Public Administration, M.P.A., Personnel and Labor Relations Concentration

Public Administration (M.P.A.)

Coordinator: Charles N. Coleman, Assistant Professor, M.P.A., West Virginia University

The general purpose of the master of public administration degree is the training of men and women at the graduate level for public service careers. Specifically, the program strives to:

• equip students with modern analytic and quantitative tools of decision making and their application to complex problems of government and nonprofit organizations;
• expose students to the wide range of administrative and managerial problems and responsibilities in the public sector; and
• increase the student’s knowledge and skills in the particular management functions of budgeting, planning, public policy formulation, public finance, public personnel administration, and collective bargaining.

The Department of Public Management in the College of Business hosts a chapter of the Public Administration Honorary Society (Pi Alpha Alpha). The National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration awarded the chapter to the university in 2003 after a rigorous examination of the quality of UNH’s Public Administration program.

Concentration in Personnel and Labor Relations

The concentration in personnel and labor relations is designed to meet the need for better trained personnel and labor relations specialists in the public sector. The public sector has experienced a growth in union membership but has not had a corresponding growth in the capability to deal with public sector/union relationships. The courses in this concentration provide training for public administrators in areas such as employee motivation, organizational change, and group dynamics.

Students choosing this concentration take the required core curriculum of nine courses and follow the 15-credit personnel and labor relations concentration in lieu of the five elective courses.

• MG 645 - Management of Human Resources

• or

• SH 602 - Safety Organization and Administration