IU Bulletins HomeBloomington CampusIndianapolis Campusred
Indiana University

Search Public and Environmental Affairs 2007-2009 Online Graduate Bulletin

Request Public and Environmental Affairs 2007-2009 Online Graduate Bulletin

School of Public and Environmental Affairs 2007-2009 Online Graduate Bulletin Table of Contents

 

 

School of Public and
Environmental Affairs
2007-2009 Graduate
Academic Bulletin

www.indiana.edu/~speaweb
School of Public and
Environmental Affairs
Indiana University
SPEA 260
1315 E. Tenth Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-1701
(800) 765-7755 Local (812) 855-2840
Fax (812) 855-7802
Contact SPEA Graduate Office

www.spea.iupui.edu
Business/SPEA Building (BS) 3027
801 W. Michigan Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202
(317) 274-4656/toll free (877) 292-9321
Contact SPEA Graduate Office
 

School of Public and Environmental Affairs

About the School
Associations and Clubs
SPEA Centers, Institutes, Programs, and Services
Office of Career Services

About the School

The School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), the nation’s largest school of its kind, is a professional school dedicated to applied, interdisciplinary learning combining the study of public affairs and environmental sciences. The interests of the faculty and professional staff typically fall into one or more of the following areas:

criminal justice
environmental science and policy
finance and economics
health science and administration
law
policy and administration
public safety
urban affairs

The school’s faculty, staff, and students work individually and jointly to solve problems that require SPEA’s unique combination of in-depth knowledge in the natural, behavioral, social, and administrative sciences.

SPEA, because of its broad program base, offers scientific and technical assistance to Indiana communities from all of the eight Indiana University campuses. The school maintains a wide network of relations with a large number of public agencies at all levels of government.

The degree programs offered by the School of Public and Environmental Affairs range from the associate degree, offered primarily on some of the regional campuses, to the Ph.D. The school offers four professional master’s degrees for individuals interested in achieving leadership positions in public, private, and voluntary organizations:

Master of Public Affairs (M.P.A.)
Master of Science in Environmental Science (M.S.E.S.)
Master of Health Administration (M.H.A.)
Master of Public Management (M.P.M.)

The M.P.A. is a professional degree structured around concepts and skills essential to public management, policy, and planning activities in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. The M.S.E.S. provides students with a strong background in environmental sciences while emphasizing the applied aspects of environmental research and management. The M.H.A. provides a broad, balanced foundation of theoretical and practical knowledge and technical skills needed to succeed in health administration and health policy and planning. The M.P.M. program is an interdisciplinary professional program structured around concepts and skills essential to management, policy, planning activities within governmental, quasi-governmental, and nonprofit organizations. Additionally, SPEA’s master’s degrees may be pursued in combination with degrees in law, library science, biology, information science, journalism, geography, geological sciences, and degrees offered by a number of area studies centers and institutes.

At the doctoral level, SPEA offers:
Ph.D. in Environmental Science
Ph.D. in Public Affairs
Ph.D. in Public Policy.

The Ph.D. in public policy is jointly delivered with the Department of Political Science. The Ph.D. in environmental science is delivered by SPEA with the cooperation of the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Geography, Geological Sciences, and others.

Return to Top

Associations and Clubs

SPEA Alumni Association
SPEA maintains contact with alumni through the SPEA Alumni Association, a constituent society of which alumni automatically become members when joining the Indiana University Alumni Association. The SPEA Alumni Association sponsors the school’s newsletter, SPEAlumni, mailed two times a year to the entire SPEA alumni network, which has grown to nearly 25,000 Speons located across the nation and world. The organization also sponsors annual alumni gatherings held throughout the United States. Recent locations include Chicago, New York City, Indianapolis, and Washington, D.C. The SPEA Alumni Association events offer alumni an opportunity to renew old friendships, meet new friends, visit with faculty, and hear recent news about their alma mater. Further, the SPEA Alumni Association has worked to raise money for a scholarship endowment to benefit current SPEA students. The SPEA Alumni Association Scholarship provides three $1,000 scholarships annually. The SPEA Alumni Association is governed by an elected board of directors, which meets twice a year.

