Drake University’s master’s of public administration degree program within the College of Business and Administration, is growing in popularity, in part due to an innovative class that takes students overseas. The course, “Comparative Management and Policy Analysis in a Global Context,” takes students on a whirlwind tour of Europe, where they meet with top public administrators. The Business Record spoke with C. Kenneth Meyer, a Thomas F. Sheehan distinguished professor of public administration at Drake, about the program.

Q: What is the purpose of a master’s degree in public administration?

A: A master’s of public administration prepares people for significant administrative and policy positions in the public, non-profit and private sectors of the economy.

Q: What is special about your M.P.A. program?

A: Our Europe trip is the only one in of its kind in the United States within a master’s of public administration program. The theme of this year’s comparative public administration and public policy trip was “New Millennium Policy Vistas.” Topics included environmental sustainablity, discrimination and racism, women and health, and children and health.    We went to Stockholm; Copenhagen; Berlin; Munich; Berne, Switzerland; Geneva; Parma, Italy; and Rome.

We received state-of-the-art presentations from the World Trade Organization, one on women and children from the International Labor Organization in Geneva, and the [United Nations’] World Food Programme in Rome. We learned about historical preservation in Berne, and met with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva and the European Environmental Agency in Copenhagen.

Q: What is the theme of next year’s trip?

A: It’s preparing for the United Nations conference on children in Budapest, Hungary.

  Q: What reaction do you get from students who participate in the trip?

A: The best thing an educator can do is enable students to ask the right questions and develop their own perspectives. That’s why just about each student who has been through the program calls it a life-changing event.

One of the ideas of this class is to begin to address the issues of ethnocentrism: the idea that there is only one way to do things in issues as broad as women, violence, the environment and the economy. Other countries are faced with similar issues but have very different ways in which they successfully deal with the problems.

As they are exposed to other cultures, students develop their own value and belief system as it relates to their own vision of the world and what’s taking place.