Speaker 1: This program has changed my life. I would not be where I am today without it.

Speaker 2: This is a comprehensive program. You come out with this fully rounded set of knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Speaker 3: There are few places across the country where you can get as much hands-on experience with the real decision makers on the front lines of public service.

Speaker 4: The school has connections with people in every walk of life. It enables you pretty quickly to know just about everybody in the state.

Speaker 1: This is a very good environment for me because I can always find any resource I need.

Speaker 5: With four master's and two Ph.D. programs, the School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware has for more than a half a century offered the best of many worlds. Academic excellence balanced with access to a vast array of professional resume building experiences.

Speaker 6: It's that combination of getting the practical learning experience while at the same time understanding the theory behind it.

Speaker 5: Small classes and individualized attention from a distinguished faculty paired with the resources of a major research one university.

Speaker 7: You can take courses in political science. You can take courses in sociology. You can take courses in education. That flexibility helped me a lot to make the program what I wanted it to be.

Speaker 5: The strong 30-year tradition of study abroad allows students to travel worldwide to further their research.

Speaker 8: To be overseas where everything is completely different takes public policy to a new level. Once I was in sub-Saharan Africa representing the University of Delaware, they provided as much support as I needed.

Speaker 5: Long-standing ties to local, state, and national movers and shakers.

Speaker 1: The access you have here to local, state, and federal government is unbelievable. How many governors are going to come in and speak to your class? How many congressmen are going to do that?

Speaker 5: The best of many worlds. This is our school of public policy and administration, making a real difference every day.

Speaker 9: Public service is very important, and public service is at a point in this country that it needs young energy and young support to get behind it and believe in it again.

Speaker 10: I'm working to get people off the street. I'm working to get benefits to people who have fought for our country. I want to wake up every day knowing that I'm working for a purpose.

Speaker 5: Working for a purpose. Working to make a difference. The degree programs at the School for Public Policy and Administration will take you there.

Speaker 11: The way that our students are engaged in these public policy issues can be used in any field that they're going into in terms of public administration, public sector management, or just working with a non-profit.

Speaker 5: The M.A. and Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding communities and the policies that affect them.

Speaker 12: In this school, you have faculty who are focusing on so many different aspects of public policy and administration. You might find someone who focuses on the environment and environmental policy, someone who's an urban planner, someone who focuses on community development, someone who's involved with the political side of things, someone who does media policy and research.

Speaker 13: Last year I was involved in a community revitalization program, Blueprint Communities. Going out into the community and working with planners, working with practitioners, working with policy analysts to actually improve impoverished communities in Delaware.

Speaker 14: We really commit to the students who are here. These are people who want to take action. Even students who thought they had it wired before they got here, all of a sudden you run into a set of concepts or questions that you just hadn't considered before. That's what a good graduate school is supposed to do.

Speaker 15: I'm getting a lot of valuable experience dealing with municipalities, laws and regulations, and different levels of government. Providing me more insight into the professional aspect of planning and transportation, and I really feel like I know as much as anybody could about the industry, and I'm proud of that.

Speaker 5: The Master of Arts in Historic Preservation prepares professionals for successful practice in public, private and non-profit venues.

Speaker 16: Here at the University of Delaware, I am out in the field on a weekly basis, I am researching primary sources, and really getting my hands into the history part of the preservation.

Speaker 17: Projects range from work on scenic byways projects, to documentation work, to national register nominations, and it gives students something very nice to put on their resume when they graduate. They can effectively say they've got two years worth of work experience.

Speaker 5: Our nationally accredited and highly ranked Master of Public Administration program offers solid preparation for graduates to succeed in challenging professional careers in government and non-profit administration and management.

Speaker 18: An MPA degree at this school had been good to me. I would say that I'm positive I'll get a better job. When I go back to Kazakhstan, I can be a more effective manager.

Speaker 3: I worked at a transportation planning agency, I worked at the State Office of Management and Budget for a short time, then worked at the State Senate, and I worked on Capitol Hill. That's all within two years. These were all opportunities that I would have never, ever, ever had, probably in any other state or any other program.

Speaker 4: The Legislative Fellows Program really is what did it for me. I got the inspiration for, I hadn't thought about running for office, I hadn't thought about the government and politics really much. Every day I went to work, I was excited. Every day I went to work, I knew that we were going to work on something that was interesting and something that was going to make a difference. It was really that that provided me with the inspiration to pursue a career in public service and ultimately in elected office.

Speaker 5: The M.S. and Ph.D. in Disaster Science and Management approach disasters from an interdisciplinary point of view, emphasizing theories, research methodologies and policies related to emergency preparedness, mitigation, management and response.

Speaker 19: Almost without exception, all of the classes focus on something that gives you a practical tool for a job. I learned a lot about project management and program management. I have new tools that I'm going to take and I'm going to use in my job.

Speaker 1: The Disaster Research Center in the University of Delaware is a world-famous institute. The greatest support I get is a library. It has more than 10,000 books, research papers, videos, photographs. I can almost get everything I need. I'm doing research with a direction.

Speaker 20: When you're looking for a degree in disaster response, disaster management, you've got a few options out there and this program does an amazing job of blending what happens in the real world with what researchers are finding and giving you the tools to pull together research and practice in a really effective way as you go out from this university.

Speaker 5: So why should you choose the School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware?

Speaker 2: We have a wonderful set of teachers here who are both academics as well as practitioners. They have worked in the field. They are continuing to work in the field and they're up to date.

Speaker 21: We're tackling a real issue that's occurring in real time. So it's very motivating and inspiring to know that there's a really true value in the work you do every day.

Speaker 22: When I heard students and faculty speak about the research opportunities here, that cemented the fact that I wanted to come to the University of Delaware.

Speaker 16: The University of Delaware schools allow you to have a very different discipline within a larger umbrella. And because you're in that larger umbrella, you can collaborate and you can meet people that might have different interests in you, but there's still a connecting point between them. And that allows for a lot of interaction that broadens your own perspective.

Speaker 14: The place is a community. If you are one of us, you are one of us. This idea that we'll accept 200 and 100 of you flunk out, we don't do it that way.

Speaker 2: A small student body, small courses, so you're able to actually interact and develop a relationship with each professor.

Speaker 20: It really has been my new family. I come from California, across the country, and I was pretty scared about getting to know people here, but I was welcomed with open arms.

Speaker 23: There are a number of young men and women who have come to work for me as a United States Senator. A bunch of them have come right out of the University of Delaware through the public policy program, worked with us for a while, and gone on to do even better things with their life. How proud I am of them and how grateful I am to this program for providing them, not just for me, not just for our state, but as it turns out, for our nation.