Master of Public Administration (MPA) alumni face increasingly diverse and global professional expectations. Public affairs specialists generally go on to manage complex partnerships that involve a wide array of participants. Public administration education ought to do its part to ensure these graduates succeed. In this sense, we offer comparative…

The academic practitioner divide and strategies to close that gap have been important lines of inquiry in the fields of public administration and public affairs. This study contributes to that significant body of work by reporting results from two surveys of faculty in NASPAA accredited programs and of practitioners affiliated with the…

Computer-based simulations in public affairs curricula are thought to better prepare graduates for responding to an increasingly complex public policy environment upon entering into or advancing within public sector careers. Using survey results from 221 participants in the 2021 NASPAA-Batten Pandemic 2.0 simulation competition, the authors…

The potential benefits and challenges of AI in the workplace are documented with public service facing a particular choice to leverage this tool to better communities. This article explores the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in public service education. As students prepare to enter public service, they need to gain the skills…

This article describes a teaching plan for a discussion-driven introduction to moral reasoning and explains its philosophical and pedagogical rationale. The teaching plan consists of a sequence of thought experiments that build on one another, and ends with participants addressing some morally complex, real-life issues. The plan rests on extensive…

The general growth in public affairs programs offering hybrid and online courses to reach a wide variety of students, along with the necessity of doing so during a global health pandemic, calls for an investigation of best practices in teaching public affairs statistics and research-oriented courses. These courses often require the use of a…

This study examines the nature of sustainability education in public affairs programs. First, through web content analysis of NASPAA accredited MPA/MPP programs, and second through web survey of program directors, data were collected on perceptions about sustainability education and public administration, demand for sustainability education,…

Despite the near global consensus on the importance of ethics education in public affairs programs, a lot of challenges are faced in implementation. The aim of the current research paper is to identify the perception of faculty in public affairs programs about why, what and how they teach ethics in their programs, the hurdles they meet, and their…

Diversity, cultural competency, and global awareness are three broad and mutually reinforcing conceptual themes in the literature of American public affairs education that are rarely implicitly interconnected. A primary challenge has concerned how to teach these themes, either separately or in unison, when designing courses and curricula to…

In this study, academic freedom was defined by 17 foreign-born professors: 12 Arab-born and five non-Arab professors from nine different higher education institutions, as the ability to express different ideas, research any topic, and publish the results without fear of intimidation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine how…

How can young people make use of digital tools and methods to get to grips with the risks and dilemmas arising out of contemporary science, technology and society relations? This chapter addresses the forms of agency enabled through a set of techniques for exploring and visualizing controversial technoscientific issues on the web. Given the…

Introducing a new concept, skill or method to public affairs students always involves a decision about the most effective pedagogical approach that will achieve the instructor's objectives. In public affairs, education concepts are often abstract, complex and contested. One of the approaches that can be effective in introducing public affairs…

There is an issue around getting students engaged in subject matter about which they may have little interest. Often, such subject matter is essential to their studies. The module Essential Public Affairs is such a concern for students of journalism. It is essential for their professional qualification. This article explores a pilot project which…

Courses: Ethics, Organizational Communication, Political Communication. Objectives: After completing this unit activity, students should be able to (1) apply multiple ethical perspectives to real-world diversity issues in a debate format, and (2) explain the role of informational and social category diversity in current controversies.

Current world events demand public affairs leadership training that generates among professionals a sense of capability, agency, and responsibility to engage in complex public problems. In this paper, we describe a unique course operated in the US focused on achieving these learning outcomes. It uses an unconventional schedule and course design…