Alpha Phi Sigma
Alpha Phi Sigma is the national criminal justice honor society with chapters established on the Northwest (Gary), Fort Wayne, Kokomo, and Indianapolis campuses of Indiana University. The society recognizes scholastic excellence by students in the field of criminal justice. It was founded in 1942 and was admitted to the Association of College Honor Societies in 1980. Membership of graduate students is limited to those who have a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice or who are currently doing graduate work in this field. A minimum grade point average of 3.4 is required of graduate students seeking membership in Alpha Phi Sigma.

Master of Health Administration Student Association
The purpose of the Master of Health Administration (M.H.A.) Student Association is to provide opportunities for M.H.A. students to learn about careers in health care. This will allow students to be more prepared for the challenges they will meet upon graduation. The Indiana University M.H.A. Student Association accomplishes this by having distinguished guest speakers, interview workshops, job search workshops, and networking events. The M.H.A. Student Association also realizes the importance of maintaining active relationships with M.H.A. alumni, certificate students, undergraduate health administration students, and other preprofessional programs. Additional information can be found at www.iupui.edu/~mhasa.

Pi Alpha Alpha
Pi Alpha Alpha is the national honor society for schools of public affairs and administration. The society acknowledges outstanding scholarship and contributions to these fields. It was founded in 1972 by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) to honor those whose performance in public affairs has been distinguished. Indiana’s is a charter chapter of Pi Alpha Alpha. Membership in Pi Alpha Alpha is comparable to membership in Phi Beta Kappa for liberal arts graduates. A person evaluating credentials in the various fields of public service should recognize the professional quality such a membership represents.

SPEA graduate students can qualify for membership by being in the top 20 percent of their M.H.A., M.P.A., or M.S.E.S. class, with a minimum overall grade point average of 3.5, a 3.7 in at least 50 percent of all required courses, and by having completed 50 percent of the required course work (i.e., 24 to 30 credit hours).

Any doctoral student who has successfully passed the qualifying examination is eligible. Alumni are eligible if they meet all the requirements of student membership but graduate before induction by the Indiana chapter.

Any full-time faculty member of a NASPAA-member institution that offers course work in a public affairs or administration degree program and at which a Pi Alpha Alpha chapter is located is eligible for membership. Honorary membership is available to any person who has achieved distinction in public administration and who has the qualities that Pi Alpha Alpha fosters.

Return to Top

SPEA Centers, Institutes, Programs, and Services

The School of Public and Environmental Affairs encompasses public service activities that complement innovative academic programs. The school provides a wide variety of services to an equally broad range of federal, state, and local agencies.

The Business–SPEA Library is a Bloomington branch of the Indiana University Libraries system. It fulfills the research and study needs of the School of Business and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. The library has extensive electronic and traditional resources. Detailed information about the Business–SPEA Library can be found at its Web site at www.indiana.edu/~bslib/index.html .

The Center for Health Policy (CHP) is a nonpartisan applied research organization in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and is collocated with the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment.

CHP works on critical health policy issues that affect the quality of health care delivery and access to health care. Although CHP is new to SPEA and IUPUI, its leaders have established working partnerships through projects with government and foundation support.

CHP faculty and staff have major leadership roles with the Workgroup on Healthcare Reform, a project to evaluate options to improve the health care delivery system in Indiana. The Center also works to establish and implement the Early Intervention Planning Council for children at risk who have been referred to the Marion County Department of Child Services. CHP also has a partnership with the state of Indiana to provide support in executing the Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant during 2006 – 2010. This partnership is through the Governor’s Office and the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction.

Students who work at CHP typically join project teams with faculty and staff. The teams work in partnership with local government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses.

For more information about CHP, visit its Web site at http://www.urbancenter.iupui.edu/HealthPolicy/.

