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Areas of Specialization

Current specialization areas include natural resource management, public safety and federal/state/local government. Additional specialization areas can be custom designed to fit the needs and interests of students.

Environmental and Natural Resource Policy and Administration

The administration of natural resources is among the most problematic and crucial challenges of our times. Environmental and natural resource administrators face increasing ecological and social complexity, a sense of greater dependency and uncertainty among the component parts and a need to integrate management on different geographic scales. The policy arena is marked by conflict, turmoil, and ambiguity among individuals, communities and jurisdictions. There is a growing need for public administrators to be involved in the process of creating, implementing, and sustaining public policy in this arena. Students attracted to this specialty include current administrators seeking to enhance their competency and mid-career professionals with technical backgrounds; i.e. biologists, hydrologists, engineers, planners, etc. seeking to add policy and administrative competency. The Executive Master of Public Administration is designed to provide environmental and natural resource administrations with competency to lead public service organizations in today's power shared world.

Public Safety

Public safety remains a key concern of citizens and a core commitment of government at every level. In most localities, public safety - law enforcement, emergency management, telecommunications, fire-rescue, corrections, parole and probation, and code enforcement - represents the largest share of government spending. The agencies responsible for safeguarding people, property, and the environment not only require the technical skills to ensure effective responses to danger and disasters, but also the leadership and managerial skills to guarantee accountability for the diverse demands placed upon their large and complex organizations. The Hatfield School's Executive Master of Public Administration equips public safety professionals from every discipline with the strategic skills, decision-making abilities, and leadership capacity to meet contemporary challenges and build public value and improve the resilience of their communities.

Federal/State/Local Government

State, federal and local governments are undergoing significant transformations that will require extraordinary leadership for the foreseeable future. The combination of de-funding, deregulation, increased performance expectations and growing taxpayer skepticism are occurring at the very time when governing capacity is eroding through massive retirements and a growing competitive pay advantage by the private sector. Together these forces require career administrators to build organizational capacity through collaborative leadership that leverages resources across organizational, jurisdictional and inter-sectoral boundaries (i.e., public, nonprofit and the private market sectors). The Hatfield School's Executive Master of Public Administration equips local, state and federal career administrators from every discipline with the strategic skills, decision-making abilities, and leadership capacity to lead in a power-shared world in ways that build public value and improve the resilience of their communities.