DEPARTMENT OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & URBAN STUDIES

MISSION STATEMENT

The Department of Public Administration and Urban Studies, in order to fulfill the needs of students, alumni, and the public, is dedicated to improving the capacity of public service in a dynamic urban society through education, scholarship and community engagement. We are committed to student success, to research and scholarship, to communications across social and cultural boundaries, to the use of information technologies to serve students and the public, and to recognizing the unique values, perspectives, and capacities of individual students.

We shall achieve our Mission through pursuit of the following Goals:

• Preparing students to understand the context of urban public service;
• Developing the critical and strategic thinking skills of students;
• Imparting the practical and technical skills necessary to improve public service in a dynamic urban society;
• Developing faculty research agendas in support of urban public service;
• Encouraging community service and engagement on the part of faculty and students;
• Offering a cross-disciplinary study of urban public service;
• Linking theory and practice in our curriculum, our classrooms, and our research;
• Developing students into leaders who strive to improve public service;
• Ensuring a diverse and inclusive student body;
• Rejecting standardized “outputs” or making students like one another; and
• Imparting an understanding of responsibility and responsiveness in, and of, the moral and ethical grounding of public service.

In achieving these Goals we shall strive for the following Outcomes:

• Alumni who will manage and lead public and nonprofit institutions effectively, efficiently, ethically, and democratically;
• Alumni, students and faculty who will advance the understanding of public service and urban society through discovery, innovation and the application of critical and strategic thinking skills to societal problems;
• Alumni and students who will understand and appreciate the various contexts of urban public service;
• Alumni, students and faculty who will foster an improved public service in Northeast Ohio, the, nation and the world through professional education, training, and community engagement; and,
• Alumni and students who will apply the philosophical, practical and technical skills gained in the program to improve public service in urban and urbanizing societies.