PUAD 5100 - Organizational Designs for Governance and Public Management (a.k.a. "Organizational Design" or "OD")​

• This course examines the organizational designs of government for the purposes of governance and public management. It encompasses the basic constitutional and political designs of government; the structures and principles governing the relationship between the partisan-political and non-partisan public-service institutions of government; the organization and roles of the central executive and corporate policy and management agencies; the organization of portfolios, departments and agencies for the management of policy and operational functions; and, the structures and processes of accountability for governance and public management. The course is focused on the Canadian system of government but addresses basic questions of organizational theory and design in a comparative context

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PUAD 5120 - Introduction to Public Policy (a.k.a. "Policy")

• ​This course covers the process of designing, implementing and monitoring public policies from a perspective that is endogenous to a political or administrative organization. This is a practical course, oriented towards developing the skills required by agents who contribute to the design and implementation of public policy. The course begins by introducing the vocabulary and concepts essential for thinking about public policy in a contemporary world. It then outlines the skills needed to develop and monitor public policy. Finally, it proposed putting into practice the skills acquired in the course and encouraging critical reflection on the limits of government intervention. This course aims to prepare students to intervene more effectively in the design, implementation and monitoring of public policy within an administrative apparatus or organization

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PUAD 5130 - Managerial Economics (a.k.a. "Micro")

• This class introduces the fundamental concepts of economics and helps to develop the analytical skills of students appropriate for practitioners in the public sector. It provides an understanding of basic microeconomic theories and principles in considerable depth, consistent with a graduate-level course in an interdisciplinary program. The course focuses on the theories of consumer and producer behaviour and their interaction in the market, of particular interest are situations of market failure and the resultant need for policy intervention.

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PUAD 5131 - Public Economics (a.k.a. "Macro")

• This course introduces the basic principles macroeconomics, appropriate to a graduate-level course in an inter-disciplinary program. It is also concerned with the use and application of macroeconomic theory and the relevance of this theory in economic decision-making in a market economy with a large public sector. In particular, this course places a special emphasis on the role of government in the economy and on the application of economic theory in policy analysis within the framework of the Canadian federation. Together with Managerial Economics, these two courses provide a unique blend of theoretical rigor, empirical relevance and sound policy applications.

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PUAD 5140 - Quantitative Methods (a.k.a. "Stats")

• This course is designed to enable students to understand existing statistical analyses, as well as to conduct their own. Statistical analyses are presented with focus on application in the public sector, emphasizing the importance of statistical analysis in social research and policy making. Specific topics include descriptive and inferential statistics, measures of association for nominal and ordinal variables, analysis of variance techniques, as well as linear regression. In addition to the course, students are also offered tutorials in working with SPSS and MS Excel. Student assignments require work with large data sets.

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PUAD 5170: Public Sector Human Resources (a.k.a. "HR")

• A major part of most public administration positions is human resource management. Therefore, it is important that public administrators understand the components of human resource management and their effect on an organization. In this course, human resource management is defined in a very broad sense, touching on all the major components of human resource management in order to give an overall concept or paradigm. The components are: 1) planning the need for public servants, 2) attracting the right people to be public servants, 3) placing the public servants in well matched jobs, 4) assisting public servants with their career development, 5) maintaining high performance with public servants and 6) evaluating public servants.

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PUAD 5180: Research Methods and Policy Analysis (a.k.a. "Research")

• This course is designed to equip students with tools needed for the collection of quantitative and qualitative data in the context of an applied research project. Students learn how to combine qualitative analysis with quantitative techniques they acquired in PUAD 5140. Specifically, students learn to write literature reviews, to conduct personal interviews, to run focus groups, and to design survey questionnaires. All techniques discussed are applied to the analysis of public policy issues. Policy is analyzed with respect to its strengths and weaknesses from various stakeholders perspectives. Students are required to present their work in class.

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PUAD 5250: Strategic Financial Management (a.k.a. "Finance")

• ​Exploring issues at all orders of government, the course will review concepts of financial planning, public sector accounting, fiscal management, budgeting and accountability. It will place finance, budgeting and economic concepts within a holistic strategic management context. This includes the role and scope of government in fiscal management, the adaptation of economic concepts and measurement and outline activities included in financial management. A review of public sector accounting will develop an understanding of the assumptions and principles of accounting and the role it plays in strategic financial management.

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DISCLAIMER: Course descriptions were copied from Dalhousie University's Academic Calendar.