Steve Fetter: Current Courses

PUAF 610: Quantitative Methods in Policy Analysis.  This course explores the use of statistics to shed light on policy issues. The goal is to make students more informed consumers--and alert critics--of quantitative analyses and to gain a deeper appreciation for the strengths and limitations of quantitative analysis as one way of understanding policy issues and choices. Along the way, students become proficient in using Microsoft Excel. Topics include summarizing data numerically and graphically, probability, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. Examples include polygraph and drug testing, health effects of environmental pollutants, public opinion polls, race and gender bias in jury selection, employment, and college admissions, climate change, and voter fraud.

PUAF 741: Global Environmental Problems.  The primary goal of this course is to understand and assess human influences on the global environment. Topics include human population growth, climate change, acid deposition, ozone depletion, and land use change and biodiversity loss. In each area we explore what is known and what is unknown or uncertain and how policy makers use scientific information and cope with uncertainty. A second goal is to understand methods of environmental analysis and to illuminate how scientists think about environmental problems, in order to help you be more intelligent consumers of scientific information and analysis.

PUAF 790: Project Course.  Students specializing in environmental policy or international security and economic policy may do a policy analysis for a sponsor. Unlike the traditional master's thesis, which can focus on topics of purely theoretical or scholarly interest, the project is intended to be thoroughly practical, in keeping with the professional nature of public-policy education. Sponsors usually work for international or federal agencies, congressional committees, or a variety of nongovernmental organizations.