The University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service will offer two new electives in the Spring 2018 (January-May) Semester.
“A significant portion of the Clinton School curriculum is field service project work,” said Clinton School Dean James L. “Skip” Rutherford III. “Having experienced professionals here supplements the great work of our permanent faculty while broadening the student experience.”
The first, Social Entrepreneurship, will be taught by Terry Mazany and will seek to determine how to organize as a society to solve complex problems.
The second, Wicked Problems, will be taught by Dr. Kent Thornton and focus on societal, cultural, and political problems that cannot be solved by traditional techniques.
Social Entrepreneurship is a course designed for change-makers who seek to make a difference in the world. Open to first and second-year students, participants in this course will have the opportunity to study and examine the social enterprises they participate in, identify challenges, and design their own social enterprise to address those challenges.
Currently a senior fellow at ForwARd Arkansas, Mazany was previously President and CEO of The Chicago Community Trust, one of the nation’s leading community foundations with assets of more than $2.6 billion and grant making of over $250 million annually. His course will be taught at Little Rock’s Venture Center.
Available to second-year students only, Wicked Problems integrates concepts from the social sciences – behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, sociology – with physical sciences – systems analysis, engineering, biogeochemistry – to document and illustrate the critical need for integrated, holistic, trans-disciplinary approaches to address wicked problems.
Named for a term originally coined by Rittel and Weber (1973), “wicked problems” are an entirely different class or domain of problems that cannot be addressed using traditional problem-solving approaches. Currently, nearly all social, cultural, and policy issues are wicked problems (gun control, poverty, income inequality, terrorism, violent crime, global climate change, etc.).
Thornton is a Principal in FTN Associates, Ltd., an interdisciplinary engineering and environmental consulting firm with offices in Little Rock, Fayetteville, and Baton Rouge, La., Thornton has almost 50 years of experience working on local, national, and international problems and issues related to water.
Mazany and Thornton join adjunct professors Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola (Contemporary Urbanism) and Dr. Arvind Singhal of the University of Texas at El Paso (Dynamics and Complexities of Social Change) in teaching at the Clinton School during the Spring 2018 Semester. The Stodola and Singhal courses are also open to first and second-year students.
Visiting fellow Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour will also continue working with both first and second-year students.
The Clinton School is the nation’s first to offer a Master of Public Service (MPS) degree. It is a two-year program with concurrent degrees offered with the Sam M. Walton College of Business (Master in Business Administration) at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; The Fay W. Boozman School of Public Health (Master of Public Health) at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science (UAMS); and the William H. Bowen School of Law (Juris Doctor) at UA Little Rock.
This spring, the Clinton School will launch its new Executive Master of Public Service degree. The first-of-its-kind program is offered entirely online, giving mid-career professionals the enhanced knowledge, skills and network they need to advance their careers without relocating while also being able to maintain full-time employment.
The program also offers the opportunity to learn and network with the Clinton School’s renowned speaker series. Over its 13-year history, the series has hosted nearly 1,200 programs that have totaled over 190,000 attendees and more than 450,000 online views.
The Clinton School is also home to the first Center on Community Philanthropy in the nation. Led by Dr. Charlotte Williams, the Center on Community Philanthropy is to explore the concept of philanthropy as the kind of giving and sharing from within that is characteristic of positive change and long-lasting development in impoverished communities.
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