Center for Health Policy
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
334 N. Senate Avenue, Suite 300
Indianapolis, IN 46204-1708

Contact: Eric Wright, Director
(317) 261-3000; (317) 261-3050 (fax) ewright@iupui.edu
www.urbancenter.iupui.edu/HealthPolicy/

The Community Research Institute (CRI) is one of the commitments of the Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) campus to the growth and development of northeast Indiana. The CRI provides support services to several regional economic development organizations, responds to requests from community, business, not-for-profit and public sector organizations for assembly and analysis of economic, demographic, and social data; and provides state and local public finance issue analysis related to northeast Indiana. Additional information about CRI can be found at www.ipfw.edu/cri.

The goals of the Environmental Science Research Center are to promote excellence in environmental science research and to foster increased interdisciplinary collaboration among environmental science faculty on the Indiana University Bloomington campus. The center director is Distinguished Professor Ronald A. Hites.

SPEA’s Executive Education Program
focuses on government, nonprofit agencies, and the private sector to prepare leaders and managers for a future of change and opportunity. Graduate-level programs offered include the Master of Public Affairs (M.P.A.) and the Public Management Certificate (P.M.C.). The Executive Education Program also provides customized leadership and management programs. With advanced knowledge and leadership development, graduates have the ability to make investments and improvements for the future.

The Great Lakes Center for Public Affairs and Administration is a unit of the Division of Public and Environmental Affairs on the IU Northwest campus. The center conducts research and provides technical services to units of government and other institutions in northwest Indiana. The center also focuses on issues in public affairs and administration in the Great Lakes region.

The Institute for Development Strategies,
co-sponsored by the Office of Research, the University Graduate School, and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, is a university-wide research program linking faculty resources from various departments and campuses. The Institute examines research-related problems in the field of entrepreneurship and economic development at local, national, and international levels. It focuses on strategies for entrepreneurship and economic development and conducts research on the causes and consequences of globalization. Additional information can be found at www.spea.indiana.edu/ids.

The Institute for Family and Social Responsibility (FASR) is a joint effort of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the School of Social Work, with its focus on social policy research and outreach activities. The institute’s mission is to bring together the resources of citizens, governments, communities, and Indiana University to better the lives of children and families. Ongoing projects include serving as the editorial home of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and a US Agency for International Development project to enhance policy analysis capacity at the State University–Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Recently completed projects have examined the effectiveness of two new e-government methods of distributing child support funded by the US Office of Child Support Enforcement; an evaluation of EduTech, a series of high-tech innovations in education in Barbados, funded by the Inter American Development Bank; and the roles of faith-based organizations in the delivery of social services funded by the Joyce Foundation. Other projects have examined the impacts of welfare reforms, the adequacy of child support guidelines, community responses to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families legislation, AIDS education for incarcerated youth, the homeless, and battered women. The institute serves as the National Child Support Enforcement Research Clearinghouse. Further information concerning FASR can be found at www.spea.indiana.edu/fasr/.

The Center for Urban Policy and the Environment at IUPUI is a nonpartisan applied research organization in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University– Purdue University Indianapolis. The center, now more than 10 years old, is one of the largest of its kind in the country. Any social and economic issues that affect quality of life are of interest to center researchers. Some of the research topics have ranged from community safety and riverboat gambling to policies to reduce health care costs, neighborhood empowerment, the property tax structure, affordable housing, the economic impact of the arts and sports, and drinking water and sewer infrastructures. With an award of general support from Lilly Endowment, Inc., center scholars have conducted ongoing studies on Indiana. These investigations have helped policy makers understand how investments by households, businesses, governments, and nonprofits have influenced the state.

Center scholars, staff, and student interns typically form project teams and work in partnership with local governments, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses. Over the years, the center has worked with more than 150 clients and partners. These include the city of Indianapolis, Indiana General Assembly and Office of the Governor, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, Indiana Gaming Commission, Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership, Indiana Land Resources Council, and the Points of Light Foundation.

For more information about the center, visit its Web site at www.urbancenter.iupui.edu.

