are determined, and how firms can minimize their exposure to fluctuations in their values.
MGT-651644 TOOLS AND PROCESSES IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Project Management. This course introduces modern tools and techniques for planning, scheduling, reporting, controlling, and managing business related projects. The students will study and analyze the project life cycle and the core project management processes (scope, time and cost). The students will gain knowledge of the concept of Work-Breakdown Structure (WBS) and different approaches to project screening and selection, and will utilize those techniques in the project planning process. The students will learn financial analysis to evaluate and select a project using Excel, plan a project, estimate duration and setup project schedule and allocate resources using MS Project, and communicate project information using electronic and e-collaborative tools. Pre-requisite or Co-requisite: Management Information Systems or by Permission of Instructor (POI).
MGT-651650 MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVES OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Project Management. A true understanding of project management comes not only from knowing all project management knowledge areas and all process groups, nor how to partner with contractors, stakeholders or users, but from understanding how different elements of project management systems interact to determine the fortune of the project. Project management success is established upon mastering the technical, socio-cultural and leadership dimensions of project management. The course learning activities are about the impact of project management on: organizational strategy and decision-making practice; advancement in corporate operations and global competition; and improvement of products and services. The course critically addresses these project success issues and intertwines all nine project management knowledge areas: project integration; scope; time; cost; quality; human resource; communications; risk and procurement management; and all five process groups: initiating; planning; executing; controlling; and closing. The course exposes and addresses the major aspects and issues of the managerial project management process and provides a theoretical foundation and practical solutions to these increasing challenges. Prerequisite: Management Information Systems or by Permission of Instructor (POI).
MGT-651651 STRATEGY AND TACTICS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Project Management. Although project managers can be successful as individuals, organizations will be much more successful in all their projects if they create a systemic, strategic approach to project management company-wide. This course integrates the concepts and processes discussed in earlier courses by relating them to evaluating and implementing multiple projects within the framework of portfolio management, project management offices (PMOs), virtual project management, and project monitoring and assessment (Lean and Six Sigma). Students will also learn more about the human side of project management, including team building, managing virtual teams and developing and implementing effective project communications. They will do this by completing a variety of individual assignments, class discussions and a final capstone project. Prerequisites: Management Information Systems, Tools and Processes in Project Management and Managerial Perspectives of Project Management.
MGT-651653 INNOVATION AND GLOBAL COMMERCIALIZATION
3 credits
This course focuses on opportunities to utilize technology transfer within a global business to meet the goals of the strategic plan. This course is an introduction to the multidisciplinary aspects (including operational issues such as teamwork and technology transfer), involved in the process of bringing technical developments, particularly research emanating from universities and other nonprofit organizations, into commercial use. The course considers the challenges and human capital required for transitioning new developments into capital ventures created by the sale or lease of commercially viable processes and products.
MGT-651655 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
3 credits
The role of Human Resources in organizations today is one of strategic business partner and change agent in which HR members participate in developing the strategic direction for the human capital of the organization. Emphasis is placed on the way in which the global economy, technology, and business activities such as joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions impact traditional human resource activity such as recruitment and selection, employee training and development, performance management, and career development. Topics covered in this course include developing HR strategy, measuring HR outcomes, applying Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), exploring the role of HR in downsizing and mergers and acquisitions, examining the role of HR in the global environment, and examining HR challenges associated with technology-intensive organizations.
MGT-651656 GLOBAL OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
3 credits
Effective management of operations and supply chain is of great importance for organizations to survive and remain competitive in a global environment. This course focuses on understanding the principles related to managing operations and supply chains with an emphasis on key tradeoffs and risks. The course will introduce the basic concepts of logistics and supply chain management and the various logistic and supply chain strategies that companies employ in order to compete within an increasingly complex and dynamic global environment. It will also discuss the tools and strategies used to design and manage operations and supply chains across an organization in the global context. A range of international case studies will be used to illustrate key concepts, reinforce the material’s application in practice and extend learning.
MGT-651657 LEADERSHIP, CRISIS AND COPING STRATEGIES
3 credits
What does it take to lead during and after a crisis? What strategies are most effective? What lessons can we glean from real-world crises and the leaders who faced them? This course explores these and other questions designed to prepare students to be effective leaders in the face of unexpected, disorienting, and tragic events. Leadership theories, competencies, approaches as well as decision-making processes will be analyzed and practical application stressed. Students will examine the vital role “straight talk” plays in bringing order to chaos, with special attention given to Emotional Intelligence. In addition, the aftermath of a crisis is explored as a rich opportunity for learning and growth. The course culminates with students developing their own crisis leadership development plan.
