Master of Public Administration Degree Requirements

The program enables students to choose from the university’s resources in a way that best fits their career needs and aspirations. As noted, the School has designed professional career paths oriented toward certain career paths.

Core Courses (15 credit hours): B- or better is required for credit

• PAD 5035: Policy Development and Administration
• PAD 5050: The Profession of Public Administration
• PAD 5106: Public Organizations
• PAD 5227: Public Financial Management
• PAD 5417: Human Resource Management

Methodology Sequence (6 credit hours): B- or better is required for credit

• PAD 5700: Research Design in Public Administration
  Must be taken prior to PAD 5701
• PAD 5701: Quantitative Analysis in Public Administration

Applied Research Project (3 credit hours): B- or better is required for credit

• PAD 6908 Capstone Project (3 credit hours)
  Permission to register is required – You cannot register yourself!

Electives (18 credit hours): C- or better is required for credit

You must complete the Non-Public Administration Elective Form to gain credit for this class!

Career paths are available to review in the MPA Handbook, but any combination of 18 hours of PAD courses can count for the elective requirement.

Courses outside of the department may count as an elective with the MPA Director’s approval prior to taking the course.

• COM 5450 Introduction to Project Management
• COM 5451 Advanced Topics in Project Management
• COM 5452 Agile Project Management (Project Mgmt)
• COM 5126 Organizational Communication Theory and Practice (Project Mgmt)
• MMC 6469 Diffusion of Innovation (Project Mgmt)
• COM 5127 Assessing Organizational Communication (Project Mgmt)
• COM 5316 Statistical Methods in Communication Research (Project Mgmt)
• COM 5317 Content Analysis in Communication Research (Project Mgmt)
• COM 5235 Crisis Communication (Project Mgmt / DASS)
• COM 5401 Analysis of Communication Theory (Project Mgmt)
• COM 5364 Foundations of Digital Media (DASS)
• LIS 5341 Data Organization (DASS)
• LIS 5786 Introduction to Information Architecture (DASS)
• LIS 5751 Computers as Persuasive Technology (DASS)
• LIS 5782 Database Management Systems (DASS)
• SPC 5545 Studies in Persuasion (DASS)
• ACG 5505 Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting and Auditing (Public Fin Mgmt)
• ECO 5505 Public Finance (Public Fin Mgmt)
• URP 5261 Forecasting for Plan Development (Public Fin Mgmt)
• URP 5731 Planning for Community Infrastructure (Public Fin Mgmt)
• ANG 5115 Coastal Hazards and Resilience / Remote Sensing (EMHS)
• URP 5445 Climate Change and Community Resilience (EMHS)
• ARE 5262 Principles of Arts Administration (Civic/Nonprofit) 
• MUM 5805 Introduction to Arts Administration (Civic/Nonprofit) 
• ARE 5867 Grant Writing & Development in the Arts (Civic/Nonprofit) 
• ARE 5665 Leading the Arts Organization (Civic/Nonprofit) 
• ARE 5253 Arts in Community Engagement (Civic/Nonprofit) 
• MUM 5815 Fundraising Strategies in Music (Civic/Nonprofit)
• ARE 5865 Cultural Policy (Civic/Nonprofit) 
• MUM 5816 Audience Development, Marketing and PR in Musical Arts Orgs (Civic/Nonprofit) 
• CCJ 5039 Self-Control, Crime, and Criminal Justice (Joint – CCJ) 
• CCJ 5109 Theory in Criminology and Criminal Justice (Joint – CCJ) 
• CCJ 5526 Juvenile Delinquency (Joint – CCJ) 
• CCJ 5659 Opioid Epidemic, Crime and Justice (Joint – CCJ) 
• CCJ 5669 Race, Ethnicity, Crime and Social Justice (Joint – CCJ) 
• CCJ 5698 Sex Crime Policy (Joint – CCJ) 
• CCJ 5716 Criminal Justice Policy and Evaluation (Joint – CCJ) 
• COM 5453 Applied Project Management for Leaders (Project Mgmt) 
• COM 5565 Social Media Campaigns (Project Mgmt)
• COM 5807 Interpersonal Communication and Conflict Resolution (Project Mgmt)
•  PHC 5001 Public Health Epidemiology (Joint – PHC) 
• PHC 5003 Chronic Disease Epidemiology (Joint – PHC) 
• PHC 5074 Social Epidemiology (Joint – PHC)
• PHC 5155 Health Services Organization and Policy (Joint – PHC) 
• PHC 5300 Environmental Health (Joint – PHC) 
• PHC 5625 Legal and Ethical Issues in Public Health and Health Professions (Joint – PHC) 
• PHC 6002 Infectious Disease Epidemiology (Joint – PHC)
• PHC 6110 Comparative Health (Joint – PHC)
• SOW 5248 Homelessness in America: Peoples, Programs, and Policies (Joint – SOW) 
• SOW 5282 Legislative Advocacy (Joint – SOW) 
• SOW 5376 Budget and Finance in the Social Services (Joint – SOW) 
• SOW 5435 Social Policy and Program Evaluation (Joint – SOW) 
• SOW 5455 Grant Writing and Grant Management (Joint – SOW) 
• SYA 5306 Data and Society (Joint – SYA) 
• URP 5059 Community Involvement and Public Participation (Joint – URP)
• URP 5122 Planning Dispute Resolution (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5123 Collaborative Governance: Consensus Building for Planners (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5125 Local Government and Land Use Law (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5272 Urban and Regional Information Systems (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5540 State & Local Economic Development (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5543 Public/Private Development (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5611 Strategies for Urban and Regional Development in Less Developed Countries (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5742 Problems and Issues in Housing and Community Development (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5847 Growth and Development of Cities (Joint – URP) 
• URP 5939 Research Methods – Plan & Real Estate (Joint – URP)

