About the Course: Guiding Thoughts
By Gabriel Eidelman and Jo Flatt
When we began planning this course over the summer, we had three motivations.
First, we wanted to inspire students to throw caution to the wind and consider a career in public policy outside government. The School of Public Policy and Governance is much like every other professional policy school: since inception, our focus has been on training future public servants. Nearly 70% of MPP grads currently work in government, whether federal, provincial, or municipal. Most of our students tell us they want to work in government (and governments, thankfully, tell us they want to hire our students!), so the program caters to this demand. Naturally.
But what about the one-third of SPPG students who either don’t end up, or have never even imagined themselves, working in government? The roughly 20% of alumni who now work for not-for-profits and think tanks, or the 10% who work for private sector organizations, leave SPPG with relatively little preparation for these “alternative” career paths. As a graduate herself (Class of 2011), Jo knows this from experience. By developing this course, “Making an Impact from the Outside,” we wanted to flip conventional policy training on its head, to focus on bottom-up approaches, advocacy, and community impact — more on what that means in a future post — and give students a taste of what non-governmental policy work looks like.
Second, we wanted to bring students and practitioners into closer contact. That meant taking the class off campus, to the Evergreen Brick Works. Not only does this give students an extraordinary opportunity to interact with policy professionals in the field, it also encourages our colleagues at Evergreen to “drop in,” to hear about academic debates that may inform their work, and exchange ideas. Often, practitioners working “in the trenches” don’t have the time to reflect on their role in the policy process, or their place in policy subsystems. Our approach tries to make the learning process a two-way street, engaging and enlightening for students and practitioners alike.
Lastly, we wanted the course to be unlike anything SPPG students have ever experienced. If you’re an outside reader following along, you’ll soon see photos from field trips to unique places, read compelling first-hand accounts of public meetings held across Toronto, hear from “change makers” we’ve invited to participate in the conversation, and be absorbed by thoughtful reflection pieces from some of SPPG’s best and brightest. If you’re one of our students — that’s you, Sasha, Alex, Harpreet, Terhas, Alex, Blake, Jasmine, Ian, and Talha — strap in. We have only six weeks together, during which time we’ll be asking a lot of you. We plan to push you, to question and provoke. But we’re also here to guide and support, and ultimately, learn together. So embrace the challenge. The rewards will be well worth it.
