Syllabus

Your goal for this two-semester sequence is to draw on everything you’ve learned in the last two years to produce a first-class policy project for a client, one that helps them make progress on the critical problems they are addressing.

Over the course of your time at Batten, you have been building skills in your core classes: economic analysis, data analysis, policy analysis, leadership, and political analysis. Your APP is an opportunity to synthesize and exercise these skills by helping a client facing a policy challenge to make a good decision about what to do, all while still under the tutelage of a professor. As your professor, my goal for this semester is to support your growth as a policy professional. I’ll use assignments, readings, class time, your colleagues, other professors, individual/team meetings with me, and your feedback to help you develop over the course of this project.

At its heart, this class is a workshop. As a workshop instructor, my aim isn’t to tell you what to learn. Yes, there is a set schedule for deliverables. Yes, you’ll be assessed on your ability to meet them. But those elements are means to an end. My end goal is to help you help your client make an important decision and to help you understand what you did well and where you can improve. I’m the coach. You’re the player. Our incentives are aligned. I’m excited to help you perform to the best of your abilities.

One unique part of the APP is the level of ownership you have over the project. This semester you’ll grow increasingly knowledgeable about your project, about your skills and areas for growth, and about your own learning processes. Hopefully, you’ll start to care more deeply about the client and the causes you have been working hard on. By the end of the year, you will be invested in a critical policy area and will help your client make progress on a difficult policy challenge.

This spring we’ll work together to ensure that I’m supporting you as best as I can in this process. Learning to manage a boss and use them appropriately is a key professional skill. Use this semester as a chance to practice that skill. Take an active approach to the course. Argue with me appropriately about decision points in the project. When you’re frustrated or need guidance, let’s have a conversation about it. Let’s work together to identify and exploit opportunities for your growth.

Let’s get going!

By the end of the APP sequence, you should be able to help a client understand and make progress on an important public policy problem by integrating analytical information and political and administrative dynamics.

To do this you will need to:

1. Identify, establish, maintain, and exit a client relationship where you help your client make progress on a public policy problem.
2. Discern quality research and synthesize research relevant to your policy problem.
3. Identify, assemble, and analyze data related to your policy problem.
4. Exercise leadership by applying the leadership knowledge and skills you learned in the Batten curriculum to help your client make progress on their problem.
5. Create a professional quality report and relevant sub-products for your client that effectively communicate with intelligent internal and external policy audiences about your policy problem.
6. Support your classmates as they learn about, analyze, and propose solutions to complex policy problems.
7. Value the role of your client, partners, and yourself in addressing your policy problem.

We will draw on readings from the following required books (which I believe you already own) as well as other readings as noted in the schedule below. You will also read a wealth of other sources on your APP topic!

Bardach, E. and E. Patashnik. (2019). A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving. CQ Press. (henceforth B&P)

Pennock, A. (2023). The CQ Press Writing Guide for Public Policy. Washington, DC:  CQ Press/Sage Publications.

Weimer, D. and A. Vining. (2017). Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice. 6th Edition. Routledge. (henceforth W&V)

Unlike your other Batten courses, APP uses a mandatory Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) assessment. This system is designed to encourage you to focus on serving your client by providing valuable work products, on growing your skills and abilities, on honoring your values, and on helping you shift to the often collaborative, ungraded world of high-quality work awaiting you after graduation.

Perhaps the easiest way to envision this standard is by considering: does this work meet the high standards of the Batten School and the professional world? I will help you understand and internalize these standards through clearly written assignments and detailed rubrics. You can also look at APPs from previous students as examples.

I will return each work product with written comments and one of three following categories:

• Accept: Assignments that are accepted are excellent work with little, if any, need for revisions. This would be the equivalent of bringing a work product to your boss and once she has read it handing it back to you and saying “Well done. What’s next on our agenda?” This is a rare honor in APP (and in one’s career!) and should be celebrated when received.
• Accept with Revisions (AwR): In this case, I will return your work product with suggestions, which can be minor, substantial, or a mix of both. A resubmission is not required. Instead, I will look for this feedback to be substantially incorporated into subsequent drafts and your technical report. Make sure to follow-up with me for clarity on my comments if you need it.
• Revise & Resubmit (R&R): In this case, I am communicating to you that your current work product has not successfully achieved the standards set in the assignment (i.e., this is currently a failing grade for the assignment). : (1) a resubmission of the work product , and (2) an attached detailing your response to each of my comments and the actions you have taken to fix them.

