MIA & MPA Quantitative Core I.
This course introduces the fundamentals of statistical analysis, with applications in public policy, management, and the social sciences. Students will begin with basic techniques for describing and summarizing data and progress toward more advanced methods for inference and prediction. The course emphasizes practical tools for interpreting quantitative data and drawing evidence-based conclusions about the social world.
MPA Quantitative Core II.
This course introduces regression analysis as a key tool for policy analysis and program evaluation. Emphasizing causal inference, students will learn to assess the impacts of programs and policies using both experimental and non-experimental methods. The first half of the course reviews foundational concepts from Quant I and builds toward multiple regression techniques; the second half applies those tools to real-world policy settings. Designed for future practitioners, the course focuses on applying and communicating statistical concepts in accessible, non-technical language, and prepares students for advanced coursework in data analysis and program evaluation.
Health economics provides theories and tools for understanding, predicting, and changing human behavior. Understanding and changing the behavior of firms and individuals, designing health policies, and managing firms and organizations concerned with delivering health care and improving health, requires a solid foundation in health economics. In this course, students will learn the concepts in health economics most relevant and important to public health professionals and how these economic concepts can be applied to improving health care and the public health systems. Students will identify the basic concepts of health economics for the purposes of solving problems using these concepts, and apply these concepts in new contexts within public health.
Why does the government play such a central role in the health of its citizens? What factors unique to American politics have given us the healthcare system we currently have, and how much change can be accomplished within our philosophical and ethical confines? How do political changes yield policy shifts - or not? This course analyzes the role of major institutions - the central government, the federal system, the private sector, interest groups, and so on - in formulating and implementing health policy in the United States. We will discuss underlying normative issues and crossnational perspectives on healthcare to situate American healthcare policy along a broader global political spectrum, and attempt to forecast what changes are likely - or unlikely - to occur. Topics will include political history, policy formation and recommendations, market forces and economic influences, and more.
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This course is intended to give the student a broad understanding of the components of the health care system and the basic management principles of hospital organization and management. The course will employ a variety of learning formats for students including lectures by the instructors, guest lecturers with special expertise, case studies and student presentations. Emphasis will be on the historical trends of health care statistics and operating data of health care institutions; the history of hospitals and health care systems; their organization and finances; regulatory controls; management strategies; accreditation and professional standards; government; private insurance; administrative leadership and professional interactions, emergency services, healthcare trends and marketing.
In this course, students will enhance and deepen their understanding of how the human voice and articulators partner together to create language. They will explore their own individual Idiolects and gain the skills to recalibrate their instruments in order to enhance the expressiveness and dynamic contrast of their speech. The phonemes of the International Alphabet (IPA) will be employed to specify the sounds of Detailed North American English (DNAE).
In the 1890s, Frederick Mathias (F.M.) Alexander, a Shakespearian actor and spoken recitalist from Australia, began experiencing severe voice loss after he performed. The medical profession of his day prescribed vocal rest which worked well enough until Alexander’s next performance when he would leave the stage as hoarse as before. Frustrated that his vocal issues were not resolving, Alexander intuited that it must be something that he was doing to himself while he performed that was contributing to the loss of his voice. Doctors agreed with Alexander but they were at a loss to say what he was doing that was causing his problems.Thus began F. M.’s journey. The discoveries he made are what we now know as the Alexander Technique, and in the past 100 plus years, AT has become a valuable part of the curriculum in music conservatories and drama schools throughout the world. Many extraordinary actors have been lifelong students of the Alexander Technique for the many ways it helps their body, voice and breath in performance.
Our work together is experiential and sensory, and it involves a way of thinking which is highly creative and improvisational. It is an art, and it takes time to evolve in us. At the beginning things are bound to be confusing. You are learning a new language—a language of body and breath—and you cannot understand it through your old ways of feeling or visualizing. Confusion is absolutely normal, but it shifts as you develop a new awareness of yourself. Our work is a process of discovery and the only requirement for you as a student is to stay open and to try not to worry about getting something “right.” This is easier said than done, but I will be reminding you of it all the time. It helps if you can keep a “beginner’s mind” so that every lesson becomes a source of wonder.
For an actor, your body is your instrument and how you use your body determines how well you move on stage, produce your voice, and perform. The Alexander Technique is a mind-body discipline that helps students improve their psycho-physical coordination while helping them become aware of physical habits that may be inhibiting their breathing and the expressiveness, energy and strength of their voice and body. In our work together, you will begin to gain an awareness of improved physical coordination and ease leading to a freer and more expressive voice and body.
Vocal production relies on psychological and physical coordination—an alignmen
Covers biomaterials that are instructive or have been designed or engineered to be instructive; structure-function-property relationships in natural and synthetic biomaterials. Advances in understanding of material properties emphasized; including electroactivity, chemical, mechanical, geometry/architecture, and the modification of material surfaces and context of their effect on biological function. Evolving field of smart biomaterials discussed. Exercises/demonstrations using materials characterization equipment conducted.
NONFICTION LECTURE
This course is designed to help MA-level students improve their researching and writing skills, and become adept at distilling acquired knowledge into straightforward prose. The aim is to assist students in being more effective communicators regardless of whether they pursue careers in academia, journalism, government service, private enterprise or the non-governmental sector. The course will also promote better understanding of how to get work published by mass media outlets. The course places particular emphasis on practical work, including the preparation of commentaries and book reviews concerning current affairs in Eurasia. Lectures examine the basic elements of editing, interviewing and concise writing. Other lectures focus on how to maintain personal and digital security while living and researching/working in Eurasia, and discuss best practices on harnessing social media for career advancement. Guest speakers will provide additional perspectives on ways to make writing on academic topics more accessible to the general reading public, and how to leverage expertise in Eurasian-area affairs in ways that can jump-start careers.
