This course teaches students to apply social theory to the real-life experience of their required STPEC internship. Students are encouraged to draw on knowledge acquired in prior Gen Ed and core STPEC courses to explore connections between theory and practice as they analyze various aspects of the organizations. Class structure and assignments promote group communication, multi-disciplinary dialogue, and critical self-reflection.

Course description: Enrollment required for students serving as representatives to the STPEC Executive Committee. Requirements for credit include: attending an orientation session and all student representative and full Executive Committee meetings, delivering weekly announcements to designated STPEC courses and, in STPEC courses in which they are enrolled, facilitating a 15 min forum prior to both full Executive Committee meetings.

Topics may include: the design of environmental and natural resource policies, particularly incentive-based policies; the analysis and control of environmental risks; cost-benefit analyses of specific environmental policies; critiques of cost-benefit analysis, international environmental cooperation; environmental and natural resource policy in the developing world; sustainability, and the conservation of biodiversity.

This one-credit capstone preparation class will involve occasional group meetings with capstone professors, discussion of potential projects, preparatory readings, other preparatory tasks, and a possible workshop on working in teams.

To imagine changing even a small part of the world is a daunting, yet exhilarating proposition. Through class exercises, readings, exploration of social policy, guest speakers and a project that takes you to parts of the campus you might otherwise not explore, you will acquire knowledge and skills necessary for becoming a person who can make a difference. By the end of the semester you will have learned to connect ideas with action, have made a positive contribution to your community, and understand, through experience, the personal and social value of community engagement.

Are there things about the world you?d like to change? Are you hoping to have a lasting impact on society? Learn how to turn your aspirations into action by organizing, funding, operating, and governing an imaginary nonprofit organization. Students in this course will learn about setting realistic goals and measuring the organization?s impact, fund raising, governing an organization when things go well and when they don?t, and deciding when to change to a different structure or dissolve the organization.

This course examines legal structures that social and environmental enterprises currently used to accomplish their missions?nonprofit organizations, traditional for-profits, L3Cs, B Corporations, cooperatives and other business forms that place ?Planet? and ?People? ahead of or on an equal footing with ?Profit.? The course contemplates the advantages and disadvantages of using these forms to accomplish these missions, how they should be adopted or modified, and whether society should devise other structures to further these missions.

This course will survey the various ways to design and implement effective public policies. It will focus on the policy tools available for improving the implementation and management of policies, and under what conditions are these policies more effective. Students will learn about the basic scholarly literature on policy design and implementation, and be better able to develop and analyze public policies.

In this course, students will learn about the contemporary tools and strategies public and nonprofit managers use to reach their missions and solve problems, while balancing for effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and social justice. Students will learn about management techniques such as strategic management, performance management, organizational design, and managing networks, for use at the executive and operating levels.

Theories of policy-formation are applied to several timely issues of US and global policy. Issues are grouped around a broad theme, such as environmental policy or security. Relevant experts/policymakers will help students complete policy simulations on our issues.