NIU's Department of Political Science offers both M.A. and Ph.D. degree programs, as well as the Division of Public Administration's MPA degree. Even though the M.P.A. is often described as a "terminal" professional degree, a number of MPA alumni have gone on to successful doctoral studies at NIU.
Public administration is one of the seven fields that doctoral students may pursue at NIU. Because of the strong national reputation of the P.A. faculty, P.A. has been perhaps the strongest field in the department, particularly in terms of the number of alumni placed in U.S. graduate-level teaching positions over the past decade.
Greg Streib ( 1985) is Professor of Public Administration and Urban Studies at Georgia State University. His work has covered a broad range of local government management issues concerning local government management tools such as pay-for-performance, strategic planning, e-government, and total quality management. He has published extensively including in top journals such as the Public Administration Review and Administration and Society. More information on Professor Streib is available at http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwsps/people/StreibG.htm
Keenan Grennell (Ph.D., 1993) is interim assistant provost for diversity and multicultural affairs and a member of the political science faculty at Auburn University; his dissertation was a study of mayoral politics in Rockford, Illinois.
Douglas Ihrke (1996), whose dissertation examined organizational burnout in the NRCS, is currently directing the MPA program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Doug Snow (1996) came to NIU after working as a legislative staffer in Utah; after completing his dissertation on state tax expenditures, he currently teaches public finance at Suffolk University.
Keith Schildt (1998), after serving as the first professional city administrator of Genoa, Illinois, and finishing his dissertation on civil case mediation in the Rockford circuit courts, is currently the director of the MPA program at LaVerne University, in southern California.
Gloria Simo (1997), an NIU MPA alumna and former MPA Coordinator, began teaching at University of Arkansas at Little Rock after completing her dissertation on the success of housing programs. She is now teaching at DePaul University.
Vidu Soni (1997) is a member of the faculty at Central Michigan University; her dissertation examined diversity in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and an article from her dissertation was recently published in Public Administration Review.
Mark Robbins (1999), after a first career in law enforcement, began a faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota at Mankato.
Wu Liangfu’s (1999) dissertation compared public and private management information systems, and an article from the dissertation is forthcoming in the American Review of Public Administration; he is the director of information services for the Village of Downers Grove, and regularly teaches the core course in public MIS in the division’s curriculum.
Vicki Clarke (2001) took PA as her doctoral second field and wrote her dissertation on local government decentralization and democratization in Ghana; she is currently the MPA coordinator in our Division of Public Administration.
Ornanong Noiwong (2001) completed her dissertation on the evolution of policy towards Muslims in Thailand; she returned home to Thailand, where she now works in the foreign office.
Greg Kuhn (2002) wrote his dissertation on executive appraisal of city managers; he recently joined the PAR Group, a local government consulting firm, as a partner.
While some Ph.D. students work full-time in public-service jobs (current students include a city manager, a city planner, municipal attorney, a NTSB senior investigator, and a police lieutenant) and take classes as part-time students, other Ph.D. students are full-time graduate students. Most full-time Ph.D. students also serve as graduate assistants. Some work as teaching assistants in the Department of Political Science; TA work (20 hours/week) includes a variety of duties, such as assistance in computer labs, discussion leader in large undergraduate American government courses, to (for senior Ph.D. students) teaching independent sections of upper-division undergraduate courses. Such teaching experience constitutes crucial experience, preparing the doctoral student for a university teaching career. The current TA stipend in the Department is $967/month, and includes a full tuition scholarship. Many other doctoral students have worked as research assistants, particularly at NIU's Social Science Research Institute. This kind of experience can also be an excellent introduction to organized research for the student's scholarly career. The stipend for research assistantships at SSRI are typically higher than in the department, and also carry a full tuition scholarship.
Doctoral programs-of-courses total at least 90 hours of graduate credit; these consist of at least 60 hours of graduate coursework and up to 30 hours of dissertation or other political science research credit. The Department require students to offer two political science fields. Students take at least five courses in their first field and four in their second field. Students can opt to take two fields plus either a third minor field or an interdisciplinary field-of-study; if they do not take a third field or area of study, students normally take three courses outside their first and second field. Applicants with a prior Masters degree from an accredited university may transfer credit for up to 30 hours towards their NIU program-of-courses.
The key to planning the student's individual program is to work with a good advisory committee, which can help the student move from the introductory survey courses to more advanced doctoral work in an efficient manner (particularly regarding effective use of transfer Masters credit). For example, the committee might recommend the following program for a student beginning the doctoral program with a prior NIU MPA degree and an interest in environmental and land use policy ("*" denotes courses from the MPA degree program):
*PSPA 509 Public Personnel Management
*PSPA 510 Public Budgeting and Financial Management
*PSPA 530 Local and Metropolitan Government
*PSPA 500 Scope and Dynamics of Public Administration
*PSPA 512 Information Management and Design Support in Public Organizations
*PSPA 555 Organization Development in the Public Sector
PSPA 561 Theory and Analysis in Public Administration (doctoral survey course)
PSPA 564 Politics of Public Budgeting
POLS 520 Study of Public Policy (policy survey course)
*PSPA 504 Public Program Evaluation Methods
*PSPA 531 Urban Planning and Zoning
*PSPA 535 Local Economic Development Policy
POLS 524 Natural Resources Policy
POLS 553 The Federalist
POLS 533 International Biotechnology Policy
POLS 503 Scope and Methods of Political Science II
*PSPA 501 Data Analysis in Public Administration
POLS 542 Intermediate Analysis of Political Data
POLS 543 Advanced Analysis of Political Data
POLS 545 Qualitative Research Methods
POLS 699 Doctoral Research and Dissertation (dissertation hours)
POLS 591 Teaching Political Science (3 hour teaching seminar)
POLS 590 Political Science Research (individual research training)
Note that this program of courses would be somewhat minimalist at the doctoral level. Due to the scheduling sequence of especially advanced methods courses, a student would likely take some additional elective courses. In particular, students would be well advised to sample courses from other fields, such as comparative politics, biopolitics, or American politics to obtain a balanced sense of the kind of work done throughout the discipline. The final element of an effective doctoral program involves the mentoring of students to begin work on their own research agendas. In addition to--or in conjunction with--work on the dissertation, students are mentored to begin presenting papers at professional conferences and publishing their work in refereed journals. Since the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, the second most important conference in political science, is held annually in Chicago, many of the P.A. faculty work with their doctoral students to assist them in presenting their research at this conference.
While the main Masters degree program of the Division is the M.P.A., graduate students admitted to the M.A. program in Political Science can and do take P.A. as their M.A. field. In contrast to the M.P.A., the M.A. is a 30-hour program in which the student takes a minimum of three courses in one field and can sample among other fields for the remaining courses. Full-time M.A. students are eligible for teaching assistantships; TA appointments in Political Science currently receive a $858/month stipend, plus a tuition scholarship.