Spotlight on PA-Based Undergraduate Nonprofit Education: A Public Sector Catalyst for Stewardship and Service

Abstract

Public administration as an academic discipline provides nonprofit students with a foundation of public values essential to the preparation of capable public servants. The faculty in the Department of Public Administration at University of North Texas have been supportive of the department’s new undergraduate Nonprofit Leadership Studies degree and bring with them a blend of academic backgrounds and interdisciplinary and intersectoral perspectives to our approach to a nonprofit education. Our relatively new nonprofit degree is built on four overarching values: passion, participation, professionalism, and performance. Our use of the 4-P approach adopts the instrumental and the expressive assumptions from Frumkin’s (2002) framework to construct our own framework for designing and critiquing our curriculum in the Nonprofit Leadership Studies degree. Students learn that nonprofits are important collaborators with government, the private sector, and with the community as they seek out innovative solutions to complex social issues. This reflection essay presents a class case study example to highlight the academic disciplines that inform effective student learning.