MGT-651658 HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND INFORMATICS
3 credits
The course provides a comprehensive examination of health care information technology and prepares future health care administrators with essential knowledge and skills they need to manage information and use information systems technology effectively. The range of informatics specific topics include survey of the diverse field of healthcare informatics, health system standards and terminology, fundamental principles of IT, information management, data management and their implications, strategic planning, information systems analysis and design, tracking and monitoring personal health record, health policy, security issues, privacy and confidentiality, HIPAA, and IT ethics. The course will also use applications and discuss practical implications for effective management of health information technology and informatics.
MIS-651521-3 MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Project Management as well as the Masters in Business Administration program. Management Information Systems explores the technologies and organizational factors that make information systems a vital part of contemporary business. By designing and building software applications, students will become familiar with the unique problems and opportunities that information systems present. The analysis of business cases will enable students to effectively manage both the hard and soft aspects of information systems in the workplace. An important focus of this study is to learn to communicate technical concepts and business decisions clearly and concisely. Therefore, emphasis is placed on written work that clearly states the business case, problem statement and explains information system technology. Topics included in this study are an introduction to information system analysis and design through the system development life cycle, database technology, design of web-based business presence, integrating information systems into a business process, and the organizational implications of information systems. Students register for up to a total of 3 credits.
MKT-650604 TRADITIONAL AND E-CHANNEL MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This three-credit elective in Marketing Programs: Channel Management will examine the marketing function of channel management from a variety of perspectives: students will first evaluate the functions of the channel member, these will then be correlated to the selection of the channel member, last the programming that will support the channel network will be developed. The course will also include some consideration of e-channels, introduced through a Harvard Business School Case. Ethical issues, conflict resolution, and international dimensions of marketing channels will be the focus of selected case studies from the required text. NOTE: This is an advanced level course. Students should have had prior marketing experience or course work in marketing at either the undergraduate or graduate level.
MKT-650605 STRATEGIES FOR BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
3 credits
This course covers the process of marketing both physical goods and services to businesses providing industrial products such as durable goods, high-tech products, and pharmaceuticals; and businesses providing services such as travel, consulting, food service and financial resources (including banking and not-for-profits). Emphasis is placed on how to identify the diverse nature of global business marketing. Marketing to other businesses becomes complex because of the diverse buying processes in these areas and the existence of multiple buying influences, including influences from customers, shareholders, and the government. Students will develop the skills necessary to analyze both the internal and external business influences and envelop those strategies that maximize the firm's effectiveness when facing this complex business environment. Strategy formation includes the development of appropriate segmentation strategies, marketing and competitive strategies, and product line strategies.
MKT-650614 GLOBAL STRATEGY
3 credits
Achieving sustainable competitive advantage in global markets depends on the ability of managers to analyze globalization trends and assess the impact of culture on international business dealings, international trade, investment and cross-cultural interactions. The course is based on three important parts: As a survey course, it covers tools for effective strategic management such as PESTEL analysis, Porter's five forces and industry analysis; VRIO, TOWS, and generic strategies (cost leadership and differentiation); As a foundation course, it focuses on global strategy and introduces students to the management of global operations and the challenges associated with the selection of markets and the management of a global supply chain; As a strategic global management course, it covers international market strategies such as foreign direct investment, licensing, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and joint-ventures, and corporate governance of multinational organizations.
MKT-651541-3 MARKETING MANAGEMENT AND STRATEGY
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only. This course focuses on how the firm facilitates exchanges of goods and services with its customers. Students examine the processes of conceiving products, pricing and promoting them to achieve market share and profitability objectives, and finally distributing the goods and services via efficient channels. Students gain proficiency in analyzing the market to identify opportunities and threats to the competitive position of the firm. They apply the elements of the marketing mix to plan, execute, and evaluate new opportunities for the firm to conduct business. Finally, students learn to incorporate the above elements into a well-articulated decision strategy to help the firm grow. Students register for up to a total of 3 credits
MKT-651635 INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES
3 credits
This course is required for the Global Brand Marketing Certificate. This course explores the different economic, social changes that have occurred over the past decade and their impact on marketing. As global economic growth occurs, understanding marketing in all cultures is increasingly important. The course examines global issues and describes concepts relevant to all international marketers, despite the extent of international involvement. The course will analyze marketing strategies including pricing, legal and ethical issues, regulations, integrated marketing communications, multicultural research, sales, and global brand management.