R&Rs require

within five business days

cover letter

To receive Credit, you must

• Submit each required assignment on time. For the semester, you have days at no cost (meaning you could be three days late for one assignment, or one day late for three assignments, etc.). You may not use these days on the Technical Report. Barring pre-agreed-upon extensions, . So please reach out to me early if you become unexpectedly ill, have a death in the family, or have other circumstances that will interfere with your submissions.

three late submission

a fourth late submission day will result in you not receiving credit for the course

If your late submissions exceed three business days across the course of the semester or if your Technical Report is submitted late, you will not receive credit for APP II and your graduation will be delayed.

This is good practice for the professional environment, where asking for extensions is not part of the culture and where meeting deadlines is important for your performance. If you have extenuating circumstances, please contact me with as much advance notice as possible.

• Achieve an Accept with Revisions every assignment. Every assignment must be completed to an Accept with Revisions level or higher.
• Receive no more than two R&Rs. Note that you may only receive two R&R (or failing grades) this semester and still receive credit. These R&Rs could be on different work products or on the same work product.

If you receive a third R&R, you will not receive credit for APP II and your graduation will be delayed.

It is important to note that CR/NC in APP is a high standard, corresponding to a grade of B- or higher on each assignment and overall.

To receive credit for successfully completing APP II you must submit each of the following assignments on time and ensure they are each at a professional level (at least AwR):

• Assignment 1: Spring semester update memo
• Assignment 2: Alternatives & Criteria
• Assignment 3: Findings & Implementation
• Assignment 4: Oral presentation + 1 pager
• Assignment 5: Technical Report
• Assignment 6: Client exit plan
• Assignment 7: Leadership work products (2 products from list)
• Assignment 8: Final reflection & online course evaluation
• Classroom work (defined below)

Classroom work includes attendance and participation in class and team meetings, ungraded assignments, progress update memos, and in-class activities. This involves being prepared for class and discussion, asking questions, answering questions, providing partner/team-member feedback, bringing related materials to the attention of the class, and doing anything else that advances learning for the whole class.

APP Teams/Partners. You will be assigned to a small team of 3-4 members who will work intensively with you throughout the APP process. A large portion of your success in your project comes from the support of your classmates. Partners comment, in writing, on drafts of a number of assignments and can help you with brainstorming, troubleshooting, and strategizing. You should share all your draft work and provide reciprocal help. Partners/teammates are also great gifts for keeping you on task over a yearlong project.  In the past, the most productive groups have scheduled a standing weekly meeting in a set location/reserved room where they work exclusively on their APPs.

APP ownership. Batten APPs are school assets that the Batten School preserves and makes accessible to the Batten community, in compliance with University policies. As graduate theses, APP technical reports (in their final form), are automatically transferred to the Batten School library of student work.

Written Assignments. All written work must be submitted to your instructor electronically by the specified due date and time. Please submit assignments in Word (unless noted in the assignment or granted an exception in advance), which will allow the inclusion of instructor comments and suggestions more easily. Please use footnotes (not endnotes) that are numbered in Arabic (not Roman) numerals. Citations and references must be in APA format.

Generative artificial intelligence is a powerful and readily accessible tool in the professional world. As APP is a pivot class to the professional world, AI use is allowed in all settings and for all assignments in APP with the following caveats and warnings. These policies apply to all AI enabled tools from Generative AI products like ChatGPT, Claude and others to research specific platforms built on top of generative AI like Elicit.

1) Document your use of AI.  AI is still a new tool and we are all learning to use it, for better and for worse. If you use AI in an assignment, you are required to submit an addendum paragraph narrating how you used it (ideation, editing, text generation, etc) and what was effective/ineffective. You will be asked to discuss your experience in class so we can all learn from it.

2) You are responsible for high quality and accurate work. AI is prone to hallucinate, that is to make stuff up (see this policy example). The AI quality has serious shortcomings, especially as applied to particular places and in the present (most AI is trained off of data more than a year old). For example, you can ask it for sources and the best (i.e. paid) models produce 20% made up sources. In the working world, your reputation for accuracy and trustworthiness is the coin of the realm. We will have high standards for accuracy as lives and resources will be at stake in your analysis. Therefore, if you submit made up sources, unverifiable facts, or other hallucinated material you will automatically receive an R&R on your submission, no matter the quality of the rest of the submission.

3) Standards have been raised. Because AI can often produce B or B- quality work with a few keystrokes, work that in past years might be taken as demonstrating engagement in the material via the assignment no longer passes muster. Instead, I expect consistently high-quality work, especially with respect to applying general principles into the specifics of your problem and your client's world. I am particularly interested in seeing you produce value from what you have learned from a close reading of materials from your client and interviews with people in their organization and on the ground.

