MAPL: Where new leaders of our advocacy community emerge.

Fall 2009 Classes -- Spring 2010 Classes-- Fall 2010 Classes

Fall 2009 Classes

Fridays 6pm to 9 pm (electives)

MAPL 5301 - Campaigns and Elections

Saturday 8:45 am to 11:45 am (Core Classes)

MAPL 6001 - The Political Process and Public Policy
MAPL 6003 - Civic Engagement and Political Culture
MAPL 6004 - Political Organizing and Communication
MAPL 6002 - Policy Evaluation

Saturday 1 pm to 4 pm (Concentration Courses)
NOTE: Concentration Courses also serve as electives

MAPL 5111 - Labor Organizing
MAPL 5119 - Techniques for Nonprofit Advocacy: Nonprofit as Agents of Democracy
MAPL 5311 - Advocacy in the Public Sector: Service in the Elected Branch

Internships (Arranged with Instructor)

MAPL 6008--3 credit
MAPL 6009--2 credit

MAPL 5301 - Campaigns and Elections

Course Description: Overview of campaigns and elections, to include both the party nomination process and general elections, at the national, state, and local levels. (3 credits)

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MAPL 5111 - Labor Organizing

Course Description: Historical overview of the evolution of modern labor movement, examine the state of organized labor and labor organizing today, and analyze two emerging models of union leadership--social movement leadership and institutional leadership. (3 credits)

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MAPL 5119 - Techniques for Nonprofit Advocacy: Nonprofits as Agents of Democracy

Course Description: Teaches on the nonprofit sector's composition, power, and positioning and its - both positive and oppositional - governmental relationships. Students learn about the creation of alternative power structures and advancement of programs, issues, and social change agendas through nonprofits. (3 credits)

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MAPL 5312 - Advocacy in the Public Sector: Service in the Elected Branch

Course Description: First of two required segments of the concentration, advocacy in the public sector. Prepares for current or future careers in the elected branches of government, at the local, regional, state or national level as members of councils, boards, the Legislature or Congress, or as staff to those elected. Familiarizes students with three essential skills for persons interested in such careers, instruction on understanding and using public opinion measurement, instruction on best practices for those operating as staff to elected or appointed officials, and instruction on media relations in a political setting; all three skills-oriented segments will be taught by guest lecturers with outstanding credentials; the first and last three-hour periods of the class will discuss the ethical dimensions of working in the political realm. (3 credits)

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MAPL 5330 - The Impact of Group Identity On Public Policy

Course Description: This course will examine the impact of identity, particularly race, on American Public Policy. Students will use critical racial theory to aid in understanding the continuing pervasiveness of racial elements in public policy development. They will then be asked to develop a communications plan for advocacy sensitive to those racial elements. (3 credits)

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CORE CLASS - MAPL 6001 The Political Process and Public Policy
(3 credits--1st class of core classes)

Course Description: In the early stages of this course, students gain familiarity with the concepts of agenda setting and policy development and on the variable meanings used in the political arena to define core concepts like equitable and efficient. After reading and reporting to the rest of the class on a leading book from the public affairs literature, students then focus primarily on the end of the year assignment, in which they pick a policy they wish to see enacted or changed, then prepare background papers and oral presentations arguing for that enactment or change.

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CORE CLASS - MAPL 6003 Civic Engagement and Political Cultures
(3 credits--2nd class of core classes)

Course description: Students in this course will identify at least four major issues currently facing the policy-makers in Minnesota and/or the nation. Using historical analysis, students will ascertain how these issues came to be what they currently are and attempt to analyze where they might go, given the political culture in the state and nation. Along the way, students will quickly survey and critique the philosophical foundations of American politics, from Jefferson and Madison to Rawls and Martin Luther King.

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CORE CLASS - MAPL 6004 Political Organizing and Communication
 (3 credits--3rd class of core classes)

Course description: This course is designed to give students an understanding of the sociological, intra-personal nature of political and advocacy communication as well as familiarity with successful advocacy writing and with modern organizing strategies.

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CORE CLASS - MAPL 6002 Policy Evaluation
(3 credits--4th class of core classes)

Course Description: This course prepares students to understand and, in some cases, to perform, formal evaluations of policy proposals, including cost benefit analysis and other efficacy-based measures. At the same time, students will learn that neither public policy nor politics are or can be ethically neutral. A key question for this course: given a problem as defined, how might various policy proposals be compared? What is the balance between what is efficient and what is, in the mind of the policy-proposer, ethically right? As a part of this ethical grounding, students will need a thorough understanding of the seminal theoretical concept of the civil society. What makes a society civil? Why does civility increase with participation? How does one implement the value-laden imperatives of the civil society without infringing upon the rights of the citizen in the value neutral society?

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MAPL 6008 Advocacy Internship (3 credits)
MAPL 6009 Advocacy Internship (2 credits)
Students will begin taking their MAPL internships around the second semester. In addition, students will take two internships (i.e. one with 2 credits and another with 3 credits).