MKT-651654 STRATEGIC MARKETING FOR NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
3 credits
This course is required for the certificate in Nonprofit Management. This course, Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations, examines marketing from the perspective of Non-profits and government agencies. The course examines ethical issues, social responsibilities of marketing professionals and the impact of funding sources on program development, marketing strategies including pricing, legal and ethical issues, regulators, integrated marketing communications, multicultural research, sales, and profiles of global managers.
ORG-651504 SCANNING THE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated M.B.A. students only. In this course students will use tools and concepts of scanning to analyze and evaluate environmental forces that shape and constrain the opportunities of business in domestic and global environments. Course topics include: trends and patterns of global economic activity; changes in global financial markets and institutions; industry structure and dynamics; business-government relations; legal and ethical considerations. This course is residency based.
ORG-651591-3 HIGH PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course is required for the certificates in Health Care Management, Human Resource Management, Nonprofit Management, and Global Brand Marketing as well as the Masters in Business Administration. This course focuses on the managerial leadership roles and competencies needed to translate strategic visions into tactical and operational plans, as well as on tools and methodologies to improve organizational productivity through integration, communication, and the management of knowledge-based organizations. Students identify, develop, and apply competencies associated with the dynamics of change and flexibility and balance them with the competencies required to lead with stability and control. Students register for up to a total of 3 credits.
ORG-651638 WOMEN LEADERS IN GLOBAL ORGANIZATIONS
3 credits
Women Leaders in Global Organizations explores the fundamental issues about why women managers are not progressing to senior international management positions at the same rate as men. In the course students examine the barriers that must be overcome in their organizations to be recruited, trained, selected, and developed for consideration in international positions. Students explore the unique challenges and competencies needed by women managers in multinational corporations. The course will also focus on such issues as dual careers, cultural norms, home country management, expatriate development, and standards for foreign assignments. Students will also be exposed to and investigate the career progression and success of women managers in various countries. This course will broaden students’ perspectives, emphasize management competencies in global organizations, and validate student experiences.
PAF-611008 POPULATION, LAND USE AND MUNICIPAL FINANCE
3 credits
In this course, students examine the dynamic relationships between the population in a particular community; the type and spatial distribution of individual, business and community activity; and the way that the community finances its activities. Any change in one of these elements will inevitably change the others and, from an economic planning perspective, each must be considered in contemplation of the other elements. Students will consider basic concepts related to each element (gathering and interpreting demographic information; the fiscal and social impact of land use and land use changes; municipal finance concepts such as the impact of taxation, equity in taxation and tax shifting). Finally, students will complete an integrative project dealing with the development of a comprehensive community plan. Prerequisite: Must complete POL-611009, Macroeconomics for Public Policy.
POL-611001 PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the methods and techniques of analyzing, developing and evaluating public policies and programs. Emphasis will be given to benefit-cost and cost-effectiveness analysis and concepts of economic efficiency, equity and distribution. Methods will include problem solving, decision making and case studies. Examples will come from human resource, environmental and regulatory policy.
POL-611005 WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT POLICY
3 credits
Workforce development programs supported by federal and state funding have become an important resource in advancing community and economic development. Workforce development programs, while most often associated with training for lower-skilled and disadvantaged workers, have served as both an incentive for prospective employers and as an alternative to public assistance. The diverse purposes of workforce development policy offer insights into the complexities of public policy in the U.S. federal system and underscore the important role of state and local governments in responding to the demands of a changing economy and workforce. This course will review the evolution of workforce development policy in the United States with particular attention to key federal legislation, the programs and services that create and deliver workforce programs, and the challenges and opportunities that continue to shape workforce development policy and programs.
POL-611009 MACROECONOMICS FOR PUBLIC POLICY
3 credits
Students will examine macroeconomic principles and methods and their particular application to public policy with emphasis on policy relating to economic development. The ultimate objective of the course is to understand macro-economic data, interpret what economic policy suggests about values and direction and the likely impact of macroeconomic policy on community and economic development.
POL-611500 POLICY PROCESS: COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated Community and Economic Development students only. This course provides students with an understanding of the process through which governments develop policies that attempt to address perceived social and economic problems, sometimes for the better, but sometimes for the worse. Students will first be introduced to the fundamental public policy concepts and models of governance within the Constitutional framework of the U.S. The emphasis will be on the crucial role that federalism plays in the process. Students will then concentrate on the actors/institutions involved in the process at the state and local levels, especially the increasing role of the county in social services and economic development. Participants will be given an opportunity to develop a policy proposal designed to ameliorate the socio-economic conditions of their localities and a strategy to have the proposal implemented.
