Master of Public Administration Program Director: Shuyang Peng, PhD

Introduction

The Dual Master of Public Administration/Master of Arts in Applied Geography and Geospatial Sciences degree offers students interested in working in the government or nonprofit sectors an opportunity to combine fundamental management and leadership training with highly sought-after skills in geospatial sciences, including geographic information systems, remote sensing, computer cartography, and spatial statistics. This degree may be particularly appealing for students interested in working in areas such as environmental management, disasters and hazards mitigation and emergency management, urban affairs, and public health. The structure of the degree allows students to complete both programs in less time and for less money.

Admission

Students interested in pursuing the dual-degree program must apply to and be admitted to each of the programs. Students admitted to one program may choose to apply to the other program at a later date. Learn more about how to apply to the Master of Public Administration portion of the dual degree.

Program Delivery

• Courses are offered on campus, online, and in remote and hybrid formats.

Program Requirements

• Students are required to take 19 courses, or 57 semester hours, to complete the dual degree.
• Students without pre-service experience in the government or nonprofit sectors will also be required to take a 3-credit internship course, bringing the total number of semester hours to 60.
• Students must earn a minimum B- grade in each required course applied to satisfy degree requirements and must maintain a 3.0 cumulative GPA.
• No more than 6 semester hours of Independent Study may be applied toward the degree.
• For more detailed information about course sequencing and requirements, contact your advisor.

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Required Core Courses
GEOG 5050	Applied Spatial Statistics	3
GEOG 6300	Foundations Seminar in Human-Environmental Interaction	3
PUAD 5001	Introduction to Public Administration and Public Service	3
PUAD 5002	Organizational Management and Behavior	3
PUAD 5003	Research and Analytic Methods	3
PUAD 5004	Economics and Public Finance	3
or PUAD 5503	Public Budgeting and Finance
PUAD 5005	The Policy Process and Democracy	3
PUAD 5006	Public Service Leadership and Ethics	3
PUAD 5008	Evidence-Based Decision-Making	3
Required Geospatial Science and Methods Elective Courses		12
Select four of the courses below.
CSCI 5559	Database Systems
CVEN 5382	Geospatial Data Development
CVEN 5383	GIS Analysis
CVEN 5385	GIS Relational Database Systems
ENVS 6200	Risk Assessment
ENVS 6220	Toxicology
ENVS 6230	Environmental Epidemiology
GEOG 5060	Remote Sensing I: Introduction to Environmental Remote Sensing
GEOG 5070	Remote Sensing II: Advanced Remote Sensing
GEOG 5081	Cartography
GEOG 5085	GIS Applications for the Urban Environment
GEOG 5090	Environmental Modeling with Geographic Information Systems
GEOG 5091	Open Source Software for Geospatial Applications
GEOG 5092	GIS Programming and Automation
GEOG 5095	Deploying GIS Functionality on the Web
GEOG 5235	GIS Applications in the Health Sciences
Required Geography Elective Courses		9
Select three Geography elective courses. 1
Required Public Administration Elective Courses		6
Select two Public Administration elective courses. 1
Internship		3
PUAD 6910	Internship 2
Capstone		3
PUAD 5361	MPA Capstone Seminar
or GEOG 6800	Community-Based Research Practicum
Total Hours		60

¹

Including at least one graduate-level Human Geography elective and at least one graduate-level Physical Geography elective, and two graduate-level Public Administration electives.

²

Unless this requirement is waived by the program director because the student has more than one year of professional work experience in government or nonprofit organizations.