OVERVIEW

The PPA Department is very flexible in its interpretation of the culminating experience requirement for its Master’s students. Students may chose, in consultation/approval of a major advisor who must be a full-time faculty member, to decide what constitutes an approved thesis/project. An overriding guideline is that the culminating project be something that would be appropriate for consumption in real-world public policy and/or public administration community. This guideline is intended to (1) increase timely completion of the PPA program and (2) give students experience producing the kinds of reports commonly frequently called for in public sector careers.

GUIDELINES

• Students are encouraged to address some public policy/administration issue or problem, with an eye toward developing a master’s project of perhaps 40-60 pages, with the exact length dependent on the type of topic, methodology, use of graphs and other visual material, etc.
  
  
• A thesis/project may consist of the more traditional format of a five chapter analysis of some question including an introduction, literature review, summary of methodology, review of data, and conclusions/recommendations. Alternatively, it could follow a pattern more consist of a PPA master’s project that includes a summary of the problem, development of criteria for assessing solutions, consideration of possible alternatives, and conclusions/recommendations. The master’s project also will generally consider a variety of perspectives on the issue, drawing on different disciplines incorporated within PPA (e.g., economics, political science, organizational behavior). These are just two possibilities. Others are fully acceptable as long as approved by the student’s primary advisor.
  
  
• In their thesis/project, students should draw upon the variety of analytical tools taught in PPA Master’s Program core courses. For example, in analyzing data a student might incorporate a regression analysis, analysis of cross-tabulated data, survey results, a comparative case study, and/or a cost-benefit assessment.
  
  
• Master’s thesis/projects should also draw upon academic literature as appropriate, but with less emphasis on showing “command of the field” and more emphasis on drawing on exactly what is necessary for the method to be used. In some cases the literature itself might be part of the data analysis (e.g., when the only evidence of effectiveness of alternatives comes from secondary literature about how such alternatives are working in other states).
  
  
• To assist students in completing their master’s thesis/projects, PPA 500 will meet frequently in the beginning of the semester when students are formulating their plans. Clear expectations will be offered regarding products to be developed and should be submitted to the student’s primary advisor and PPA 500 seminar leader every few weeks. For example, students will be required to submit a two to three page prospectus by about the second week of class outlining the thesis/project statement they will be analyzing. Several weeks later students will submit a second memo outlining the analytical approach they will be taking, including possible alternatives to be considered, criteria for evaluating alternatives, and analytical tools or methods to be used. All of these submissions must be done in consultation with the student’s primary advisor.
  
  
• A large portion of PPA 500 class time will be devoted to working in groups or as a whole class to help students revise and improve their problem definitions and their analytical approaches.
  
  
• The strong expectation will be that students will complete their master’s projects within a single semester after their first time enrollment in PPA 500 once. Students will only need to take PPA 500 a second time if they fail within their first time of taking it of being within striking distance of finishing it the next fall or spring semester.
  
  
• Students will have two readers (a primary and secondary) for their Master’s thesis/project, and will be expected to have identified the readers within the first two or three weeks of PPA 500 (if not prior to the seminar). The PPA 500 seminar leader may be one of the readers but this is not required.
  
  
• To make it entirely possible to complete the Master’s thesis/project in the time frame of two semesters, it is strongly suggested that students begin work on identifying a topic, choosing a primary advisory, and beginning an appropriate literature review the semester before they are scheduled to take PPA 500. This is a minimum suggestion; ideally this pre-PPA 500 work should be begun even earlier.
  
  
• A PPA student will only be allowed to enroll in PPA 500 when he/she has no more than one core course to take in the program to take. They may take their last core course at the same time as PPA 500. Only the department chair will be authorized to modify this requirement in exceptional circumstances.