Welcome everybody I am completely delighted to welcome you to NYU Wagner. I'll add my
welcome along with the many others that
I'm sure you've been receiving today. My
name is Erica Foldy. I lead PNP I also
lead the management specialization and I
co-direct the capstone program. And I'll
be talking with you today about PNP.
Before I do that I want to ask some
people in the audience to stand up.
So along with me here to kind of tell you
all about the school, we have faculty--I
could ask the faculty to stand up. Should
be roughly one per yeah okay thank you
and we have alumni coming up. Can I ask the alumni to stand up lovely thank you so much for
coming and joining us today and we have
current students can I ask them to stand
up. all right fantastic thank you so much
for coming. The way this is going to work
is that we're going to spend
approximately half an hour I'll do some
talking
there will be time for Q&A and then
we'll have some more mingling at the end
and we actually encourage you to switch
tables and to meet some new faculty, new
alums, new admitted students and just
have a different group of people to
speak with. So I want to congratulate you
for getting into the Wagner program with
the longest name. We don't even try to
spell it out anymore it's just too long
for us but it does stand for Masters of
Public Administration in Public and
Nonprofit Management and Policy so we
just we've given up and we just call it
PNP.  Along with having the longest name,
it's also the it's the biggest program
about 55% of students are in PNP. It's also the
broadest program and so you have a lot
of choice in this program and that's a
great thing and it also means that the
program can be a little bit more complex
than some of the other programs and I'm
here to try to untangle some of that
complexity for you. I'll go through the
slides but I actually encourage you to
stop me at any point if you have
questions I think it always makes it
more interesting if it's interactive and
I
also want to invite the the faculty the
current students and the alums to chime
in. some of you know more about what I'm
talking about than I do, so please
feel free to chime in, clarify you know
in help in whatever way. so you've been
oops
"Why Wagner" there we go. so I think people have been talking with you about "Why Wagner" all morning.
I'm gonna add my particular version of this so the first
thing is that Wagner is all about impact.
You've seen the home page you know it
says, "How will you make your impact in
the world." This is one of the things I
love about being at Wagner and so as a
student you're doing more than
accumulating knowledge and learning
skills--both very important--but you're
actually learning how are you gonna make
your mark on the world, how are you gonna
make a difference. That's to me that's
one of the things that that makes Wagner
special. Theory and practice--you've been
learning probably a lot about
this as well. In order to make your mark
or certainly to make it in a way that
makes a positive difference, it helps to
have both theory and practice. so you'll
be learning a number of different
frameworks in all of your courses and we
need frameworks to make sense of the
enormous complexity that is public
service work. but then you will also be
you can also be immersed in practice and
that happens in a variety of ways it
happens through case studies, through
field trips to various organizations,
certainly through capstone, guest
speakers. it also happens a lot with the
student groups and a variety of other
programming that we have for you.
Wagner is about both breadth and depth
that's particularly true of PNP it's a
very broad program has a lot under its
particular umbrella. all PNP students and
all MPA students are required to take
five core courses because we believe
there is a very broad foundation that
everyone needs. and we believe that
because people wander across sectors,
they go in and out of public nonprofit
and private organizations,
different roles, different issue areas,
different communities and for that
reason we think a broad foundation is
really helpful but after those core
courses are--actually even as you're
taking those core courses--you're
also choosing a specialization and going
very deep and gaining expertise in one
particular area. flexibility: you can move
from part-time to full-time back again
that's important. multidisciplinary
approach so I love the fact that I get
to work my degrees in organization
studies I came out of a business school
but I get to work with economists,
political scientists, psychologists,
sociologists--people with degrees in law,
public administration, Health
Administration. I get tremendous richness
in my own for my own teaching and my own
research through that
multidisciplinarity
and I think it also really adds to the
student experience and then finally
equity diversity and inclusion. those are
those are you know very common buzzwords
these days I like to think that we
actually grapple with these issues in
ways that many other places do not. EDI
is at the absolute heart of public
service and therefore it is at the heart
of Wagner as well. so we look at we keep
this in mind when we think about
learning and curriculum, student events,
and programming. our research
bringing in students bringing in new
faculty and staff it's always in our
minds. all right so let's talk a little
bit about the student journey. you'll
start with the new student retreat in
August you could meet people there that
will be lifelong colleagues and friends
you'll learn you'll learn more details
about Wagner the courses the programs
etc but what you'll really learn is
you'll learn who we are what's our
