PPOL-G 742 - Community-based Operations Research

3 Credit(s)

Description:
This course provides an introduction to descriptive, predictive and prescriptive and analytic methods to improve planning and operations activities of nonprofit, mission-driven community-based organizations. A deeper understanding of relevant methods will help resource-constrained community-based organizations better measure the impact of their services, and design new ways to provide these services to optimize efficiency, effectiveness and equity. The course will emphasize iterative, inductive, mixed-methods and critical approaches. Student s will be prepared to become proficient modelers and analysts for community impact, not just educated consumers of relevant methods. Examples of public-sector applications we will address include: public safety and emergency services, human services, community and public health, economic development, humanitarian logistics and housing and community development. Master’s and doctoral students in public policy, business, economics, education, health care, political science, and many other areas are welcome. Students will learn how to identify public-sector problems that are amenable to solution-focused analytic methods from a variety of disciplinary traditions. Students will also learn how to structure decision problems, and to solve these problems using multiple methods. Some methods may use commonly-available technologies such as spreadsheets; others, such as insights into preferences of stakeholders, or heuristics (“rules of thumb” to guide strategies or routine operations, require little to no technology.

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