POL-620500 POLICY PROCESS: SOCIAL POLICY
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated Social Policy students only. The purpose of this course is to provide students with an understanding of how government can influence the progress toward improving social conditions and alleviating social problems, sometimes for the better, but sometimes for the worse. Students will examine the processes that lead to the formulation, adoption, and implementation of government policies and programs and how they are affected by a diverse range of values and priorities in a democratic context. Students will examine their own values and explore how they affect their views of social problems and proposed policy solutions. At the same time they will be responsible for checking the consistency of their views with the best evidence about social problems that they can find and to use empirical information to justify their positions and persuade others. Also, they will be involved in deliberations that will require them to include the values of others in the process of arriving at a collective decision. The course provides an overview of the ways in which ideas become policies within the Constitutional framework of the U.S., the influences on those processes, and the value conflicts that arise and are resolved as proposals or bills as they are considered and eventually become policies. We will follow policy processes mainly at the national level. However, special consideration will be given to the role of federalism in the policy process. After considering the institutions and the roles that are played by various actors in the process, students will examine: a) what, why and how issues get on the agenda; b) types of policies, policy design, and policy tools; c) policy implementation and evaluation; and, d) various models of policy making. This course is residency based.
POL-623000 VETERAN SERVICES AND PUBLIC POLICY
3 credits
This course provides a holistic overview of the policy framework within which federal, state, community-based, and other veteran services are offered. Following an exploration of the figure of the warrior in society and culture, students will examine the evolution of public policy concerning veterans, critique current gaps and problems in the system, and develop an understanding of how policy frameworks and service-delivery interface. The course includes an historical perspective on veterans’ issues and public policy as well as addressing the need for continued advocacy regarding new policies, benefits, and technologies. This course is required for the Veterans Services Certificate.
POL-623001 VETERAN OUTREACH, SERVICES AND ADVOCACY
3 credits
This course provides a grounding in the psychosocial landscape within which veteran services are offered and puts veteran services within the broad context of the experience of war and the challenge of coming home. It identifies the challenges facing returning veterans, including re-integrating into the community, reconnecting with family, reorienting to the less structured character of civilian life and, in some cases, adjusting to life with a disability. Special attention is also paid to the family system and to the challenges facing the families of veterans, to the effects of multiple and extended deployments, to the specific issues facing women veterans, to generational differences among veterans, and to veterans as they age. Finally, the course identifies strategies for reaching out to veterans, explores existing models for such outreach and service delivery, and addresses the question of how to advocate for veterans across multiple communities and multiple political and social perspectives. This is a required course for the Veterans Services Graduate Certificate.
POL-623002 VETERAN PROGRAMS AND BENEFITS
3 credits
This course provides students with broad knowledge of specific veteran benefits and programs, including health care, education, employment, criminal justice, and housing. Topics include needs assessment, the mesh of services and service providers, and case- and claims- management, review, and appeal. Students will gain practice in identifying the benefits available to specific veterans and groups of veterans, explore issues concerning access and eligibility and consider both the functional and the challenging aspects of the system of benefits. Following a broad overview of these topics, students have the opportunity to do further work in a topic of particular interest.
POL-623003 HUMAN SERVICE PRACTICE AND DELIVERY
3 credits
This course is intended for students with experience in military and/or veteran communities but no prior background or training in human services. It situates human services within a broad historical and sociological context; explores the roles of the human service professional vis-a-vis clients, social institutions, and the larger society; and then focuses on specific skills of communication, case and program management, and professional development.
POL-623004 MILITARY AND VETERAN CULTURE: DEVELOPING CULTURAL COMPETENCY
3 credits
This course qualifies as a Veteran Services Certificate elective. This course is highly recommended for students, such as social workers, with prior background and/or training in human services but with no previous experience working with military or veteran populations. Topics include the reasons for enlisting in the military, the effects of military training, formal and informal military structures, military hierarchy, military terminology, active duty military and veterans in work and educational environments, and the effects of military service on later life.
POL-630500 POLICY PROCESS: LABOR POLICY
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated Labor Policy students only. Students will focus on the process through which government develops policies that address perceived social and economic problems. Students will be introduced to fundamental concepts of public policy and models of governance within the constitutional framework of the U.S. The emphasis will be on the competing models of pluralism and elite theory and the crucial role that federalism plays in the policy process. Students will then concentrate on the process at the national level and assess what roles individuals and groups can play in: a) what, why and how issues get on the agenda; b) formulating different types of policies, policy design, and policy tools; c) policy implementation and evaluation, and, d) various models of policy making. Students will also examine the influence of public and private unions on the policy making process. In so doing, they will also examine basic underlying assumptions regarding the labor union movement. This course is residency based.