identity who are we as a school that's a
really important piece really important
beginning to your journey and that's
also the place where you start where
actually it's the place where you become
a Wagnerd. I don't know if you've heard
that term your Wagnerds it's yes Wagnerds
it's so we're very proud of being
Wagnerds and really basically once you
enter that retreat you're an honorary
Wagnerds right then okay that's a new
student retreat there are five core
courses that everyone takes you can see
them listed here I'm not going to go
through them I will say that you're
going to be going to some court some
course tables after this session you're
going to explore lots of different
courses
none of the core courses are going to be
there but we do want to emphasize that
they're super important and and they do
provide this very strong foundation for
for the rest of your work all right
so many of you have already indicated an
interest in a specialization you'll
you'll later in your first semester
you'll either confirm that or you can
change that as I was mentioning to
someone at the table if you're kind of
on the fence between two different
specializations it's very helpful to
take courses related to those
specializations in your first semester
because that'll help give you a lot of
information to make that decision but so
once you've chosen that specialization
then you start working on the core
courses for that specialization two
three four required courses you have to
take then you take what are called
constrained electives so you have a
choice but within a relatively limited
number of courses and then finally you
have your full electives and you can
take anything at Wagner and you can also
take dozens if not hundreds of courses
around the university so you have a huge
kind of buffet of courses to choose
from for that then you will be part of
capstone I'll tell you more about that
in a moment and we also you know in many
of our students are doing internships
while they're at Wagner some of them are
working doing internships and going to
school that seems really complicated to
me but people have different ways of
kind of assembling the different
components but we really strongly
encourage students particularly those
with less work experience to also do
internships just for a moment I'm gonna
stop here and see if anyone has anything
to add any questions at this point okay
all right I'll keep going okay so our
specializations these are getting more
complicated when I arrived here in
2003 we had four specializations and
that was the case for 12 years
or so and then the last couple of years
we've just added two more and so and
we're really excited but then we're excited
about all our specializations so I'm
going to go through and describe these
but there are people in the room who
know more about some of these in I do so
I really encourage you to to chime in
okay so this is our newest
specialization is advocacy and political
action and this is students who are
interested in this particular
specialization want to push very
directly and openly and loudly for
social change political change social
justice you combine coursework in
advocacy organizing policy formation
communications several other several
other kind of foundations to this work
and the kinds of students who are
attracted to the specialization imagine
themselves post graduation and and may
already be actually organizers activists
advocates and lobbyists campaign staff
right so people who really want to get
into the scrum of you know political and
social change the financial management
and public finance includes these two
pieces financial management is more about
you know managing within an organization
being that you know the CFO or the
budget officer whatever within an
organization public finances about how
public institutions raise money and
spend money and the kinds of students
who are attracted to this are imagining
careers as budget analysts chief
financial officers business or
investment analysts finance directors
those kinds of those kinds of jobs the
international program is one of our
specializations they get their own room
and their own table so I won't go into a
lot of detail here I'll just say that it
tends to focus focus on International
Development there's becoming somewhat
there's something of a change a little
bit more in the area of International
Affairs international relations if you
end up having questions about that we
might be able to help you or we can send
you over okay management management and
leadership so we just changed our name I
lead the management specialization so
we've been management for years but we
realized that we were teach
both management and leadership and we
also really feel that people need to
learn both sets of skills so we decided
to rename ourselves in the and we are
training people to be managers in public
and nonprofit organizations some schools
have separate programs and nonprofit
management separate and public
management we believe that people are
probably going to be crossing those
lines a lot so we prepare people for for
actually for management jobs in 
for-profit organizations as well so the
idea is you get a set of skills that you
can take anywhere and the kinds of
students who are more likely to be in
this in this specialization they imagine
themselves as being executive directors
or CEOs a lot of them are in fundraising
and development program directors
consulting consulting is an increasing
area of interest for our students across
the board including in management
foundation staff those are some of the
some of the roles that that management
student may play public policy analysis
