Course Review: PAD 631 Leading in Diverse Environments

 

 Course Review: PAD 631 

Leading in Diverse Environments

This blog post is the second post in the three part series of course reviews from this semester. The first course review can be found here. 

PAD 631 focuses on leading and managing in diverse, public environment. Most weeks we have a discussion board as a means to connect and expand on the lesson. Through my experience, I have seen a number of great ideas on how to further leadership opportunities at organizations that we (students in the class) are working, volunteering, or socializing at. In addition, the discussion board allows students to further engage with certain situations and help develop the idea. 

Another big part of this class are the reflective essays. Each essay has a certain theme that matches where we are in the book, but within each theme there are a handful of topics to write about. This semester I wrote about gentrification, far-right extremism rallies, charter schools, and racism in healthcare. While these topics are quite different from each other, through the essays I was able to connect them to local public administration issues in communities significant to me. 

Overall, this class surprised in how much I enjoyed it. I was able to connect many topics/lessons to my community and workplace, and "customize" the course to what interested me.