RAM-611002 RESEARCH METHODS
3 credits
This course involves the study of quantitative and qualitative research methodology for the social sciences. The goals of this course are to provide students with the analytic tools to critically evaluate social science research and causal arguments found in everyday life, and to improve students’ abilities to pose and answer research questions on their own.
RAM-620590 MODES OF INQUIRY/DIRECTED RESEARCH (SOCIAL POLICY)
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated Social Policy students only. This course is designed to enhance a student's knowledge about the nature of research, analytical thinking, writing methods, and style. There is a web-based component to the course to enable interaction between students and access to resources on the web. However, each student's work is developed individually, depending on the subject of their final project, the type of final project, and the student's skills and background. This course will give them general exposure to academic modes of analysis in their fields and, more specifically the final project topic. The final product of this course is the Final Project Proposal which must then be approved before enrollment for the Final Project itself. This course is residency based.
SOC-611006 ETHICS AND COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP
3 credits
This course focuses on the relationship between ethics, public policy and business enterprise. It covers topics in ethics relevant to workforce development, industrial development, public land use for businesses, and public funding for private organizations. Specific topics include but are not limited to conflicts of interest, financial disclosure, public integrity, affirmative action, social responsibility of business, truth in advertising, financial disclosure form requirements, commissions on integrity, fairness in hiring practices, supervision and intra-office relationships, harassment, financial transparency, salary disclosure, corporate and public loyalty, the appearance of impropriety, and local and state business relationships. We will use both classical texts in business ethics as well as a collection of articles on integrity in the workforce. In addition we will review existing and proposed legislation on business-government relationships. This will include the actual legislation creating quasi-government agencies, financial disclosure laws, corporate ethical and legal requirements, and the NY State Commission on Public Integrity. Lastly, we examine actual and fictional case studies on these topics and discuss possible approaches to resolving potential ethical dilemmas.
SOC-620501 SOCIAL POLICY PERSPECTIVES
3 credits
This is a required course available for matriculated Social Policy students only. This course examines the historical, philosophical and theoretical development of American social policy. It considers definitions of social policy and a common framework for systematic analysis of social policy. It includes a review of the evolution of social policy, and its relationship to American individualism, the New Deal programs of the 1930s, the Great Society programs of the 1960s, and traces those developments to contemporary issues. It examines a variety of historical analyses and perspectives on current social issues, particularly policies related to poverty. The course also explores the interrelationship among cultural values, social institutions, and policy-making processes. Along with its companion course, Policy Perspectives, this study encourages students to reflect in an informed and organized way on the inter-connectedness of social values and social policies. This study is residency based.
SOC-620504 ADULT EDUCATION AND SOCIAL POLICY
3 credits
This course provides the student an opportunity to explore basic policy questions about adult higher education, confronting such issues as access, quality, equity, and equality of results as well as the relationship of adult education to training and upgrading the American workforce.
SOC-620505 AGING AND PUBLIC POLICY
3 credits
This course examines social policy and the aged. Students examine the policy implications of gerontological theory and research from various schools of thought. Among specific policies considered are those related to employment and retirement, income maintenance, health insurance, health care, institutionalization and family support systems. Cross-cultural/national and historical variations in social policy are also considered. The study also considers the connections between agism, sexism, and racism.
SOC-620507 WORK, ORGANIZATIONS, AND SOCIETY
3 credits
How do the ways we work reflect the changing society in which we live? This course will provide students with an understanding of the relationship of work with the broader society and its implications for social policy. Students will first explore the major classical theories of work from sociology and organizational studies and then move on to more contemporary theories that analyze current inequalities in the workplace, including those based on age, gender, race and ethnicity. Specific topics include: the impact of technology on the workplace; re-engineering and downsizing; the effects of a global economy and the changing nature of professional, managerial and service work. The relationship of work to family life will also be explored. A guiding question throughout the course will be to analyze the relative effectiveness of social policies that have been developed to respond to the needs of a changing American workforce.
SOC-620511 HIGHER EDUCATION AND SOCIAL POLICY
3 credits
This course considers the challenges of social, political, and economic policy issues in higher education. Primarily, it examines American higher education to comparative worlds, and fundamental issues such as autonomy and accountability, academic freedom, and an overview of the emerging issues facing higher education in the new century. It also considers the transformation in emphasis of the use of federal student aid, from equal access to middle class affordability, through loans and tax credits in the contexts of American higher education, and the complexities of the funding of higher education as more states are reducing support of public education resulting in the privatization of public universities.