often not always but often attract
students who have a passion for a
particular area criminal justice the
environment education health care often
those students end up in the policy
specialization and they take courses in
policy formation policy development they
also take additional statistics courses
as part of that specialization and they
often go into positions as advocates for
a particular policy area but also
analysts people public policy analysts
who who try to determine the impact of
particular policies compare the impact
of multiple policies these folks may
also end up as the staff of legislative
legislators legislative aides they may
also work in you know various city
departments or you know kind of agency
staff and then finally we have our
longest the most the longest named
specialization Social Impact innovation
and investment we call it SI cubed
because again we can't really say these
words all at the same time and this is
also one of our newer specializations
we're really excited about it and it
combines students there are required to
take coursework in
entrepreneurship policy formation finance
operations many and several other areas
as well and these folks are going to end
up in a few different places they may be
very interested in creating a startup
and we have a couple of startups more
than more than a couple of startups that
have come out of Wagner that we're very
proud of these students might want to be
intrapreneurs meaning they may want to
start a new program but within an
existing organization and some of them
want to use the tools of investment and
finance to you know advocate and push for
social change and not just for their own
for their own profit so those are the
specializations I'm gonna stop here
again see if anyone wants to add
anything
ok that's exciting
Thank You Kathy thank you okay that's
good that's good
all right so let's talk a little bit
about capstone I'm sure you've been
hearing about it
capstone is the end event for all our
MPA students students work in teams of
three to five and you work on a project
for a client organization virtually all
students do and you work you know the
class starts in September it ends in May
so you're working for a full academic
year on a project and that means that
the projects are very substantial very
substantive and that's why you know
capstone is really at the heart of
bringing our students together with
theory and practice and so you can see
the the projects and the students these
are the numbers for this year but this
is roughly what we have every year
here's a you know a handful of clients I
chose some to kind of give you a sense
of the range of the kind of clients that
we have some of them will be familiar to
you I can imagine the World Bank a
number of different New York City
departments our clients. Achieve Mission
Consulting is a small boutique
consulting firm for nonprofits they work
in talent development and leadership
development and Empatico is a really
interesting organization it was started
by the guy and I should know his name it
was started by the guy who created Kind
bars you know those bars that are now
ubiquitous like they're absolutely
everywhere the nuts you know so he's he
got obviously made lots of money decided
to use some of it to create an
organization called in Empatico which is
about it's a start-up it brings together
students in US classrooms with students
in classrooms in other countries and
uses you know a variety of virtual
technologies to bring them together
legal services here in New York City and
elsewhere Outward-bound Peacebuilding
you probably imagine you've heard of
Outward-bound you know people I was
always terrified to do it but I really
was very impressed by the people who
chose to do it you go off into the woods
and you have to spend three days not
eating anything so they use lots of
there's a lot like very serious
team-building techniques and and and and
great stuff and so they've started
taking those techniques and applying
them to peacebuilding so they go into
areas areas you might imagine in the
Middle East, northern Ireland areas and
bring together people in conflict and
try to use those same tools Rocky
Mountain Institute is does research
consulting convening around issues of
sustainability and especially the energy
and Urban Strategies Council you know
very proudly proclaims that it's it's
about economic political social racial
justice so again just a just a
smattering of our of our capstone
clients so we um so I co-direct capstone
very proud of capstone and very very
proud of the quality of the work that
our capstone students do so we ask our
clients to evaluate the students work at
two different points we do it right at
the end of the when the product is
handed over to the client in May and
then we do it again six months later so
we have a really good sense so these are
these are the numbers from last year so
this is on the clients on receiving
their project you know and they're
immediately upon completion and you can
see how highly they ranked the quality
of the project whether the students were
responsive to their organization really
nice numbers there oops and then this is
six months later so six months later
people are saying 80% saying that works
having at least summit lasting impact
83% we're implementing at least some of
the team's recommendations 90% the work
is having at least some lasting impact
on my organization and I have to tell
you those numbers compare very favorably
with the work of paid consultants
our great numbers so I'm gonna leave
things there mostly I just want to say
again we're thrilled to have you and we
really hope that we'll see you in August
and our new student retreat
