Public Administration/Applied Geography and Geospatial Sciences, MPA/MA

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Introduction

The dual Master of Public Administration/Master of Arts in Applied Geography and Geospatial Sciences degree offers students interested in working in the government or nonprofit sectors an opportunity to combine fundamental management and leadership training with highly sought-after skills in geospatial sciences, including geographic information systems, remote sensing, computer cartography, and spatial statistics. This degree may be particularly appealing for students interested in working in areas such as environmental management, disasters and hazards mitigation and emergency management, urban affairs, and public health. The structure of the degree allows students to complete both programs in less time and for less money.

Program Requirements

Students are required to take 19 courses, or 57 credit hours, to complete the dual degree.
Students without pre-service experience in the government or nonprofit sectors will also be required to take a 3-credit internship course.
Students must earn a minimum B- grade in each required course applied to satisfy degree requirements and must maintain a 3.0 cumulative GPA.
For more detailed information about course sequencing and requirements, contact your advisor.

Students must take all nine of the following core courses:
GEOG 6300 - Foundations Seminar in Human-Environmental Interaction
GEOG 5050 - Applied Spatial Statistics
PUAD 5001 - Introduction to Public Administration and Public Service
PUAD 5002 - Organizational Management and Behavior
PUAD 5003 - Research and Analytic Methods
PUAD 5004 - Economics and Public Finance or
PUAD 5503 - Public Budgeting and Finance
PUAD 5005 - The Policy Process and Democracy
PUAD 5006 - Public Service Leadership and Ethics
PUAD 5008 - Evidence-Based Decision-Making
Students must take four Geospatial Science and Methods elective courses (12 hours) from the following list:
GEOG 5060 - Remote Sensing I: Introduction to Environmental Remote Sensing
GEOG 5070 - Remote Sensing II: Advanced Remote Sensing
GEOG 5081 - Cartography and Computer Mapping
GEOG 5085 - GIS Applications for the Urban Environment
GEOG 5090 - Environmental Modeling with Geographic Information Systems
GEOG 5091 - Open Source Software for Geospatial Applications
GEOG 5092 - GIS Programming and Automation
GEOG 5095 - Deploying GIS Functionality on the Web
GEOG 5235 - GIS Applications in the Health Sciences
CSCI 5559 - Database Systems
ENVS 6200 - Risk Assessment
ENVS 6220 - Toxicology
ENVS 6230 - Environmental Epidemiology
CVEN 5382 - Geospatial Data Development
CVEN 5383 - GIS Analysis – Theory and Practice
CVEN 5385 - GIS Relational Database Systems
Additionally, students must take three Geography elective courses (9 hours), including at least one graduate-level Human Geography elective and at least one graduate-level Physical Geography elective, and two graduate-level Public Administration electives (6 hours).

Internship: All students must take
PUAD 6910 - Internship
  (3 hours), unless this requirement is waived by the program director because the student has more than one year of professional work experience in government or nonprofit organizations.

Capstone: All students must take either
PUAD 5361 - Capstone Seminar
  OR
GEOG 6800 - Community-Based Research Practicum
  (3 hours).