Public Administration and Community Development Major at University of Northern British Columbia

This major is targeted at people who seek to combine public administration with a keen interest in community development. The goal is to give students the skills to function within a range of groups, organizations, and offices. The graduate is able to interact with appropriate professionals, receive their input and reports, and collate a wide range of information and material in service of their group/organization/office. Skills in analysis and synthesis are to be complemented by an ability to work cooperatively and effectively, and to be able to communicate clearly through written, oral, and graphic mediums. For this major, ‘public administration’ is conceptualized broadly. It is understood as involving the regulated functioning and management of public service offices, groups, and organizations within broad social, economic, and political contexts. The skills required to accomplish these tasks are readily transferred between different organizational settings, but at this general level there is a focus upon the interrelation of policy and management; of the recursive relationship between the rules and the actions. For this major, the understanding of ‘community development’ is similarly broad. It encompasses improvements to social, economic, and cultural foundations so that a community can organize its assets and resources to achieve objectives considered important. This may involve increasing the skills, knowledge base, and ability to access information and resources, and to then use those tools to create strategies and partnerships to take advantage of changing circumstances. Such actions occur within existing norms, traditions, regulations, and social relationships and may involve conflict and dispute resolution, consensus building, as well as technical skills used in information access and communication.