Courses

Effective development, planning execution and communication of special projects are critical to all types of public service organizations. Service organization, health providers, nonprofits and government organizations constantly pursue new initiatives and projects to address the demands of their constantly changing environment. This course offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods for directing projects and provides students with tools that prepare them for success as a project manager. 

This is an advanced course for students who plan to become policy analysts.  Students (a) extend their familiarity with methodologic issues, including research designs, measurement problems, and analytic approaches; (b) get hands-on experience with management, analysis, and presentation of data; and (c) develop skills in reading, critiquing, and reporting on policy-relevant research.

While some countries have achieved unprecedented rates of economic growth in the past half century, other countries have experienced set-backs. For those that have seen rapid growth, economic changes have not always translated into proportional social changes – and sometimes rapid social changes have occurred in the absence of economic growth.

This course explores the political and economic policy issues surrounding hunger and food security, drawing on many case examples. The course will provide an overview of some of the core dimensions of global hunger and food security policy issues, including debates over reconfiguring food systems to address health, equity, and sustainability; a new green revolution; food aid; fair trade, and role of the food system in addressing climate change.

The goal of this course is to develop the key data analytics skill sets necessary to inform evidence-based policy. Its design offers hands-on training in how to make sense of and use large scale real world heterogeneous datasets in the context of addressing real world problems. Students will learn how to scope a policy problem, understand the data generation process, how to manage, combine, and structure data, and how to create, measure and analyze the effect of different data decisions.

Multiple regression is the core statistical technique used by policy and finance analysts in their work. In this course, you will learn how to use and interpret this critical statistical technique. Specifically you will learn how to evaluate whether regression coefficients are biased, whether standard errors (and thus t statistics) are valid, and whether regressions used in policy and finance studies support causal arguments.

Corporate philanthropy and engagement is an evolving space which is critical to the existence and operation of nonprofit organizations. The role of the private sector in helping nonprofits achieve their mission, serve their clients and realize their expected goals and outcomes is unique and very different from the role that government funders and individual major donors play.

This seven-week class is the first in a series of “City Lab” classes that will offer an in-depth analysis of a current issue confronting cities. This first lab class will consider the potential for adaptive re-use of office buildings to address various challenges facing cities across the U.S. -- underutilized office space as many employers offer flexibility to work from home, energy inefficient building stocks, and an inadequate supply of affordable housing.

The NYU Impact Investment Fund (NIIF) is a unique inter-disciplinary, experiential learning course which is offered in tandem with a student-led and operated Impact Investing Fund of the same name. For students to participate in the Fund they are required to be enrolled in this course.

The course focuses on economic inequality and poverty, drawing on research in economics and other social sciences. The aim is to explore research questions, recent empirical approaches, and policy responses. The course draws on international experiences, with a tilt toward the United States, and an emphasis on framing problems comparatively.

This course introduces students to basic statistical methods and their application to management, policy, and financial decision-making. The course covers the essential elements of descriptive statistics, univariate and bivariate statistical inference, and introduces multivariate analysis. In addition to covering statistical theory the course emphasizes applied statistics and data analysis. The primary goal of this course is to introduce these basic skills and encourage a critical approach to reviewing statistical findings and using statistical reasoning in decision making.

This course introduces students to basic statistical methods and their application to management, policy, and financial decision-making. The course covers the essential elements of descriptive statistics, univariate and bivariate statistical inference, and introduces multivariate analysis. In addition to covering statistical theory the course emphasizes applied statistics and data analysis, using the software package, Stata.

Open only to students in the MSPP program. Policy and Data Studio builds on the core courses, your advanced coursework, and is specifically meant to deepen your data and data analytic skills, in the content of a policy issue. Studio is a unique end event where you will use data to shed light on a policy question of your choice using the technical skills and specialized knowledge gained from the program.

Open only to students in the MSPP program. This course will provide students with an opportunity to engage in policy analysis in situations that mimic the real world practice of the craft of policy analysis. In practice, policy analysis requires drawing inferences from limited information, under time pressure and data constraints. It requires asking the right questions, finding the right data, assessing the quality of the data and analyses, and communicating results effectively in writing and in person.

In our increasingly data-reliant and data-saturated society, people who understand how to leverage data to generate insights have the power to change the world. Data visualization and storytelling is a crucial skill for policy and data analysts, communications and marketing professionals, and managers and decision-makers within nonprofits, social organizations and the government. With the advent of visualization tools that do not require coding, data storytelling in the digital age is also an attainable skill set for people with varying levels of technical ability.

Community Organizing is for those who could imagine running national or local advocacy organizations that make change happen or anyone who wants to understand the art of community organizing. It will provide an overview of and training in contemporary community organizing practice in the United States. This includes defining what community organizing is and identifying its value base; exploring the strategies, tactics and activities of organizing; and thinking about marketing, language and evaluation.

Over the last few decades, disparities in income, wealth, and mobility have widened in the United States, but the U.S. fares worse in wealth inequality than income inequality. Wealth, in particular, is crucial to many functions across the life course and between generations, including but not limited to: spending on healthcare and education, acquiring and retaining investments for profit, weathering unexpected expenses or shocks, ascribing social status, and transferring assets to children and/or other family members.

This course brings together a wide range of thinking and scholarship to encourage learning about what race is, why it matters, race and racism in organizations and how to build racial equity and justice at work.

The application of digital tools in healthcare has grown exponentially over the last several years. They are now firmly entrenched in the healthcare delivery model. However, after experiencing this explosive growth, the application and potential of healthtech tools remain uncertain and potentially unfulfilled.

In the coming decades, water will be the central issue in global economic development and health.  With one in six people around the world currently lacking access to safe drinking water (1.2 billion people), and more than two out of six lacking adequate sanitation (2.6 billion people), water is already a critical factor affecting the social and economic well-being of a sizable proportion of the world's population.  However, with the world's population projected to double in over the next fifty years, and with rapidly dwindling water supplies becoming both more scarce and more vol

This course provides an in-depth exploration of social entrepreneurship and innovation as a set of promising pathways to drive social change across sectors using a systems-led approach. Students will delve into understanding complex social and environmental problems at a systems level, equipping them to contribute to long-term, sustainable solutions.

This course examines economic activity at the national (“macro”) level, focusing on topics such as why countries sometimes fall into recessions and different policy options for responding to downturns in the economy; the role of a central bank such as the U.S. Federal Reserve in setting interest rates and promoting stability in the financial sector; the federal budget, government deficits and national debt. In doing such, it teaches principles of macroeconomics in both the closed economy and international context, with an emphasis on macroeconomic policy.

This course serves as an introduction to those evaluation tools most commonly used to assess the performance of programs, services, and policies in both the public and private sectors. Topics include needs assessment; explication and assessment of program theory; implementation and process assessment; research design, measurement, and sampling for outcome and impact evaluation; and the ethics of conducting program evaluation. The focus is on critical analysis and understanding of both the underlying programs and their evaluations.

This one-week travel class to Amsterdam offers an immersive journey into the heart of sustainable urbanism. The course offers a unique opportunity for students to delve deep into the city's pioneering approaches to sustainable mobility, climate adaptation, and urban tech.