Courses Taught

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Course Description: This course deals with applications of quantitative and qualitative analysis in the study of social, political, economic, and environmental issues within a public policy and leadership context. The first goal of the course is for students to develop the skills needed to locate, accurately interpret, and effectively utilize empirical research studies and reports that inform public policy decision making and leadership. The second goal is for students to acquire the foundational skills needed to develop a proposal for an empirical research project.

 Course Description: As the contemporary world becomes more interconnected and globalized, public policy actions are increasingly affected by, and must attempt to deal with, a wide range of peoples, places, and environments around the world along with major processes of global change. Exercising wise leadership and decision making also require such understanding. This course develops this understanding through comparative study of major regions of the world. Each of the major world regions is studied in turn using the lenses of (1) environment and society; (2) history, economy, and territory; and (3) culture and populations. Recognizing that global processes produce unique characteristics in different places, this study seeks to maintain equal balance between (1) globalization and the global processes operating across all regions, and (2) the unique characteristics that distinguish each individual region. In addition, the implications of domestic and foreign policy are explored, both within each region and by the United States toward each region.

Course Description: As the contemporary world becomes more interconnected and globalized, public policy actions are increasingly affected by, and must attempt to deal with, major processes of global change. Global environmental issues have emerged as one of these processes that require leaders, policy makers, and educated citizens to recognize and understand potentially far-reaching cause and effect relationships and unintended consequences. To develop such understanding, this course examines the inextricable links that exist between the physical environment of the planet and human activity on Earth at local to global scales.

Course Description: As the contemporary world becomes more integrated and globalized, several major processes of global change are exerting increasing influence on the actions and decisions of many stakeholder communities, including public policymakers. Religions and belief systems have emerged as one of the most powerful of these processes. The major world religions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism influence the lives and the decision-making by large pluralities of the world’s people while smaller religions such as Chinese, traditional ethnic, Judaism, and others play important roles with substantial numerical minorities. This emergence (or perhaps reemergence) of religion as a major process of global change has come as a surprise to many in Western democracies who direct other major processes of contemporary global change that are non-religious such as science and technology, transnational market economies, political systems and organizations, and the global diffusion of cultural, entertainment, and artistic products. Embedded within both these religious and non-religious systems lie beliefs and values that oftentimes conflict but can also offer the basis for cooperation. This course assumes no prior coursework in religion or geography and provides an introduction to religious and non-religious belief systems around the world along with an exploration of interactions among and between them with a specific study of policy implications and the foundations for conflict and cooperation.