SOC-620513 RACE, CLASS AND GENDER IN US PUBLIC POLICY
3 credits
This course is designed to develop understanding of the implications of race, class, and gender for U.S. public policy. We will consider both social structural and cultural dimensions of this question, and we will examine a range of policy areas from domestic policy and civil rights to international affairs and foreign policy.
SOC-620514 SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL POLICY
3 credits
This course focuses on the policy debates of three key periods in US history: the New Deal of the 1930's, the Great Society of the 1960's -1970's and the Patient Protection and Affordability Health Care Act, or "Obamacare" of 2010. Features unique to the American policy landscape will be examined in relation to contemporary trends in social policy.
SOC-620515 ADVOCACY FOR MENTALLY DISABLED
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to provide students with the theoretical and practical tools required for the provision of advocacy services for mentally disabled populations residing within mental health facilities in New York State, as well as for the provision of advocacy services for those mentally disabled populations residing in the community. Students will be introduced to general information regarding the legal rights and entitlements due mentally disabled persons in New York State. Students will also become familiar with information regarding advocacy groups which provide community based support for this population. Students will gain familiarity with reading legal cases, statutes, regulations and items of mental health policy.
SOC-620525 PUBLIC POLICY AND THE FOSTER CARE SYSTEM
3 credits
This course is designed to provide the student with a framework for assessing and understanding the range of policy issues posed in the current, financing and delivery of foster care services in the United States, and for evaluating proposals being made in the arenas of public policy for a more comprehensive system of social services. Issues of child welfare will be explored considering policy implications as we move into the 21st century.
SOC-620532 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND ABUSE
3 credits
While most people associate the term domestic violence with spouse abuse and battered women, this course will examine this disturbing social problem in all of its forms: spouse abuse, child abuse, elder abuse, and the newly recognized area of human trafficking that may involve abuse of persons who work in domestic households. Readings and assignments will emphasize current research that examines various forms of violence and the policies devised to address them. This course is appropriate for students interested in criminal justice, social services, and health care.
SOC-620540 ETHICAL ISSUES IN SOCIAL POLICY
3 credits
This course is available for matriculated Social Policy students only. This course is designed to introduce students to the ethical principles underlying our social policies and social institutions. Students will read both classical and contemporary works in ethics and social policy, and examine how these theoretical models are applied to specific, "real life" problems. Students are encouraged to select specific topics of interest related to their own careers or educational goals. Students will locate and read additional texts appropriate to their area of interest. This course is residency base.
SOC-620543 NEW YORK STATE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
3 credits
This course explores the structure and function of political institutions in New York State government and political activity at the state and local levels, including the state legislature, the governor, state agencies, the court system, and intergovernmental/federalism relationships with particular focus on the policy making process. This course satisfies the elective requirement of the Public Sector Labor and Employment Policy Advanced Certificate program.
SOC-620554 CITIZEN AND STATE: CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN IDEOLOGIES AND POLITIC
3 credits
Citizen and State explores the political ideas that have affected and continue to affect American society, politics, and public policy from the end of World War II to the present. The emphasis will be on the fundamental changes that have occurred in the way key social groups have come to view their relations to the state and the role that the state should play in their private and public lives. Through an examination of historical events, movements, and leaders, students will explore the development of the deep social, cultural, and ideological cleavages that have come to divide American society and politics and affect domestic and foreign policies. The emphasis will be on the post WWII evolution of liberalism and conservatism. This course is required for the Public Sector Labor and Employment Policy Advanced Certificate program.
SOC-620564 PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
3 credits
This course will begin with a brief discussion of the philosophical intentions of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, after which students will examine the electoral process leading to the White House. In doing so, they will study: a) the increasing importance of primaries and policy implications; b) the decreasing role played by political parties in the selection process; c) the role of the media and money in campaigns and their impact on policy; d) the role of national party conventions; e) the impact of race, taxes, welfare and affirmative action programs on the decline of the Democratic and the rise of the Republican parties.
SOC-620565 PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS
3 credits
This course provides an understanding of a number of analytical approaches, strategies and techniques drawn from several academic disciplines and the application of these schemes to the public policy process with particular reference to governments in New York State drawing on both the student’s prior learning and professional experience. Students complete a research project analyzing an existing or proposed federal, state or local government program.
SOC-620568 MEDIA AND PUBLIC POLICY
3 credits
This course will explore the connections between media and public policy in contemporary American society. The guiding assumption of this study is that the media are an important vehicle by which most Americans make sense of public policies and the politicians who enact these policies. How does the media influence the public about public policy and the way in which policies are created? In order to answer this question, the student will explore theories of the media and society and then focus in on specific areas of public policy, to understand how the media has been able to influence public opinion.