Center for Urban Policy and the Environment
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
334 N. Senate Avenue, Suite 300
Indianapolis, IN 46204-1708

Contact
John L. Krauss, Director
(317) 261-3000
(317) 261-3050 (fax)
jkrauss@iupui.edu
www.urbancenter.iupui.edu

The Transportation Research Center was established in 1972 as the Institute for Research in Public Safety. Its purpose is to coordinate and facilitate SPEA’s research objectives in transportation and related areas, including transportation safety, risk analysis and security, regulatory policy, energy, and the environment. Work in automobile safety focuses on crash investigation, occupant injury, and how these are mitigated with both active and passive safety systems. The center uses a staff of professional researchers, faculty, and graduate students in performing projects for government agencies and the private sector. Additional information on the center and its activities can be found at www.spea.indiana.edu/trc.

Upsilon Phi Delta
Upsilon Phi Delta is a national honor society for students in healthcare administration, with a chapter established on the Indianapolis campus. The society acknowledges scholastic excellence by students in the M.H.A. program. Membership is limited to students in the MHA program graduating from the program with a 3.8 cumulative GPA or above.

Return to Top

Office of Career Services

SPEA’s Office of Career Services (OCS) provides a wide range of career development services. Career counselors meet individually with students soon after they begin their first semester to plot the students’ career timelines, and to help familiarize them with the services that the OCS provides, which include:

  • Career counseling and guidance
  • Hosting career development workshops and employer information sessions
  • Critiquing resumes, cover letters, and other application materials
  • Assisting students in their internship and job search process
  • Providing career networking opportunities
  • Guiding students through the interview process, including mock interviews, salary negotiation tips, and correspondence advice
  • Continuing career services assistance following graduation

The OCS also offers students a number of resources to facilitate the internship and job search process, including:

  • Access to SPEACareers.com—an internship/job bank specifically customized to service the needs of SPEA students
  • Unlimited use of the office fax machine for sending as well as receiving faxes
  • Free long distance telephone use for phone interviews and professional communications
  • A library of text resources, including employment guides, periodicals, and books
  • An extensive collection of Web-based career resources
  • Free photocopying of career development materials and documents
  • Access to skills and personality assessment tools, such as the MBTI

The OCS continually strives to develop strong relationships with the best employers to facilitate their ongoing recruitment of SPEA’s graduates. In partnership with employers and alumni, OCS coordinates on-campus interviews to help facilitate students’ internship/job search process.

The OCS also helps students access potential employers by coordinating regional and national career development site visits. Trips to Indianapolis, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. help position students for pursuit of employment opportunities with governmental, nonprofit, consulting, environmental, and international organizations. The OCS works with SPEA alumni, recruiters, and other contacts within these organizations to set up information sessions tailored specifically to the educational and professional backgrounds of the visiting students.

Visit us on the Web at www.indiana.edu/~speaweb/careers/.

Bloomington Campus
Office of Career Services
SPEA 200
(812) 855-9639

For answers to specific questions on other campuses, students may contact:

Indianapolis Campus
Career and Employment Services
Business/SPEA 2010
(317) 274-2554
www.career.iupui.edu/careercounsel.asp

Fort Wayne Campus
Internships
SPEA: Neff Hall, Room 260
(260) 481-6351; fax (260) 481-6346
Academic Counseling and Career Services
Kettler Hall, Room 109
(260) 481-6595

Northwest Campus
Career Services
Hawthorn Hall, Room 101
(219) 980-6650

South Bend Campus
Career and Graduate School Planning and Placement
Administration Room 137A
(574) 237-4425

Kokomo Campus
Career Services
Kelley Student Center 200B
(765) 455-9301

Return to Top

 


Indiana University
Office of Creative Services
Von Lee 319
517 East Kirkwood Avenue
Bloomington, IN 47408-4060

Last updated: 29 March 2024 04 23 42

Submit Questions or Comments
Copyright 2024 The Trustees of Indiana University