Graduate students are responsible for maintaining knowledge of the FSU Graduate Student Handbook PDF Document. This handbook contains information that has been assembled from many sources to assist students in pursuing their graduate education at Florida State University.

The Student Conduct Code

The Askew School exists to prepare students for careers in public service. We strive to produce public servants who will conduct themselves according to high ethical standards. Public servants must act with a sense of responsibility toward others. Such conduct begins with a strong sense of personal responsibility. We, therefore, endorse the essential concept upon which Florida State’s Student Academic Honor Code is based — personal responsibility. The FSU Student Handbook delineates the Honor Code, as well as identifies student rights and responsibilities, the procedures to provide due process, and penalties. The code states that students are responsible for their own academic honesty and that of others. Academic dishonesty as well as student and faculty responsibility is also defined. Breaches of the code are taken very seriously in the School.

Academic dishonesty includes:

1. Cheating on tests;
2. Plagiarism and unlawful “help” on written assignments;
3. Stealing, buying, or referring to an unauthorized copy of an examination before it has been administered; and,
4. Assisting in any of the above.

Student responsibility covers:

1. Abiding by the honor code, including signing a pledge that you have not violated it;
2. Turning themselves in if they have violated it; and
3. Reporting or persuading violators to turn themselves in within 24 hours.

Equal Opportunity and Disabilities

Students with disabilities are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Students with disabilities needing academic accommodations should register with the Student Disability Resource Center and bring a letter to class from the center indicating that the student needs accommodations. This should be done within the first week of class.

Sexual Harassment

In a diverse nation and globe such as ours, the future of our children depends upon how well we learn to live together as fellow citizens and human beings. The public servants of a diverse democracy must respect the diversity of those whom we serve. Consequently, we seek to conform to both the spirit and the letter of all laws against discrimination. Nearly all of our students will go on to exercise some form of organizational authority over others. Nearly all will become supervisors themselves. Consequently, we strive to represent and perpetuate high standards with respect to the use of power and authority.

Sexual harassment, for example, is not tolerated in any form; it is a violation of an individual’s human rights and a form of discrimination based upon sex. Male and female employees and students who engage in sexual harassment are subject to applicable disciplinary processes, and acts of sexual harassment which also constitute sexual battery will be referred to the appropriate authorities for prosecution.

