Courses and Curriculum

One course (I-MPA 6010) that focuses on critical issues in governance and human well-being; another course (I-MPA 6040) that immerses students in the latest and best interdisciplinary thinking about cross-sector (government, business, and nonprofit) collaboration; and a third course (I-MPA 6060) that surveys competing theories and concepts concerning leadership ethics.

Five courses, each of which imparts academically well-grounded but practical and applied lessons in leadership and problem-solving: quantitative reasoning for real-time problem solving (either I-MPA 6030 or I-MPA 6031); either global issues in child residential and foster care (I-MPA 6045) or global leadership and transnational religious organizations (I-MPA 6046); economic reasoning for strategic decision-making (I-MPA 6055); either global public health and philanthropy (I-MPA 6080) or the political economy of labor migration (I-MPA 6081); and exploring existential threats to human well-being (I-MPA 6200).

Two courses, each of which challenges students to independently apply the curriculum's core theories, key concepts, evidence-based techniques, and illustrative case studies. A group-organized capstone project on global aging in which students, guided by leading experts, immerse themselves in issues pertaining to the "eldercare crisis" in Southwest and East Asia, and evaluate public-private programs that serve the most vulnerable older subpopulations in several Chinese cities (I-MPA 6095); or a group-organized capstone project on creation, enforcement, and implementation challenges, in which students, guided by leading experts, study coal mine safety, environmental regulation, housing, and demographic policy in order to evaluate how politics, economics, bureaucracy, and organizational culture shape compliance outcomes (I-MPA 6096). And either leadership, theory, and biographical analysis (I-MPA 6100) or critical issues in leadership theory and innovation management (I-MPA 6101).

Over the last 200 years or so, despite various significant setbacks, human beings all across the world have become more likely to live longer, healthier, wealthier, and better overall. However, global progress in human well-being has been neither linear, nor universal, nor stable. What must happen if the next century-long chapter in the annals of global human well-being is to be a tale of greater health, wealth, and happiness for all or most people worldwide? While there is no simple answer, this course argues that human well-being is best promoted and preserved only under conditions of good governance. But what is governance, and what is good governance? How has the theory and practice of governance changed over the last several decades, and how should it develop into the future? How can public managers act more strategically and effectively in the face of existent crises and emerging threats? What sort of partnerships can and should public agencies enter into with non-governmental actors in order to define and solve critical problems? Through classic texts, case studies, and group discussions, this course will explore these and other questions while giving students the practical knowledge needed to become boundary-spanning public leaders.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6030 or I-MPA 6031

Knowing how to understand and use quantitative data is, increasingly, a skill critical to success in the government, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors. While numbers, statistics, and graphs abound, leaders across these sectors struggle in knowing not only how to organize, parse, and analyze data, but also how to utilize it effectively and in real time to cope with adverse conditions, solve problems, and achieve desirable outcomes. Designed for students who have not had significant prior quantitative data analysis learnings or experiences, this course is uniquely designed to enhance your ability to use data effectively for real-time problem-identification, definition, decision-making, and problem-solving. In this course, students are introduced to key concepts, principles, protocols, and analytical tools and techniques relevant to quantitative reasoning, statistical analysis, and three separate but related problem-solving leadership skills: (1) describing and forecasting general social, economic, and civic trends; (2) measuring performance and results; and (3) evaluating particular social, economic, and civic interventions or programs. Students learn and apply these skills in relation to several cases.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6030 or I-MPA 6031

Knowing how to understand and use quantitative data is, increasingly, a skill critical to success in the government, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors. While numbers, statistics, and graphs abound, leaders across these sectors struggle in knowing not only how to organize, parse, and analyze data, but also how to utilize it effectively and in real time to cope with adverse conditions, solve problems, and achieve desirable outcomes. Designed for students who have had significant prior quantitative data analysis learnings or experiences, this course is uniquely designed to enhance your ability to use data effectively for real-time problem-identification, definition, decision-making, and problem-solving. In this course, students are introduced to key concepts, principles, protocols, and analytical tools and techniques relevant to quantitative reasoning, statistical analysis, and three separate but related problem-solving leadership skills: (1) describing and forecasting general social, economic, and civic trends; (2) measuring performance and results; and (3) evaluating particular social, economic, and civic interventions or programs. Students learn and apply these skills in relation to several cases.