The current market places increasing demands on healthcare managers so it is essential that individuals possess basic skills related to financial management and financial reporting. Current events make these demands more dynamic than ever. This course is intended for students who are interested in expanding their knowledge of healthcare financial issues and/or pursuing careers that involve financial management in the healthcare sector. The focus will be on non-profit healthcare delivery organizations.
How is the health care system organized? Who pays the bill? Why have efforts to enact national health insurance failed? What role does government now play in the US health care system, and how do different levels of government share these tasks? Contrary to many perceptions, the fervent debate of these questions is not a recent phenomenon; these are issues that have been argued vigorously throughout American political history. Exploring these debates is critical both to the development of public health policy and the management of delivery systems.
This course focuses on policy and management issues that affect all health care practitioners. We will examine, among other topics, the historical foundations of the American health care system, the rise of managed care, the make-up of the healthcare workforce, the key issues on the nation’s long-term care policy agenda, and ways in which government can encourage good quality care. This introductory course is intended for MHA students and serves to fulfill a core course requirement in Health Policy and Management.
POETRY LECTURE
In Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and other countries of the Eurasia region, corruption is systemic. Corruption, defined as the abuse of public trust and power for private gain, is institutionalized in government at the national, regional, and local levels. Formal government decision-making processes have been captured by informal networks of political and business elites who exert significant control over the allocation of public resources. They utilize this control to make illegal financial gains with the support of government authorities and protection of the law.
When President Putin began Russia’s expanded military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the imprisoned Russian anticorruption activist and political opposition leader Alexey Navalny was on trial once again over fabricated charges of embezzlement. Though Mr. Navalny faced another 15 years in a penal colony, he seized the opportunity during his February 24 hearing to publicly state his opposition to Russia’s war on Ukraine. “This war between Russia and Ukraine was unleashed to cover up the theft from Russian citizens and divert their attention from problems that exist inside the country,” he said.
This seminar examines the role that Russia’s systemic corruption played as a cause of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Is the war an extension, and drastic escalation, of the Putin regime’s campaign against both his own citizens and the citizens of post-Maidan Ukraine? We will consider how the Kremlin’s strategic use of corruption is threatening the sovereignty of other nations in Eurasia.
This seminar analyzes the political economy, power relationships, historical and cultural factors that have engendered systemic corruption in Eurasian countries. We identify different types of corrupt systems that have emerged in the regions. We will also examine how systemic corruption causes conflict and war, and poses a threat to the global economy and democracy. Finally, we analyze various anti-corruption reforms to understand why some failed while others succeeded.
The seminar will benefit SIPA and Harriman Institute students who specialize in regional studies of countries of the Eurasia. It will also benefit SIPA and other graduate students who specialize in international security, economics, finance, energy, law, development, conflict resolution, and journalism. To achieve a deep understanding of Eurasia corruption, we will examine
Analytics and Managerial Decision-Making I is the first of two required quantitative methods courses taken in sequence by all MHA students. These courses are foundational to the MHA curriculum. The two courses are fully integrated with respect to materials, exercises and cases, and by a two-term, team-based application project.
Managers are continually confronted with the need to make significant decisions concerning the organizational and financial performance of a health organization, based on a combination of strategic intention, practical experience, and interpretation and application of complex data and information. Data analysis is one tool that supports such decision-making. This course is designed to provide management students with the tools to generate and present data-driven and model-based management recommendations that are meaningful and implementable.
The course focuses on learning basic tools for the collection, analysis, and presentation of data in support of managerial/executive decision-making. Topics will include introductory data and statistical exploration from basic descriptive statistics to population and market estimation, comparison testing and decision-making, sampling design and analysis, and predicting/forecasting using linear regression. Using Excel as an additional tool, the course develops analytical skills to prepare managers to make and to present informed decisions in the overall healthcare sector.
This Human Rights practicum course focuses on the Western Balkans of the Former Yugoslavia in a contemporary context. The course focuses on war crimes and their respective consequences that have occurred during the most recent Balkan Wars 1991-1999 in the Former Yugoslav states and will include a detailed review and examination of human rights policies and practices carried out by international, regional and national bodies, laws, organizations, frameworks of transitional justice and evaluative tools employed in an effort to stabilize a post-war, post-Communist, post-conflict scenario. The course will present and examine in detail policies and practices deployed by international and national state structures to address the legacies of war crimes and the emergence of new human rights issues that are currently present in the Former Yugoslav space. The course will require students to prepare a 10-page paper on a human rights issue in the region, analyze the issues, review implementation to date and recommend policy initiatives that will address the problem (75 percent of the grade). Students are expected read weekly assignments and regularly participate and attend the class, which will constitute 25 percent of their final grade. Failure to attend class without a justifiable explanation will be penalized by a reduction of one grade letter.
This course deepens the actor’s working understanding of their body as “instrument” and teaches practical application of learned skill sets for professional practice and complex use.The course achieves this objective by examining current practice and providing solutions for real time obstacles and challenges actors are encountering in their daily practice in classes and rehearsals. Challenges faced are explored specifically in context of class vocabulary as well as by providing increasingly complex tasks that require use of multiple skills sets at once.The course continues the work of developing physical ease and awareness and expands each actor also to prepare body and being for work in ensemble.