The School’s policy on sexual harassment illustrates, through one of our own operating policies, how the School seeks to encourage responsible use of organizational authority while protecting the rights of all concerned.

The central principles that underlie appropriate faculty-student relationships are professionalism, respect, fairness, and concern. Faculty must avoid manipulation, coercion, or exploitation of students (especially acts directed at securing monetary, ego, or sexual gratification) and should demonstrate a sensitivity of cultural and personal diversity by avoiding racial, sexual, religious, and ethnic discrimination.

A particularly egregious form of exploitation is sexual harassment. Sexual harassment refers to unwanted sexual attention. The key elements of sexual harassment are that (a) there is a power imbalance between the faculty member and the student, with the faculty member taking advantage of this institutional authority and (b) there is emphasis in one way or another on the sexual identify of the harassed. What is violated is not only a relationship of authority but also one of trust. Sexual harassment has consequences for its victims that range from being psychologically upsetting to causing the victim to change disciplines or drop out of school.

Every student has the right to enjoy an academic environment free of unwanted sexual attention. Students’ academic prospects suffer when they are sexually harassed. We should not force the injured students to carry the burden of stopping sexual harassment. Preventing sexual harassment, and stopping it when it occurs, is a collective responsibility of the faculty. Trivializing it and not taking it seriously makes us an arm of the people who do it because the authority relations make the faculty member dominant and the student subordinate. Romantic alliances that seem consensual to a faculty member may be construed as coercive by a student. Students may fear that they will suffer retaliation if they confront a faculty member who makes sexual overtures to them. They may fear that they will not be believed if they complain to other authorities within the institution.

Because of the power imbalance, a student’s consent may mean consent to a condition of submission, and this power imbalance never goes away as long as one is faculty and the other is student. In addition, being labeled the “professor’s girlfriend or boyfriend” may be corrosive of the student’s professional development. The student may become isolated from the student community, have less support from cohorts, and be looked upon with suspicion.

Society and this institution have placed faculty in a position of trust and we in turn owe students the exercise of good faith in performing our professional duties. Faculty-student relationships that are other than professional represent a conflict of interest. Men and women in an educational community may interact in many appropriate ways (as teachers and students, advisers and advisees, and scholars and practitioners)–not, however, as romantic or sexual partners. Sexual relationships and dating between a faculty member and a student currently enrolled in the faculty member’s course, or under the supervision or direction of the faculty member, are prohibited. Because other students may believe that a student currently involved with a faculty member or romantically involved in the past may benefit from favoritism in obtaining academic rewards, the school strongly discourages sexual relationships and dating between a faculty member and any student in the school.

The faculty fully supports the University and College policies related to sexual harassment. Students are encouraged to notify the respondent (alleged perpetrator) in writing in an attempt to end the harassment, but this is not required before filing a complaint. Under the University’s policy a student should report incidents to the Office of Audit Services. In addition to the processes and procedures provided in the University’s policy on sexual harassment, additional channels of reporting violations of this policy are to report to the Director of the School or to the Dean of the College.

The faculty fully supports the University and College policies related to sexual harassment. Students are encouraged to notify the respondent (alleged perpetrator) in writing in an attempt to end the harassment, but this is not required before filing a complaint. Under the University’s policy a student should report incidents to the Office of Audit Services. In addition to the processes and procedures provided in the University’s policy on sexual harassment, additional channels of reporting violations of this policy are to report to the Director of the School or to the Dean of the College.

The complainant should provide the following information to facilitate a prompt and thorough investigation:

1. The names, addresses, telephone numbers, administrative unit, and position or status of the complainant and the respondent, if known;
2. Specific acts alleged, including dates, times, and locations;
3. Names, addresses, and phone numbers of potential witnesses;
4. The effect the alleged acts have had on the complainant;
5. Actions the complainant may have taken to attempt to stop the harassment;
6. Complainant’s suggestion of proposed action to address or resolve the harassment; and,
7. Other information the complainant believes is relevant.

The full range of sanctions available to the School, the College, and the University will be considered available when a faculty member violates this policy. Complete information about the University’s policy can be found online at:

University Sexual Harassment Policy PDF Document