Upcoming Courses - Spring 2025
Gentrification and Social Equity (3 credits)
Professor: Dr. Tony Robinson
Local Government and Affordable Housing (3 credits)
Lecturer: Robin Kniech, J.D.
TBD: A course focused on workers/jobs/the economy (3 credits)
Current Courses - Fall 2024
PSCI 4914 Community Organizing and Community Development (3 Credits)
Lecturer: Dr. Joyce Luján Martínez
The theory and practice of community organizing strategies and community development innovations. How can social activists build power at the grassroots to build equitable, sustainable, and healthy communities? This is one of two courses required for a Master's degree from the New Directions program.
This course examines diverse community development and community organizing practices engaged in by various governmental, civic and community-based organizations as well as differing strategies and outcomes associated with these various efforts. The overall goal of the class is to help students lay a foundation for a broader theoretical and practical understanding of community development and community organizing, both historically and current practice.
Psci 5008 Special Topics - Public-Private Partnerships: The Process And The People (3 credits)
Lecturer: Kat Correll
A public–private partnership is an arrangement often focused on financing projects that support the public vision. These partnerships can support a broad range of efforts and allow for a creative dialogue around synergizing benefits for both the public and private sector. Public private partnerships or P3s generally consider how the private sector can contribute to solving community challenges. This course will explore the process for identifying potential partnerships and the people that will keep them successful and sustainable. It will cover a number of interrelated topics aimed at developing a solid understanding of why public-private partnerships are needed, the factors to consider in developing a partnership strategy, the tools used to assess partners, and the processes for developing agreements and evaluating success.
A primary goal of this course is to consider why challenges in the public realm might need private assistance for resolution, to explore the types of partners and partnerships to address different issues, and to understand the process for considering the feasibility of different partners or tools for different cases.