SOC-620569 ADVOCACY FOR THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN
3 credits
Historically, children were viewed by society as property of their parents. Over time, children have gained many legal rights in this country. This course will introduce the student to an overview of these various rights and of the many legal, sociological, psychological and political issues involved in their development. In addition to an overview of these fundamentals legal rights, students will become familiarized with the basics of the court system and the statutes and judicial decisions affecting children’s rights today. Some specific topics to be explored in this study are neglect and abuse of children, the legal, ethical and sociological effects of prenatal maternal substance abuse and children’s right to the effective assistance of counsel.
SOC-620572 CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN PUBLIC PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
3 credits
This course explores current and emerging personnel management issues in the public sector. This includes issues like the public sector budget process, generational change, differences within the public sector workforce, and training and workforce development issues.
SOC-620595 FINAL PROJECT
3 credits
Please contact your academic advisor to discuss Final Project. The Final Project is unique to each individual. It will not appear in the on-line term guide, but will appear in your registration worksheet, once your academic advisor has added the course for you. You will then be able to register for the final project. Prerequisite: Approved Final Project Proposal must be on file in Graduate Studies.
SOC-620600 POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: ORGANIZATIONAL POLICY
3 credits
This course is available for matriculated Social Policy students only. This study deals with what happens between the policy formulation (through legislation, executive action, or organizational governance) and policy outcomes. Consistent with the program goals in Social Policy, we particularly focus on policy implementation in service delivery. Beyond examining case studies on how policy is put into action in agency bureaucracies, we examine public demands for accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness in front-line service delivery mechanisms. We similarly examine the service provider’s role in policy creation and execution. This section particularly examines implementation within organizational structures, including nonprofit and private agencies. This course has a residency requirement.
SOC-620601 POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: GOVERNMENTAL POLICY
3 credits
This course is available for matriculated Social Policy students only. This study deals with what happens between the policy formulation (through legislation, executive action, or organizational governance) and policy outcomes. Consistent with the program goals in Social Policy, we particularly focus on policy implementation in service delivery. Beyond examining case studies on how policy is put into action in agency bureaucracies, we examine public demands for accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness in front-line service delivery mechanisms. We similarly examine the service provider’s role in policy creation and execution. This section particularly examines implementation within formal governmental sectors, both for civil servants and those organizing to create change. This course has a residency requirement.
SOC-620602 QUALITATIVE METHODS
3 credits
This course is available for matriculated Social Policy students only. Students will participate in an online course designed to introduce them to the methods and ethical issues involved in qualitative research in social research. Students employ material from previous studies in Modes of Inquiry and Ethics, as well as texts and online readings and exercises in this course. Students conduct methodological exercises employing qualitative methods and participate in discussions on ethical issues in social research. In addition, students report on and discuss readings from examples of qualitative studies in social science. This course may be taken at the same time or following Modes of Inquiry, but should not be taken prior to enrollment in Modes of Inquiry.
SOC-620603 QUANTITATIVE METHODS
3 credits
This course is available for matriculated Social Policy students only. This course involves the study of quantitative research methodology for the social sciences. The goals of this course are to provide students with the analytic tools to critically evaluate social science research and causal arguments found in everyday life, and to improve their abilities to pose and answer research questions on their own. Upon completing this course, students should have an understanding of the epistemology, the tools and techniques of conducting quantitative research in social sciences. More specifically, by the end of this course they should be able to conduct literature reviews, formulate research questions, analyze and interpret quantitative data, understand scientific methods and the research process as consumers (students should be able to critically evaluate scientific methods and articles) and as producers (students should be able to develop studies, conduct analyses, and write scientific papers), and develop proficiency using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). This is a residency based course.
SOC-620604 FAMILY POLICY
3 credits
In this course, students examine the institution of family through the lens of cultural values and as an area for policy decisions. Topics raised in the course consider How the family unit has evolved over time, the cultural values that shape not only how family is viewed, but also how that view shapes policy decisions that affect the family, and the impact that these policy decisions have upon both families and the larger society.
SOC-620606 DISASTER IN A SOCIAL CONTEXT
3 credits
This course is an examination of social theories that inform the field of disaster studies. Students will explore the history of disaster research, consider challenges posed in disaster research settings, examine key social theories that pertain to disaster, and then apply this knowledge to case analyses of contemporary disaster typologies. Case studies include the Buffalo Creek flood, the Chicago heat wave of 1995, the 1918 pandemic, Chernobyl, Hurricane Katrina, and sociopolitical disaster events.
