Welcome to Contemporary Policy Challenges Fall 2011

Hi everyone! I hope you had a great summer and you are ready to get back into the swing of things. If you are reading this post, you are either someone who really loves public policy or (more likely) a student in my online section of PAF 340 for the Fall semester of 2011. This class is an intermediate undergraduate class that will guide you through some of today's theoretical, critical, and applied issues in public policy. My hope is that you have come into this class with some knowledge of current events and an interest in learning more about how policy decisions are made. For each week, you'll have a theoretical chapter on the policy process or policy theory and a chapter on a substantive policy issue. You will also be assigned optional documentaries and podcasts to help you understand the readings better. I will be blogging at least twice a week, and you can ask me questions here. It's a big class so we have two TA's who are also doctoral students in the School of Public Affairs who may be weighing in from time to time, Matt Heil and Mark Martz.

My hope is that by the end of the course you will have a better idea of how policy is made in the American political context. I also hope that you will understand the complexity of public policy issues and emerge a public policy skeptic whenever you hear that a problem is simple and a solution obvious. I hope that you enjoy the multimedia components of this class and the use of blackboard, twitter, and this blog. I look forward to getting to know you better as the semester progresses.