• * * *

Ultimately, this class is about producing professional quality work. If you can do this with AI's help, great!  That said, you are still learning to use AI well and how to write a policy analysis so be cautious about leaning on AI.  AI writing (especially in longer papers) is often disjointed.  Be cautious about outsourcing thinking and communicating to it.  Let's learn to write with AI as a class community this year.

AI has great promise to help us create professional quality work products more quickly and with better insights. It also has the ability to make stuff up and only tell us simple and vapid truths. I look forward to working with you this semester to learn how to use it ethically, accurately, and effectively.

The Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy embraces and upholds the University of Virginia’s Honor Code principles that mandate that students will not lie, cheat, or steal, and we will not tolerate the actions of those who do. Acting in a manner consistent with the principles of Honor benefits every member of the Batten School community.

We expect every student to comply fully with all provisions of the UVA Honor System. By enrolling in this course, you agree to abide by and uphold the Honor Code System of the University of Virginia. The following applies to your Batten course work and requirements, and unless otherwise specified by your instructors:

• All graded assignments must be pledged.
• Students may not access any notes, study outlines, problem sets, old exams, answer keys, or collaborate with other students without explicit permission.
• When given permission to collaborate with others, students will not copy answers from another student.
• Students should always cite any resources or individuals they have consulted to complete an assignment. If in doubt, sources should be cited. If in doubt please review https://honor.virginia.edu/plagiarism-supplement.
• Suspected violations will be forwarded to the Honor Committee, and, at the discretion of the instructor, students may receive “no credit” for the assignment in question, independent of the actions taken by the Honor Committee.
• Any questions about what is or is not permitted on an assignment should be clarified by students with their instructors prior to the completion of their work.

If you believe you may have committed an Honor Offense, you may wish to file a Conscientious Retraction (“CR”). For your retraction to be considered valid, it must, among other things, be filed with the Honor Committee before you are aware that the Act in question has come under suspicion by anyone. Please contact Batten Honor Representatives if you have questions regarding the Honor System, believe you may have committed an Honor Offense, or would like to report your suspicion of an Honor offense. More information can be found at www.virginia.edu/honor and https://honor.virginia.edu/plagiarism-supplement. Please direct any further questions regarding the course Honor policy to your professor.

The Frank Batten School has a grade normalization practice, with an emphasis on a well-distributed range of grades. Batten courses aim to have a mean grade that does not exceed a 3.5 grade point average.

UVA is committed to creating a learning environment that meets the needs of its diverse student body. If you anticipate or experience any barriers to learning in this course, please feel welcome to discuss your concerns with me. If you have a disability, or think you may have a disability, you may also want to meet with the UVA Student Disability Access Center (SDAC), to request an official accommodation. You can find more information about SDAC, including how to apply online, through their website at www.studenthealth.virginia.edu/SDAC. If you have already been approved for accommodations through SDAC, please make sure to send me your accommodation letter and meet with me so we can develop an implementation plan together.

Additional exam time is not given automatically to students whose first language is not English. Dictionaries are permitted, at the discretion of the faculty member.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or isolated, several individuals at Batten are ready and want to help. Amanda Crombie, Assistant Dean for Academic Programs, Heather Downs, Director of Academic Operations, and Nicolo Porto, Staff Psychotherapist, are available to support all Batten Students. They are readily accessible during walk-in hours or by setting up an appointment. Additionally, all Batten faculty and staff take student health and safety very seriously. Therefore, as part of their duty to care for distressed individuals, faculty and staff will refer students who threaten self-harm or suicide to appropriately qualified personnel at the earliest opportunity.

Alternatively, there are also other University of Virginia resources available. The Student Health Center offers Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) for its students. Call 434-243-5150 (or 434-972-7004 for after hours and weekend crisis assistance) to get started and schedule an appointment. If you prefer to speak anonymously and confidentially over the phone, call Madison House’s HELP Line at any hour of any day: 434-295-8255. Additionally, as part of the student comprehensive health fees, you have 24/7 virtual care through the TimelyCare app.

If you or someone you know is struggling with gender, sexual, or domestic violence, there are many community and University of Virginia resources available. The Office of the Dean of Students, Sexual Assault Resource Agency (SARA), Shelter for Help in Emergency (SHE), and UVA Women’s Center are ready and eager to help.

Finally, I care about you and your well-being, and am always ready to talk.