Master of Public Policy

Cybersecurity touches almost every aspect of public policy. This concentration focuses on the issues, policies, practices, and perspectives of various sectors, critical infrastructures, agencies, and disciplines, such as national security, intelligence, criminal justice, and emergency management. Cyber threats can have an adverse effect on public confidence, stock markets, economic sectors, and other critical infrastructures. The need for trained experts in this field who can prevent, detect, and eliminate such threats is critical to our national security.

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

• Analyze the national cyber threat landscape and cybersecurity challenges from both external entities and domestic sources.
• Examine the legal, social, regulatory, ethical, and technical issues related to securing information systems and national critical infrastructures.
• Compare and contrast the interdisciplinary policies, practices, perspectives and products required to address the cyber threats to our information systems and critical infrastructures..

Environmental Policy represents one of the major policy realms that cross discipline, geography, and history. Students will study the interplay between economic and political factors and their impact on the environment, as well as review existing paradigms for environmental planning, analysis, and management. This concentration may also prepare students for study at the doctorate level in related fields.

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

• Distinguish the key variables and theoretical frameworks for incorporating economic interests into environmental policy.
• Analyze the similarities and differences of specific environmental policies from culturally and geographically diverse areas of the world.
• Analyze the economics of a specific environmental policy.
• Critique current policies and evaluate validity of environmental policy as it relates to economic issues and drivers.
• Analyze an environmental policy’s economic impact both spatially and temporally.
• Examine the major legal, regulatory, and policy framework that encompasses environmental programs and projects in the United States.
• Analyze interconnections among environmental policy, laws, and regulations, and between them and environmental management and other disciplines in management, government, science, and engineering.
• Assess the U.S. role and level of involvement in international environmental policy.

Health Policy is a growing field, especially now, and our nation looks to policy experts to understand, translate, and explain massive healthcare legislation. Masters of Public Policy students who choose a concentration in Health Policy will gain the knowledge often needed to inform, direct, analyze, and report on public health issues and policy responses. Graduates will learn to craft policies, but also help the nation understand and adapt to them.

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

• Examine how social, behavioral, environmental, and biological factors contribute to specific individual and community health outcomes.
• Analyze the critical factors that will influence health and health care in the first decade of the 21st century.
• Compare and contrast the theories regarding health care systems.
• Evaluate health care policies and their influence on the development, operation, design and effectiveness of health care delivery systems.
• Assess the efficacy of public health programs and initiatives such as Medicare, Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).
• Deconstruct the relationship between public health and policy responses.
• Appraise the public health issues associated with various disasters.
• Examine health care issues that confront emergency management decision makers.
• Analyze past and future approaches to disaster health management programs.

Public Policy students who choose to focus on National Security Policy will be positioned to advise officials on issues of strategic importance. Combine this degree concentration with your work experience and training to further your knowledge and skills often required in the growing public and private sector industry of policy analysis and strategic planning. This is a concentration of interest to civilian and military students who seek to gain advanced understanding in national security policy, security policy analysis, and related fields.

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

• Deconstruct individual actors’ roles and contributions to national security policy.
• Differentiate among conflicting and competing interests and their impact on national security policy development.
• Examine the foundations of U.S. National Security Policy
• Analyze U.S. national security policies from the end of WWII to the end of the Cold War.
• Assess the effectiveness of U.S. National Security strategies available to the United States.
• Analyze the historical practice of diplomacy by states.
• Assess the use of diplomacy by states to implement their national security strategies.

Students of public policy must understand how an idea becomes a law, but MPP students who choose a concentration in Policy and the Law will become experts in the judicial process and the enforcement and execution of our laws. This concentration explores ethics, contractual obligations, procedural due process, and new developments in security and the law.

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

• Interpret complex contract language.
• Examine specific cases of contract law and extrapolate the laws and precedents established.
• Extrapolate the development of Constitutional Law in the areas of judicial, legislative, and executive powers.
• Analyze the separation of powers, federalism, national and state regulation of commerce, and property rights.
• Interpret the role of the judiciary by examining landmark constitutional decisions.
• Examine the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.
• Evaluate policies related to cybersecurity.
• Explore laws related to cybersecurity issues, including litigation, intellectual property and privacy.

This concentration will give the administrator the background to be able to understand the ramifications of policy and law on the future of the space industry, both in the US and globally. The implications of policy for both the public and private sector will be explored.

Upon successful completion of this concentration, the student will be able to:

• Examine the political and commercial significance of major national and international space missions, projects, and operations.
• Evaluate organizations that are critical to the success of the technological advance of space infrastructure in the United States.
• Assess the status of space cooperation and diplomacy between various space faring nations.
• Synthesize space laws and how the governing institutions affect applications such as remote sensing, communications, navigation, launch services, satellite exports, and arms control.