Leaders across the world increasingly recognize the necessity of working across boundaries through various forms of collaboration. Collaboration across the government, nonprofit and business sectors has become more prevalent and important, but, at the same time, also more complicated. This course helps students understand the theory, policy, and practice of cross-sector collaboration. Students learn the purposes collaborations may serve, the forms they take, what skills and techniques are required, and the steps involved in initiating, sustaining, and evolving them. Students also learn the characteristics of the three sectors, the roles and contributions each can make to successful collaborations, and the competitive forces that are often at work in the collaborative process—as well as their possible implications.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6045 or I-MPA 6046

When governments are tasked with protecting vulnerable children in state care, they can respond by providing residential care or home-based care for those children. This course explores foster care and alternative care arrangements around the world, including the estimates for children in state care as well as how children arrived in state care such as due to death of a parent, natural disaster or crises, poverty or lack of resources, or a primary caregiver’s inability to care for the child. The course examines residential care arrangements including medical treatment facilities, orphanages, and group homes, in addition to, home-based care arrangements such as kinship care or placement with a foster family in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. The latter part of the course focuses on promising global child welfare practices and cross-sector collaboration partnerships with international, national, and regional public institutions, in addition to business, nonprofit, and foundation partners. Finally, this course is conducted in part through integrated learning exercises that require students to draw directly on specific learnings from each of their other fall semester I-MPA courses.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6045 or I-MPA 6046

To address challenges to human well-being ranging from environmental protection and public health to elder care services, from poverty reduction to affordable housing, governments in many nations are relying to varying degrees on public-private partnerships (PPP) that involve local, regional, national, and transnational religious organizations. Both in once exceptionally religious nations that have witnessed a decline in religious identification and in nations that have long restricted religious identification, there are PPP involving religious organizations that address many different types of social, public health, and other needs. In nations all around the globe, both indigenous and transnational religious organizations and their respective leaders are playing a role in PPP dedicated to ameliorating or solving present or potential threats to human well-being. This course explores the character, extent, and efficacy of these PPP, spotlighting more than a half-dozen nations through assigned reading and video materials, special guest interviews, and city-specific Leadership Task Group exercises that culminate in written and oral reports.

Economic reasoning is key to strategic decision-making. This course has two parts. In Part I, students are introduced to important elements of economic reasoning, both at the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. At the microeconomic level, topics include supply and demand, production and cost analysis, market structure and competition, market failure and the role of government. At the macroeconomic level, the course covers topics such as measuring aggregate output, economic growth, unemployment and inflation, and international trade. In Part II, students practice applying these economic principles to the range of strategic decisions business firms face. Why business firms? Together with the government and the nonprofit sector, the business sector has a profound bearing on human well-being. For socially responsible business leaders, the challenge is to formulate successful strategies that grow firm profits, and satisfy its employees, shareholders, and customers, while also benefitting, or at least not adversely affecting, wider communities, whether local, regional, national, or transnational. Especially when facing less scrupulous business competitors, aggressive government regulators, or adversarial nonprofit advocates, civic-minded business leaders grapple with this challenge every day. How can business leaders formulate strategies to gain and sustain a competitive advantage at home or abroad? By applying economic reasoning, we will discuss firm decisions on prices, quantities, and costs, and firm decisions regarding which industries and geographic markets to enter. Moreover, we will examine how firms interact with each other through competition and collaboration. In addition, we will explore how these decisions are affected by the forces and trends in the overall macro economy.

In a world filled with multiple and competing human well-being needs, not all of which can be addressed or acted upon fully or at once, which human well-being goals or purposes ought to matter most, which problems ought to be considered most deserving of attention and action, and which goals, purposes, or problems should be treated as top priorities with respect to their claims on attention, resources, and action? Under what, if any, conditions, should accomplishing certain human well-being ends be thought to justify policy or programmatic means that involve largely or wholly sacrificing other goals, purposes, or human well-being ideals and interests in the bargain? Students explore how, whether, and to what extent effective boundary-spanning leadership is, ought to be, or can be made synonymous with moral or ethical boundary-spanning leadership, and by which understanding(s) of “morality” and “ethics.” Through classic and contemporary readings and case studies, students study several different philosophical and religious writings and traditions that might usefully inform the moral reasoning of present or future leaders who seek to promote human well-being by solving local, regional, national, or global problems.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6080 or I-MPA 6081.

Globally, more than half of all children under age five who die of pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria reside in Africa. More generally, by many public health indices, including rates of life-threatening infectious diseases, access to healthcare delivery, life expectancy, and rates of foodborne illnesses, Africa faces huge and still largely unmet public health challenges. Millions of people in Africa die each year from diseases that can be prevented by access to certain medicines and mitigated by participation in particular programs. Focusing mainly on malaria in Africa, and with a special case-based focus on Tanzania, during the first half of the course, students describe, analyze, and evaluate multiple and competing anti-malaria approaches and programmatic initiatives. Philanthropy is a huge part of the story behind efforts to address global public health challenges and other major and persistent threats to human well-being. But what, exactly, is “philanthropy,” and what economic and other factors matter the most in determining its extent and efficacy in meeting unmet human needs? During the latter half of this course, students explore the economics of global philanthropy, concluding with a case study on philanthropy in India.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6080 or I-MPA 6081.

