The EMPL course map is designed to build knowledge and skills in key areas to prepare students for senior leadership positions. Students take all 11 courses in the program following the order in which they are offered. All students participate in a short, intensive immersion experience at the start of the program.
Gateway Course
May
Monday-Thursday All Day (4 days total)
PA 280E
The EMPL program will begin with a four-day intensive gateway course for all students. This course is designed to accomplish four goals. First, it will build community among students, nurturing a set of personal connections that will facilitate intellectual collaboration and professional networking. Second, the gateway course will help prepare students for the reading, writing, and analytical expectations of the program. Third, students will take part in a multi-rater leadership assessment and begin work on a personal leadership development plan that will be interwoven and addressed throughout the EMPL course of study. Fourth, and perhaps most important, the gateway course will introduce key concepts of leadership that will underpin all student work in the EMPL program.
The gateway course will occur over four consecutive days in late May, before the summer semester begins. It will be a two‐credit full‐time course for those four days. Students must attend all sessions.
Summer
May - August
Friday Evenings - Saturday Afternoons
PA 381E
Strategic communication is a vital part of a public leader’s role. A principle of strategic communication in any public entity is understanding and shaping opinions, with a variety of internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders include staff at the leader’s agency and staff across the organization, and all public boards or commissions that are pertinent to an agency’s mission. External stakeholders include the public, media, interest groups, and lobbyists. The goal of this course is to enable public leaders to implement strategies to understand and shape the opinions of these diverse stakeholders.
The class is divided into three sections including:
Class sessions will include discussion of the readings, case studies, exercises, lecture, role-play activities, and guest speakers with expertise in presenting to boards, communication campaigns, and social media.
PA 383E
This course will examine the factors that make excellent organizations and the role of executive leaders in such organizations. The instructors draw on sources in the public, private and nonprofit sectors to develop these concepts. Attention will be given to the attributes of excellent organizations and the roles and priorities of leaders in achieving and maintaining such organizations, including a range of leadership strategies and activities. Specific topics include: strategic people issues, working in teams, creating collaborations and alliances, political savvy, engaging in policy development and executing policy, ethics in organizations and scenario planning. This course is intended to be the first of two linked courses on elements of organizational management and should serve as a foundation in the development of a variety of program core competencies.
Course Activities/Assignments:
PA 383E
The research on the success of organizational change efforts is not encouraging. Some sources indicate that as many as 70% of major organizational change initiatives fail to achieve some or all of their intended objectives. At the same time, some leading authors in the field propose that the function of leading organizational change is one of the defining, core responsibilities of leadership. Senior level leaders in government must achieve a better record than that!
The course will be organized to cover the following areas:
The course will utilize different learning approaches, including lectures, group discussions, case studies, and a computer-‐based simulation. There will also be a number of guest speakers/panels who will discuss their experiences and challenges in leading and implementing organizational change efforts.
Fall
August - December
Friday Evenings - Saturday Afternoons
PA 381E
This course for students in the Executive Master in Public Leadership Program will examine factors that enable organizations and leaders to become excellent and exemplary executives, respectively, as assessed by people within and without an organization. The class emphasizes the creation of effective teams, coalitions and collaboration; dispute prevention; negotiation; dispute resolution; and mediation. The class reinforces through group exercises the application of these tools, skills and competencies to organizational effectiveness. The class is about working with people and leveraging relationships to enhance leadership and accomplish organizational goals.
Accomplishing goals requires meeting challenges through constructive engagement with people, both within and outside of the organization. This class discusses how to cooperate with others, addressing disputes (or proactively avoiding disputes), mediating, negotiating, gaining support (internally or externally) with coalitions or alliances, preventing or resolving differences of opinion (real or imagined), creating more productive work relationships (bosses, peers, or subordinates), benefiting from a diversity of perspectives, leveraging team performance, as well as practice working with governing boards or legislative bodies (city councils, legislatures or nonprofit governing boards). This course provides students with knowledge and skills to allow them to achieve these ends.
The Instructors will draw on their experiences in both the public and private sectors for germane material (not just “war stories”) for this course. All participants are encouraged to share their knowledge and experience as well, where it can inform the learning experience for the course. We will learn together.
PA 381E
Crises are inevitable. At some point, something will happen outside or within any organization that will spark a crisis. How that crisis is handled shapes the reputation of the organization and the careers of every leader of that organization. Handled well, reputations are enhanced; handled poorly, careers are ruined and organizations falter. Indeed, one the major responsibilities of organizational leaders is effectively handling crises.
In this class, we focus on the issues leaders of organization must consider before, during, and after a crisis. We begin the class by defining crises, noting the sorts of crises organizations face, and the value, intrinsically and extrinsically, of good crisis management. We highlight the importance of preventing, anticipating, and planning for, crises. Then, using a stage model of crises we explore what leaders need must do to recognize crises early, handle them well, and recover from them promptly. We emphasize how what leaders say and do matters immensely during crises. Finally, we discuss the role of the media in crises and how leaders and organizations need to both understand and effectively manage the media throughout a crisis.
The goal of the course is give participants a deep understanding of crisis management and provide a variety of practical tools and skills participants can use when faced with crises. Instructionally, the class includes readings, exercises, lectures, case studies, as well as invited speakers who have successfully handled crises in the past.
PA 382E
Leaders use data to drive decision making. This course provides students with the skills and experience to understand how to use data to make informed decisions. The course will use real-world examples to teach students about statistical inference, research methods, and how to be sophisticated consumers of evidence. Students will also learn to present evidence to communicate with multiple audiences.
Spring
January - May
Friday Evenings - Saturday Afternoons
PA 383E
This course is designed to help you develop the management capabilities expected of senior managers/leaders in the public sector. The course assumes you have already had basic managerial experiences and are preparing yourself for more senior roles. The course will cover four broad topics that you can expect to face in your role as a senior executive in the public sector (government or non-‐profit organization). These topics include:
The course will utilize different learning styles, including: (a) lectures; (b) group discussions; (c) guest speakers/panels; (d) case studies; (e) writing assignments keyed to ‘real world’ management problems; and, (f) selected readings in management theory and practice. Students will be expected to share their own management experiences with the class and discuss them with our guest speakers.
PA 383E
This course will introduce mid-career professionals to key concepts, insights, and experiences related to the strategic leadership of modern organizations. The course is designed to increase students’ understanding of what it means to think strategically, lead an organization, and marry strategy with leadership. Course activities will center on readings, discussion, and short think-piece papers. Students will not learn a formula for strategic leadership. Students will, instead, gain an appreciation for the different kinds of strategic leadership, and their relevance for current and future professional needs.
PA 382E
This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of public financial management at senior levels of government. Its objective is to develop executive capabilities in the analysis of financial operations and the management of public sector financial resources. The course will cover the principles of budget, finance, accounting, and fiscal administration. The course will cover the full range of fiscal management issues, from development of budgets to review of account data and financial reports. Other topics will include taxes and revenue collection, debt financing, investments, cash management, audit, pensions, cost analysis, and procurement.
Capstone
May – June
PA 389E
All EMPL students are expected to work closely with the academic director and other professors to identify a project that will build on their studies in the program and contribute to their leadership success in their current employment. The capstone course offers an opportunity for each student to work one-‐on-‐one with a faculty member in completing this project. Projects will include a research, writing, and presentation component.
…the entire curriculum – leadership of self, leadership of teams and leadership of organizations – in its totality…has been most useful.
patricia vojack
EMPL Graduate
