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In the 21st century Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs need to meet the challenge of preparing public affairs professionals for an increasingly global and interdependent world in which complex social problems often span national boundaries and cultural differences. In that context, various internationalization strategies can be helpful in developing the necessary global, international, and intercultural (GII) competencies that public affairs professionals need. In this paper, we evaluate a model known as Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) as an internationalization at home tool which may have potential in public affairs programs. We describe the philosophical and pedagogical approach of CLAC, and compare our experiences with three levels of CLAC integration within graduate-level public affairs classes. Based on feedback from students and observations from faculty we are able to offer preliminary assessments on the effectiveness of the CLAC approach in MPA education, and advice for MPA programs and instructors who may be interested in using CLAC to develop GII competencies among their students.

This paper examines the self-reported progress of public service degree programs in NASPAA for defining, measuring, and assessing student learning outcomes as they relate to the "ability to communicate and interact productively with a diverse and changing workforce." The analysis is placed in the context of the need for cultural competencies among public administration professionals and the evolution of this accreditation standard. Using data drawn from accreditation records, we first present an exploratory qualitative analysis of how programs are defining this competency over time and how progress on this competency relates to progress on competency assessment generally and to other measures of program diversity. We interpret all findings in the context of two broad goals: to provide an accurate assessment of program progress and to provide useful information to programs seeking to develop their competency definitions and assessment.

Despite repeated calls to temper the bureaucratic ethos and its associated process-oriented pathologies with more of a democratic ethos grounded in normative values and the public interest, the practice, research, and teaching of public administration continues to largely perpetuate the former. In this paper we build upon the work of Camila Stivers’ book Governance in Dark Times and Nabatchi and colleagues’ subsequent call to search for opportunities to better address issues of war, terrorism, climate change, economic calamity, refugee crises, and other atrocities which characterize dark times. We focus our attention on one specific issue within this realm, that of genocides and mass atrocities, as a way to illustrate that public servants—from street-level bureaucrats through high-level policy makers—may be part of the problem or part of the solution. We assert the responsibility of public affairs educators to ensure that their students are prepared to administer prevention or we risk that traditional administrative pathologies may lead them to inadvertently engage in administering atrocities. We position our overarching proposal in the context of fundamental public service values as well as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 16. We also align our more specific recommendations with the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration’s universal competencies and the core content domains of the Atlas for Public Management.