International labor migration remains one of the most important and controversial issues in the post-COVID pandemic world. Migration concerns intersect with emerging issues in domestic labor markets and new forms of labor exploitation in an increasingly digitized world. This course explores the dynamic international political economy of labor and migration. Through readings, discussions, and collaborative projects, students research and craft global leadership and problem-solving case studies on emerging issues in labor and migration in today’s global political economy (skilled labor displacement due to AI advancement; anti-immigrant sentiment; aging populations; and others). The course culminates in student presentations of their case studies, research, and policy briefs.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6095 or I-MPA 6096; this is a capstone course

The elderly population of Asia is projected to exceed 900 million by the year 2050. In East and Southwest Asia, public health policies are just beginning to support "healthy aging in place," and pension systems are not yet well-developed. In this group-organized capstone course, students learn about global aging and explore the humanitarian, economic and public health dilemmas posed by eldercare in East and Southwest Asia. By 2040, China alone is projected to have more than 400 million people age 60 or older. Students do individual and task group projects regarding how leading Chinese governmental bodies have defined the eldercare challenge; promoted "public-private partnerships" (or "PPP") programs; advanced community-based "healthy aging in place”; addressed the need for more geriatric medical practitioners and nursing professionals; and more. The last segment of the course is a multi-week research and writing project in which students describe, analyze, and assess China's subpopulation of "three needs" elderly citizens, and identify, evaluate, and prescribe reforms to existing PPP eldercare programs. The course concludes with a student-led presentation of the class's capstone report before a distinguished, multilingual, and multinational group of experts and leaders from the worlds of government, business, and the nonprofit sector.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6095 or I-MPA 6096; this is a capstone course

This capstone course examines how laws and public programs are created, enforced, and implemented across national and international contexts. It emphasizes the persistent tension between legislative intent and administrative reality. Drawing on studies in coal mine safety, environmental regulation, housing, and demographic policy, students analyze how politics, economics, bureaucracy, and organizational culture shape compliance outcomes. The course integrates symbolic and substantive theories of policy enforcement, offering a comparative framework for evaluating global approaches to complex public problems.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6100 or I-MPA 6101; this is a capstone course

Global leaders and managers must work across three different types of boundaries: interpersonal boundaries, which involve relations with people who differ from oneself demographically, personality-wise, and otherwise; institutional boundaries, which involve working across government, nonprofit, and business organizations; and international boundaries, which involves both individual and institutional engagements that are carried on across national borders. This course introduces students to the latest and best empirical research literature on leadership, with a particular focus on governmental or public leadership and management. Students explore how to identify one’s own leadership-relevant traits, skills, and signature strengths, and how to learn from past and present global leaders whose careers arguably exemplify ethical and effective boundary-spanning leadership. Each student researches and presents a ten-point "Mini-Biographical Analysis" (M-BA) of a single significant global public leader. Students also meet with leaders in government, academia, international organizations, and business, who inspire and empower the I-MPA students by sharing their leadership experience.

Note: Students take either I-MPA 6100 or I-MPA 6101; this is a capstone course

Global leaders and managers must work across three different types of boundaries: interpersonal boundaries, which involve relations with people who differ from oneself demographically, personality-wise, and otherwise; institutional boundaries, which involve working across government, nonprofit, and business organizations; and international boundaries, which involves both individual and institutional engagements that are carried on across national borders. This course introduces students to the latest and best empirical research literature on leadership, with a particular focus on business or for-profit leadership and management. In today’s global business environment, it is increasingly clear that business success is driven by a firm’s ability to create and capture value through innovation, whether technological or non-technological. Accordingly, the processes firms use to develop and foster innovation; the choices they make about how to commercialize innovations; the changes they make to their business models in response to a dynamic environment; and the strategies they employ to build a dominant competitive position are all critical managerial concerns.

As defined by the Stanford University Existential Risks Initiative, “existential risks, or global catastrophic risks, are risks that could cause the collapse of human civilization.” In the growing scientific literature on the subject, the most commonly cited examples of existential risks or, as we shall define them in this course, “existential threats,” include pandemics; catastrophic accidents related to Artificial Intelligence (AI); the effects of extreme climate change; and nuclear weapons proliferation. In this course, we impart an intellectual framework for defining “existential threats,” understanding how they arise, persist, change, and discerning how best to cauterize, contain, and cope with them. Our framework is in tension with certain other leading frameworks on the subject, and students will be entreated, encouraged, and expected to challenge it. We explore pandemics, climate change, AI, and nuclear weapons proliferation, with a special focus on climate change. Guided by the co-instructors, senior staff teaching associates, guest experts, and the assigned course readings and videos, each student will draw on the full range of skills-based and other learnings in the program and prepare an ETA (Existential Threat Assessment) memo focused on a threat other than the ones covered in the course.