SOC-620630 WOMEN, CRIME AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
3 credits
This course will cover major issues of gender, crime and justice. There will be coverage of women as deviants/offenders, women as victims of crime, and women as workers within the criminal justice system (lawyers, judges, police, prisons).
SOC-620631 URBAN ISSUES
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to develop an understanding of urban areas and the problems they confront. The course will explore the advantages and challenges that cities face and the ways that various municipalities have devised to provide good places for people to live, work and play in localities with dense populations. Particular attention will be paid to crime, policing and safety; economic development; education; government; housing; and transportation. The course will be conducted in a seminar format over the internet. In addition to the assigned readings, each student will become familiar with a specific urban area. He or she will share information on the urban area selected as the course looks at each of the six topics– crime, policing and safety; economic development and transportation; education; government and government services; housing; and poverty and discrimination.
SOC-620633 COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
3 credits
Effective civic engagement often challenges us to work with others at the grassroots level to meet a wide variety of human needs. This course uses a simulation model to enable students to experience community organizing first hand. By the end of the course students will be able to apply key political science and sociological theories to community organizing, use qualitative and quantitative research techniques to discern community needs, work with community volunteers to make important decisions, and take the necessary steps to initiate community building. The course will work with real situations in real communities.
SOC-620636 JUSTICE: POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION
3 credits
In this course, Justice: Policy and Administration, students will explore the policies and practices of courts and the judicial branch of American federal and state government to assure fairness and equality in the administration of justice and will consider methods used in court systems to deliver justice in an efficient, effective, neutral and accountable manner.
SOC-621524 INFORMATION ASSURANCE AND SECURITY POLICY
3 credits
This course focuses on the managerial aspects of information security and assurance and the need for organizations to practice information assurance as a balance between security and access. Topics covered include access control models, information security governance, and information security program assessment and metrics. Coverage of the foundational and technical components of information security is included to reinforce key concepts. The course includes up-to-date information on changes in the field. It involves additional research and understanding of computer security of hardware, software and data. A holistic viewpoint for information assurance is developed from the McCumber model. This course will also involve aspects of privacy and the expectations of government and business organizations.
SOC-622509 EDUCATION POLICY
3 credits
This course provides an overview of the historical, social and political contexts that influence education policy. Students examine the phases of the policy making cycle, including problem identification, policy development, policy analysis, political decision making, policy implementation, and policy evaluation in relation to education policy. Students investigate current educational policy issues and they investigate and analyze the development and effectiveness of a particular policy.
SOC-622510 HEALTH CARE POLICY
3 credits
This course will explore issues related to three important components of health care policy; access to health services, cost, and ensuring quality in health services. We will primarily examine public sector initiatives in these areas but will also consider activities within the private sector that impinge on these three components. State and federal level activities will be investigated and analyzed. We will also examine U.S. policy within an international context. An important focus in the study will be the interrelatedness of these three components; policy initiatives aimed at any one of these three will likely impact the other two. We will consider the logic for government’s role in the health care marketplace. This will include examining a range of arguments in support of and against government’s involvement in the health sector including; economic efficiency, distributional and fairness issues, and political.
SOC-622535 HUMAN SERVICES POLICY
3 credits
In this course, students will examine how social policy influences, and is influenced by, the way in which human service functions, service populations, outcomes, and resources are publicly and privately defined, identified, secured, and measured. Students will examine the interactional effects of social policy and human services at organizational and professional levels. For example, at the community level, local funding agencies such as the United Way often act as gatekeepers controlling community resources. At the organizational level, this might be expressed as a conflict between the stated mission of an organization and actual practices necessitated by the requirements of its funding sources. An example at the professional level is the socialization of human service workers which often includes membership in professional associations. These associations serve as interpreters of state-of-the-art practices and attitudes and lobby for their expression in social policy, law and regulation. By semester's end, students should be capable of effectively analyzing or deconstructing any human services agency or concept in current social policy.
SOC-629577 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES-EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES
3 credits
The aim of this course is to explore and compare the American and European health and human services systems. The course will provide students with an historical perspective and will focus on contemporary social welfare policy. The course will take into consideration economic, political, and social factors, special characteristics of various systems, and an analysis of these concerns. Students will build upon their knowledge of experience with the American health and human service system.
SOC-629578 MENTAL HEALTH POLICY
3 credits
This course examines major trends in the formulation and delivery of mental health services in the US to the seriously mentally ill. In addition to its historical perspective, it also considers current issues associated with biochemical research and managed health care.
