| WHAT IS THE CURRICULUM?
The MPP requires 45 semester credits, including approximately 20 credits in core courses, a 3-course concentration (9 credits minimum), and a course to fulfill the professional paper requirement. The remaining credits are taken in elective courses. A 400-hour professional internship also is required, unless a student is exempted based on relevant previous employment.
Required core courses (approximately 21 credits)
Students with relevant prior coursework may be exempted from selected core course requirements.
Concentrations (9 credits in one of the following areas)
Students select a focus or concentration from the areas that follow in detail. Concentrations may change as student and faculty interests change. Students also may design concentrations with their advisers and with the approval of the director of graduate studies. All concentrations require at least 9 semester credits. Concentration and elective courses may be drawn from the Humphrey Institute and from other University departments.
Electives (approximately 15 credits)
Professional paper
Professional internship (400 hours)
Dual Degree Opportunities
By choosing a dual-degree, you can complete a Humphrey Institute degree and another University of Minnesota graduate or professional degree in less time (typically one year or less) than it would take to complete the two degrees independently.
We offer dual degrees with the University of Minnesota School of Law, the School of Social Work, and the School of Public Health.
More about dual degrees
Professional paper
In writing their professional paper, students apply the methods, approaches, and perspectives studied in the curriculum to a real world policy or managerial problem. The resulting Professional Paper includes an analysis of the issue and policy recommendations or discussions of the implications of the analysis. The paper must demonstrate individual competence in professional writing, including the ability to analyze a discrete but significant public affairs problem, the ability to collect, analyze, and integrate information from a variety of sources and perspectives, and the ability to link the analysis with potential action. If a capstone workshop is selected, generally a report is completed for an external client on an issue mutually agreed upon by the student, client, and course instructor.
Professional internship
Students generally are required to complete a 10-week (400 hours) internship in a professional setting, doing work related to their academic training and career interests. Typically students complete internships after the first year of the program.
Sample internships
- Office of the Legislative Auditor, Minnesota
- Catholic Charities, Minnesota
- Girl Child Network, Kenya
- U.S. State Department, Bureau of International Organizations, Rome, Italy
- Minnesota Department of Human Services
- U.S. General Accounting Office, Washington, D.C.
- The Urban Coalition, Minnesota
- Women's Institute for Self-Improvement (WISE), Minnesota
- Rainbow Research, Inc., Minnesota
- Metropolitan Health Plan, Minnesota
- Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights
- Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
- Minnesota House of Representatives Research Department
- Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Minnesota
- City of Minneapolis, Management Analysis Division
- Wells Fargo, Inc., Office of Government Relations, Minnesota
Our career services staff is available to help you find an internship.
Concentrations
Advanced policy analysis methods
Courses in policy analysis build on the quantitative and policy analysis core courses. Policy analysis is systematic, structured thinking about policy problems. Topics include formal deductive modeling, statistical inference, simulation, or evaluation methods. Students may wish to focus their concentration on a specific substantive area such as social policy. Students may take an approved subfield in labor policy or population policy. Humphrey Institute courses that apply to this concentration include:
Economic and community development
Humphrey Institute courses that apply to this concentration include:
Global public policy
Courses in this area explore foreign policy and international relations with a variety of techniques and approaches from an explicitly action-oriented point of view. In terms of course selections, this concentration is one of the Institute's most heterogeneous. It also draws less than most concentrations on offerings within the Institute. Students pursuing this concentration largely design their own program with guidance from an adviser. Courses explore general foreign policy issues, international development, international conflict, cross-cultural communication, international economic policy, and the management of international organizations. Humphrey Institute courses that apply to this concentration include:
Public and nonprofit leadership and management
Courses in public and nonprofit management explore the complex and often unique challenges confronting managers trying to pursue the common good and to create public value in both types of organizations. The challenges include constrained resources and the impacts of devolution, multiple and competing constituencies, increased demand for services, and the use of multisector partnerships for program design and delivery. Course topics include strategic management and implementation techniques, organization design and change, conflict management, financial management, and budgeting, managing in collaborative settings, and nonprofit management and governance. Some courses present topics relevant to managers in both the public and nonprofit sectors, while other courses focus on only one of these settings. Humphrey Institute courses that apply to this concentration include:
Science, technology, and environmental policy
This concentration explores the relation of science and technology to society and the policy process. Among the issues considered are the role of science and technology in the economy, food and health, security, education, and energy and the environment. Within the latter category, topics include sustainable development, the role of energy in contemporary societies, environmental systems, and environmental aspects of the application of technologies. Humphrey Institute courses that apply to this concentration include:
Social policy
Social policies address social issues and distributive justice. Courses relate to problems of income inequality, poverty, and factors that shape the well being of individuals, neighborhoods, government and private sector institutions, and communities. Examples of topics include aging, child welfare policy, crime and criminal justice policy, discrimination, education, family policy, financial issues in social policy, health care, labor, and industrial relations, poverty, and racism. Students are encouraged to plan their concentration in one of two ways:
- focusing on applying management, policy analysis, or planning skills to social problems or;
- focusing on a substantive area, such as aging policy, health care policy, labor policy, families and children policy, or race and public policy.
Humphrey Institute courses that apply to this concentration include:
Women and public policy
Public policy is gendered. Men and women are affected differently by public policies, and they participate differently in the public policy making process. Public policies are an important component in the ongoing construction of gender differences and a site where gender is resisted and renegotiated. The faculty and fellows of the Humphrey Institute have strong expertise in the issues of employment discrimination, feminist economics, feminist organizations, population policy, women's human rights, women's leadership, and youth policy. Students also can draw on the University's outstanding faculty in other departments, particularly women's studies and feminist studies.
Humphrey Institute courses that apply to this concentration include:
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