Department Head Message from Amy Donahue

On behalf of the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut , welcome! We have a rich community we'd like to tell you about. We are a proud part of UConn's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and are lucky to be located on the University's Greater Hartford Campus, minutes from the State capitol in Hartford. Our faculty, staff, and students are actively engaged members of the public policy, public management, and survey research communities through scholarship and practice. Whether you are a prospective student, one of our hundreds of successful alumni, or a colleague curious about our work, we invite you to explore our site and learn more about the interesting things we are doing. If you have questions about our research projects or programs, please be in touch with us!

The centerpiece of our Department is our high-quality professional education programs. Our Master of Public Administration program is nationally recognized as among the top programs specializing in public budgeting and finance, and is ranked 7 th in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. Our Master of Survey Research program is one of only a handful of such programs available nationwide. We also offer graduate certificate programs to support the professional development of policy and management leaders. We serve a community of about 80 actively enrolled graduate students. We also offer an undergraduate minor and individualized major in public policy.

If you are a prospective student, I congratulate you on your desire to further your education and wish you success in your studies and career. Our aim at the Department of Public Policy is to help you reach your academic and professional goals by providing you with a top-notch applied education. Our particular emphasis in all of our courses and programs is on helping students develop rigorous analytic skills that they can apply to solve a wide array of research, management, and policy problems. Our Master of Public Administration program centers on strengths in public finance and city management. Our Master of Survey Research program centers on a strength in project management.

The challenges of decision-making in all contexts-policy, government, markets-have never been more profound. We know that you face an increasingly complex, demanding, interdependent world. When you graduate, you will be competing with talented people for top jobs. To make sure you will thrive in this environment, our programs explicitly draw together theory, analytic skills, and field practice. In our programs, you will benefit from useful, engaging, relevant, and thorough courses taught by experienced instructors who are dedicated to your success. You will have regular and close interaction with an extraordinary group of full-time and adjunct faculty who are experts in their fields, excellent teachers, committed mentors, and top scholars. You will have many opportunities to learn, both on your own and as part of collaborative teams, in settings that range from the classroom, to graduate assistantships, to professional internships, to independent research projects. You will graduate with the knowledge and skills you need to join fellow alumni as leaders in government agencies, non-profit organizations, research and consulting firms, or businesses.

If you are an alum, welcome back! I hope you will take the opportunity to connect or reconnect with us. Please be in touch with me or our graduate program director if you have questions or feedback about our programs or want to get involved in alumni activities. We rely heavily on our graduates to provide advice and insight about our programs, help us recruit and mentor our students, and help garner resources to support our programs. You are a very important part of the Department of Public Policy, and we'd like to hear what you're doing!

If you are a professional colleague interested in our research or collaboration with our faculty or staff, I encourage you to review the exciting work our faculty and students are doing. As you can readily see, our faculty are active researchers engaged in a variety of funded projects in areas as diverse as homeland security policy, disaster management, civic literacy, minority representation and majority decision-making, education policy and school reform, municipal debt management, and citizen preferences and demand for public services. We value collaboration highly, and welcome opportunities to participate with others in a variety of scholarly endeavors.

I am confident that you will find our Department's activities as exciting as we do. We very much look forward to hearing from you with your questions and ideas.

Sincerely,

Amy K. Donahue

Department Head and Associate Professor