Basic principles and actual practices of managing financial resources and accounting in government organizations at the federal, state, and local levels. Topics include Public budgeting and accounting systems, principles of financial reporting, taxation, intergovernmental aid, financial statement analysis, public securities, and debt management. Hands-on computer laboratory exercises provide training in financial analysis.
The course provides an introduction to budgeting and financial control as a means of influencing the behavior of public organizations. Concepts include the budget process and taxation, intergovernmental revenues, municipal finance, bonds, control of expenditures, purchasing, debt management, productivity enhancement, and nonprofit finance. Students learn about the fiscal problems that managers typically face, and how they seek to address them. Students also gain experience in conducting financial analysis and facility with spreadsheet programs. Case materials utilize earth systems issues as well as other policy issues. A computer lab section is an essential aspect of the course, as it teaches students to use spreadsheet software to perform practical exercises regarding the budgeting and financial management of a hypothetical state environmental agency.
In this course, we will examine - through readings, class discussion and guest speakers - the role of the "public" in public education, offering a broad perspective of where public education lies in the consciousness of the American body politic and how politics, the media, the non-profit sector, foundations, parents, the unions and the business world perceive and impact public education. Following an examination of the historical development of public engagement and how it has transformed over time, we will discuss what civic involvement looks like today. Who are the participants and what are their roles? And, does civic involvement actually have an impact on school leadership and on students? We will attempt to answer the question: How can the broad civic community most effectively participate in the public school system in a manner that makes a difference on school improvement? Students will also explore their own experiences as members of the public --- incorporating all international students and their experiences --- for insight in answering these questions. Issues will be tackled while ever-mindful of the major contextual variables and outside players and their impact on the relationship between civic support and public education (Country by Country: Race, Class, Ethnicity, Media, Courts, Federal government, Non-Educator Superintendents).
While it is generally thought of to be related to construction, the truth is that Project Management can be applied to any field. It is defined as the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to a broad range of activities in order to meet the requirements of the particular project. A project is an endeavor undertaken to achieve a particular aim. Project management knowledge and practices are best described in terms of their component processes. These processes are: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing. Knowledge Areas include Scope Management, Time Management, Cost Management, Quality Management, Risk Management, and Change Management. We will discuss all of these elements in the course.
Prerequisite: registration as a nutrition degree candidate or instructor’s permission. Discussion of pathology, symptomatology, and clinical manifestations with case presentations when possible. Laboratory assessments of each condition. Principles of nutritional intervention for therapy and prevention.
Prerequisites:
MATH W4071
or knowledge of J. Hull's book Options, futures.
Seminar consists of presentations and mini-courses by leading industry specialists in quantitative finance. Topics include portfolio optimization, exotic derivatives, high frequency analysis of data and numerical methods. While most talks require knowledge of mathematical methods in finance, some talks are accessible to general audience.
Introduction and development of microeconomic concepts that are of particular importance in policy analysis and program evaluation. Background training in economics is recommended, although not required.
Microeconomics and Policy Analysis covers how to use an economics framework to analyze public policy and decision-making related to environmental issues. In part II of the course, students will learn to understand, apply, and critique basic microeconomic, macroeconomic and econometric tools that inform environmental problems. By the end of the semester, students will gain experience in using a range of economic concepts to recommend or critique actual environmental decisions. The course will cover concepts and metrics from micro- and macro-economic theory, regression analysis, and computable general equilibrium models.
Microeconomics and Policy Analysis covers how to use an economics framework to analyze public policy and decision-making related to environmental issues. In part II of the course, students will learn to understand, apply, and critique basic microeconomic, macroeconomic and econometric tools that inform environmental problems. By the end of the semester, students will gain experience in using a range of economic concepts to recommend or critique actual environmental decisions. The course will cover concepts and metrics from micro- and macro-economic theory, regression analysis, and computable general equilibrium models.
