Spring 2022 Registration: A Message to MPA and MPP Students – Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration

Re: Spring 2022 Registration

Dear MPA and MPP students,

It’s been very exciting to welcome all of you back to campus for the Fall 2021 semester! We thank you so much for adhering to and bearing with the vaccination and safety protocols at this time. As of now, we fully expect these protocols to continue through the Spring 2022 semester, but please stay tuned for any further directions and updates from the University.

The main purpose of this message is to inform you that Spring 2022 registration for graduate students begins on Wednesday, November 10^th on GWeb. Please consult the GW course schedule for dates, times and locations of all courses. At the time of the composition of this letter, the Spring 2022 schedule has not been posted, but we anticipate it will be posted shortly. In the meantime, please see the TSPPPA Spring 2022 course offerings if you want to see the TSPPPA courses offered before the university schedule is posted. We also want to provide you the following suggestions and information.

Please check DegreeMap, the MPA/MPP websites, and the Masters student handbook regarding your degree progress so far. If you waived or plan to waive any courses and they are not reflected on DegreeMap, please contact Professor Nathan to get it updated as soon as possible.

As a reminder, please take a part-time schedule (6-7 credits per semester) if you are working full time. Courses can become quickly overwhelming otherwise.

First Year Students – Please continue to work on completing your core courses. While it may be tempting to jump to field and elective courses quickly, we strongly recommend completing the core first.

Spring 2022 MPA/MPP Capstone (PPPA 6008) Students – Virtual information sessions are scheduled for Friday, November 5^th, Friday November 12^th and Friday December 3rd from 4:30-5:45pm. Professor Joe Cordes will contact you via email and the Skim with further details. If you plan to take capstone in the spring and have not been in contact with Professor Cordes yet, please let him know as soon as possible.

Undergraduate Combined Degree Students: Please consult your admission letters on course registration instructions and the deadline to submit your combined degree credit forms.

For assistance with the course registration process, please contact Deneé Bottoms. If any TSPPPA courses are at capacity and you’d like to be added to a waitlist, send Deneé a message along with an RTF-EZ form indicating your interest. You don’t need the instructor’s signature, and please don’t seek out the instructor asking for permission to enter the course. If the course can be expanded, we will coordinate with the instructor and select who can be admitted based on student need, and we will contact those students. However, due to pandemic precautions, we will strictly avoid overloading courses unless absolutely necessary. While on the waitlist, keep checking Gweb for any seats that come free and notify Deneé if you do get a seat. If you can’t enroll in a course due to capacity constraints, have a backup course in mind and please don’t hesitate to contact core and field advisors for any advice in course selection.

If you decide to register for courses outside of TSPPPA and you can’t register through GWeb, you’ll need to fill out a registration form and get permission from the instructor or an authorized person from that school/department. Please contact Deneé or an advisor if you are having trouble finding the right point of contact.

For any master’s students interested in PhD level (8000 and above) courses, please contact Deneé to get on a list for permission to register in those courses.

Feel free to explore courses in the GW consortium if you cannot find equivalent courses at GW.

Trachtenberg School syllabi are available online. If you don’t see a syllabus for a PPPA course being offered, please contact Pam Brown Turner.

Tentative TSPPPA Summer 2022 course offerings – The tentative TSPPPA Summer 2022 course offerings is now available. Note that the core courses of PPPA 6000 (Perspectives on Policy Values), PPPA 6006 (Policy Analysis) and PPPA 6016 (Program Evaluation and Policy Analysis) are tentatively scheduled to be offered in Summer 2022. The MPP tools class, PPPA 6021 (Data Visualization), is also tentatively scheduled. However, demand for these courses in the summer is likely to be high, and we will likely not be overloading any courses for safety reasons. If you can take these courses in Spring or Fall 2022 instead, we urge you to do so.
Summer semesters are a great time to take field and elective courses. The university will offer an assortment of courses that will be revealed early in 2022 on the GW course schedule.