Good morning, Tarleton MPA nation. Wow, it has been a year now since the Master's in Public Administration degree program moved from the College of Business Administration to the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Strategic Studies, Since that time, the program has grown immensely.
Two of our students, one who graduated spring 2016, Dallas Sims, and another that graduates in August, Alan Fourmenten, accomplished graduate papers to complete their degree requirements. Their papers have made practical and real contributions to our citizens and governmental operations. These graduate papers are excellent and I hope they will consider having their papers submitted for publishing in trade journals.
In about a week, on August 6th, the MPA program will have seven students graduate with their MPAs -- six of those will be our Emirati students that transferred in from Western Kentucky University a little over a year ago. These seven students will be a milestone for our program since they will be the first cohort of students who went through our program to graduation. I am very proud of these students. I will have the honor of hooding them at Commencement.
From August of 2015 to now, we have grown from a program of just under 20 students to one with over 75 students. Plus, more students are being admitted every week. This is awesome growth. Our best recruiters are our students. I hope you all take the opportunity to extol the virtues of Tarleton State University and, in particular, the MPA program. I know many students have applied who were first told or our program by one of our current or past students. Please, keep that up.
As our program grows, so too must our cadre of faculty. We have added four (4) adjunct faculty and, hopefully, will be adding another full-time PA professor as of fall 2017 to handle the course load for our ever growing program. Drs. Brian Wish and Coby Pewitt have along with me handled all of the teaching duties over the past year. Starting this fall, Drs. Kathy Rowe and Bill Munn will be assisting. All our PA faculty are Ph.D.s and seasoned professionals in the public administration field.
Currently, our students represent a very broad range of practitioners in PA, nonprofits and NGOs -- we have educators, police officers, fire fighters, assistant city managers, public works personnel, probation, corrections, and administrative personnel from local and state agencies and many, many others in the program. Some are private sector professionals looking to transition into public administration careers.
Fall is approaching quickly. The fall semester will start a week later than usual -- August 29th. This change will also result in changing down the line. Graduation for the fall will, as a result, will be a week later than usual.
The MPA program has a great line-up of courses scheduled for fall. As many of you are already aware, our program is fully online as well as face-to-face. So, a student can mix and match or pursue their Master's online or F2F. I will be teaching MAPA 5311, Intergovernmental Relations; MAPA 5315, Public Budgeting; and, MAPA 5331, Public Policy this fall -- all face-to-face at our Southwest Metro Campus in Fort Worth. The online offerings will be MAPA 5331, MAPA 5300, MAPA 5315, and MAPA 5340, and MAPA 5345. Plus, we have a number of criminal justice courses that are cross-listed and available -- ethics, research methods and statistics. On the CJ courses, I have personally visited with all the profs that teach these courses and they are aware and supportive of PA students taking their classes and allow them to pursue PA topics to fulfill course requirements.
I have some great plans for the MPA program's future -- publishing our own journal for our students' papers to be published in, an annual colloquium for our students to present their papers and inviting visiting scholars to our colloquium just a few example. So, stay tuned.
See you all soon and I hope you are having a great summer.
Dr. G.M. Cox
Assistant Professor
Director, MPA Program