This doctoral seminar will address how the universalization of sexuality as an essential human (and sometime animal) attribute that transcends cultures began to be studied in U.S. academia in earnest in the 1970s, proceeding apace with the mobilization for sexual rights in U.S. domestic social activism, and by the 1980s with the mobilization of universal human rights as a central agenda for both U.S. foreign policy and international activism. With the era of globalization, these trends intensified with the aggressive proliferation of Western-funded non-governmental organizations in the Global North and South. The seminar will examine the literature on the universalization of sexual rights and identities by U.S. and European activists and scholars and the implication this has for sexual citizenship in the Global North and for sexuality studies itself in the Western Academy. Of particular interest to the seminar will be the resistance attributed by this literature to Islam, Muslims, and Arabs to assimilate into this new regime of universal sexuality, whether located in the Muslim or Arab worlds, or among Muslim populations in Europe and the United States and how the latter’s presence in the heart of the Global North may influence sexual citizenship negatively.
Prerequisite: instructor’s permission. An introduction to the problem of food and nutritional diseases from a public health perspective, and the relationship between the determinants and the program designed to solve these problems. Various types of interventions, with emphasis on the health sector role.
Prerequisites:
CHEM G4221
and
CHEM G4230
, or their equivalents.
Stochastic processes; Brownian motion; Langevin equations and fluctuation-dissipation theorems; reaction rate theory; time correlation functions and linear response theory.
Individual projects in composition.
"A nomadic society does not have a history of its own," wrote the well-known Historian Arnold Toynbee. This course seeks to challenge this statement by employing new perspectives in examining the economic, political, cultural, and environmental history of the nomadic steppe populations of Eurasia, which main body lies within the borders of the former Soviet Union. Extended to the east into Mongolia and Northern China and to the west to the Carpathian Mountain range in Central Europe, the Steppe region has played a major role in Eurasian history, although its importance is often overlooked. By connecting east with west via trade routes (the Silk and Tea Roads), it facilitated travel of goods, cultures and ideas between their populations through its inhabitants, the nomadic peoples, who were the main mediators in bringing many innovations to both sides. This course is also open to approved undergraduates; please request instructor's permission and fill out an add/drop form to be added.
Individual projects in composition.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission prior to registration.
The colloquium audits work achieved under the rubric of 'American Political Development' and looks ahead to possibilities for future research. APD's concepts, premises, substantive themes, and silences will be considered, including the subfield's engagement with history and temporality, its attempts to place the United States in comparative and international perspective, and its approaches to ideas, institutions, regimes, interests, and preferences.
The focus of this upper-level graduate course is New York City government and politics. In this course future urban policy makers will learn from guest lectures by leaders with extensive practical experience in New York City politics and policy, from academic scholarship and policy research in urban affairs, and from their own participation in an applied policy analysis project.
This course is designed for students interested in the financial and budget issues confronting state and local government officials. Across the country pension funds are underfunded and require substantial financial contributions from hard-pressed state and local governments. The course will address the financial and political challenges faced by public pension funds today. It will cover the financial concepts that underlie pension fund investment strategies and the politics surrounding pension funds. The primary focus will be the New York State and New York City pension funds but other major funds, such as CalPERS, CalSTRS, Chicago and Detroit will also be discussed.
Prerequisites:
STAT G6106
and the department's permission.
Available to SSP, SMP Topic to vary each time course is given.
This course will first, examine the nature, ingredients and gradations of the extraordinary success of several East Asian economies. The lessons of their experience have been the subject of an extensive literature. The course will introduce students to the main controversies. The second part will illuminate the debate by contrasting the experience and policies of East Asia with stylized trends and overviews of developments in each of the regions of Latin America, South Asia (Indian subcontinent), Sub-Saharan Africa and the transition economies of Europe and Central Asia. These comparisons will be informed by the question of what the lessons of East Asian success are for these other regions.
This course will examine the linkages between urban governance structures and an economically successful democratic city. We will consider the particular policy challenges that confront both developed and developing cities in the 21st century. It will be important to understand the institutional political causes of urban economic decline, the unique fiscal and legal constraints on city governments as well as the opportunities that only cities offer for democratic participation and sustainable economic growth. The course will draw on case material from primarily American cities and from other developing and developed cities around the globe. It is important to keep in mind that creative policy solutions to the problems of urban economic sustainability may be found in small towns, in rural areas, in private businesses or in other global cities. The utility of "importing" ideas and programs rests on a practical understanding of politics in that city or community and an effective implementation strategy. Our objective in this course is not simply to understand the challenges to governing the 21st century city but also the policies that promote effective urban governance and economic sustainability.
