UST 830 Public Administration Seminar

Course Description

This is a seminar for doctoral students in public administration. It is meant to provide intensive exposure to central themes in the literature. The purposes of the course:

• To review major milestones in the American public administration literature
• To make sure students have a grasp of enduring and cutting edge theoretical issues
• To provide a firm theoretical foundation from which students can prepare for comprehensive exams.

By the end of the course, students should have a clear picture of what is entailed in preparing for comprehensive exams in public administration. While the course does not guarantee to cover every possible topic that might appear on the exams, it does provide grounding in the major concerns out of which most, if not all, significant theoretical questions are likely to be posed. And it does offer opportunities to think through, and write out, issues whose substance and scope are models for comps questions.

Beyond this immediate pragmatic concern, the course is intended as a kind of “peak experience” in doctoral education. Since it deals in central issues, the course and its discussions will serve as an opportunity for students to experience intellectual exchange at a high professional and scholarly level, and to integrate the various aspects of the doctoral education experience in a way that (perhaps unfortunately) participants are not likely to have many subsequent opportunities to engage in. In other words, the experience will entail the kind of flexing of intellectual muscle that prospective scholars should have fun with!

As with any seminar, the success of the course depends on conscientious preparation for each class and on each student’s active participation in discussions. The importance of participation is perhaps greater here, however, than in any other course. The presumption upon which the approach to the course is based is that this central material cannot be integrated and “owned” by the student without joining in a discussion with colleagues. Therefore sitting silent will almost guarantee a less than full appreciation for the complexity of the issues and will retard development of your ability to use the material to make independent interpretations. Success in this course does not entail memorizing key points, authors’ names, and dates. It entails developing a sense of the terrain of the literature, its strengths, weaknesses, and gaps, and beginning to find your own niche within it.