Program Overview

Executive MPA Course (EXEC-GP)

The Executive MPA course is designed for mid-career professionals in the public and non-profit sectors. The program aims to equip students with the tools, perspectives, and frameworks necessary for executing high-impact strategy within mission-driven organizations.

Course Descriptions

• EXEC-GP 100: EMPA Co-Curricular Series: A mandatory series of sessions that complement coursework and advisement, providing opportunities to enhance skills, reflect on professional identity, and learn from leaders in the public and non-profit sectors.
• EXEC-GP 101: EMPA Co-Curricular Series: Similar to EXEC-GP 100, this course is a continuation of the co-curricular series, focusing on skill enhancement, professional identity, and learning from sector leaders.
• EXEC-GP 1194: Strategic Leadership: An intensive leadership course that equips mid-career students with tools and frameworks for executing high-impact strategy, focusing on cultivating purposeful leadership, analyzing conditions for change, mobilizing commitment, and achieving change.
• EXEC-GP 2106: Community Organizing: A course that provides an overview of the fundamentals of organizing to win, implement, monitor, and sustain change in the private and public sectors, exploring different forms of participatory community organizing and their linkages to social movement building.
• EXEC-GP 2113: Building Effective Teams - Advanced Strategies: A course that develops students' ability to build, lead, and participate in high-performing teams, drawing from research in psychology, management, strategy, behavioral economics, and sociology to discuss best practices for team design, launch, participation, and coaching.
• EXEC-GP 2135: Human Resources: Leading Talent Development: A course designed for public and non-profit leaders and managers, providing a broad overview of human resources and talent management dynamics and responsibilities, including recruitment, job design, professional development, employee engagement, and performance appraisal.
• EXEC-GP 2141: Financial Decision Making and Management: A course that helps Executive MPA students learn financial tools to apply to decision-making within mission-driven and governmental organizations, focusing on financial analysis, strategy, and decision-making in the context of social sector organizations.
• EXEC-GP 2170: Performance Measurement & Management: A course that focuses on what performance measures are needed, how they should be created, and what forms of communication are most effective, providing students with the skills to assemble and report information on performance and make decisions based on that information.
• EXEC-GP 2174: The Intersection of Operations, Policy, and Leadership: A course that exposes students to policy formation, operations management, and leadership, aiming to build a toolbox of specific skills to assess stakeholder environments, support analysis and decision-making, and appreciate the role of leadership in driving policy outcomes.
• EXEC-GP 2201: Institutions, Governance, and Public Sector Reform: A course that explores contemporary thinking about institutions, governance, and the reinvention of the public sector, focusing on specific reforms intended to improve government performance and promote good governance in different countries and contexts.
• EXEC-GP 2413: Strategic Philanthropy: A course that explores the fault lines within the field of philanthropy, preparing students to effectively leverage resources for their organizations by examining different approaches to grantmaking and understanding the tensions and debates within the philanthropic sector.
• EXEC-GP 2430: Cross-Sector Collaborations: A course that encourages students to understand the value and challenges of cross-sector collaborations, gaining insight on the skills and approaches required for effective collaboration and exploring cases that span geographic context and levels of action.
• EXEC-GP 3190: EMPA Seminar: Leadership Confronted: A course designed to create an “action learning” community where students integrate their professional experiences and graduate coursework with a final exploration of leadership concepts, theory, and applied practice, strengthening their abilities to lead and promote leadership behavior.
• EXEC-GP 4101: Conflict Management and Negotiation: A course that aims to develop students' ability to manage conflict effectively, exploring the dynamics of conflict, understanding the role of leadership, and introducing conflict resolution techniques such as mediation.
• EXEC-GP 4126: Leading Values-Based Culture in Nonprofit Organizations: A course that explores the values that lie behind nonprofit organizations, drawing on the instructor’s extensive experience in supporting cross-sector global and mission-driven organizations, advancing DEIB strategies, and managing partnership and funder relationships.
• EXEC-GP 4129: Race, Identity and Inclusion: A course that brings together thinking and scholarship about race and identity, encouraging learning about what race is, why it matters, and racial dynamics in organizations, and how best to address them.
• EXEC-GP 4137: Communications and Branding for Nonprofits: A course that offers an overview of branding and communications concepts, helping students approach branding in a way that builds commitment to their organization’s mission, increases trust, creates ambassadors, and strengthens impact.
• EXEC-GP 4151: Inclusive Leadership: A course that considers the key components and skillsets underlying an inclusive leadership approach, reviewing materials and viewpoints, and diving into both the business case imperative and the importance of purpose in creating inclusive workplaces and settings.
• EXEC-GP 4154: Management Consulting for Public Service Organizations: A course that answers and invites debate on questions about management consulting, including what it is, why public service organizations rely on it, and what skills and experience are needed to be a management consultant, exploring scholarly and practitioner thinking on strategy, problem-solving, innovation, and the costs and benefits of consulting in the public and nonprofit sectors.