Prerequisites: a member of the department's permission.
Reading in special topics under the guidance of a member of the staff.
This half-course covers a subject that is crucial for management success in the future: how government policy and regulation affect the online-based industry and its users, and how the industry in turn can affect government action. The skill to navigate this interaction is critical to management in the emerging information economy, as well as to forward-looking policy making. The course takes an innovative approach, bringing together several strands of the MBA program, together with public policy and technology management, and applies them to the media and information sector. It aims to give students the MBA tools to run or use digital and online businesses in an environment full of government initiatives and restrictions. The course is valuable for future entrepreneurs, investors, creators, marketers, advertisers, users, and public officials.
The vast major of human society has been governed by non-democratic regimes historically; even today, more than half the world's people live in autocracies. Many SIPA students come from countries whose governments are not democratic, and will work in institutions whose regimes are not democratic. Yet almost all of the literature of political science and on policy-making is devoted to democracy-its origins, development, processes, flaws and merits. This course examines instead how we should understand the regimes we collect together as "non-democratic," contesting the notion of "authoritarianism" as a useful analytical concept and exploring how we might understand policy-making processes in regimes that are stable, enduring, sometimes even dynamic and enlightened, but not democratic.
Working with selected readings of both theoretical and best practice empirical work and discussions of causal analysis with strategies for conducting quantitative social research. Much of the class time will involve presentation and discussion of quantitative strategies from the research projects of class participants.
Prerequisites: Only first years are eligible to enroll
The International Conflict Resolution Practicum is designed to help prepare students who wish to pursue careers in international conflict resolution. The ICR Practicum combines a 3-point course during Spring semester with intensive, 8-week summer field placements. During the field placement, students work under the supervision of multilateral or other agency field offices (e.g. UN agencies, USAID, or NGOs) to research a topic related to conflict prevention, including the prevention of mass atrocities, and/or peacebuilding. This year's practicum will focus on the Andean region. Information about the specific research theme and client organization will be circulated as soon as possible. Following the completion of the summer placement, students will present a written report in order to complete and earn a grade for the practicum. MIA and MPA students who complete the course with a passing grade may use the summer field placement to fulfill their internship requirement for an additional 3 credits. Admission to this class is by application only. Prospective applicants must register for the course waitlist during registration period; successful applicants will be admitted manually from the waitlist. Application instructions will be circulated to those students who have signed up for the waitlist as soon as certain details for the class are finalized. Application instructions can be viewed here: https://orgsync.com/116717/files/910652/show
This is a Public Health Course. Public Health classes are offered on the Health Services Campus at 168th Street.For more detailed course information, please go to Mailman School of Public Health Courses website at http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu/academics/courses
Prerequisites:
ECON G6411
and
G6412
.
Students will make presentations of original research.
Prerequisites:
G6215
and
G6216
.
Open-economy macroeconomics, computational methods for dynamic equilibrium analysis, and sources of business cycles.
One of the central concerns of Denis Diderot's famous Encyclopédie - the "machine de guerre" of the Enlightenment - was the organization of human knowledge. In this course, we will read Diderot's remarkably wide-ranging corpus as an occasion to think critically and historically about the organization of disciplines in his time and our own. On the one hand, the range of Diderot's polymathic writings indicates the extent to which our modern disciplinary divisions were not operative during the Enlightenment: his work ran the gamut from natural philosophy, to theater, to the novel, to moral philosophy, to political theory, to medicine, with significant overlap among these areas. On the other hand, he contributed to the elaboration of a number of modern disciplines, both through his reflection on knowledge in the Encyclopédie and through his forays into new modes of knowledge such as art criticism and anthropology. We will read his works both in their Enlightenment context and in the context of recent critical reflections on the organization of knowledge and the problems it poses in our own interdisciplinary, information- laden age.