Noncredit course (NONCR-GP)

This non-credit course is an excellent opportunity for all incoming Wagner students to jump-start their academic journey relative to both the foundational content as well as the classroom experience of Wagner graduate coursework. It is required of all students who did not complete their bachelor's degree at a four-year institution in the U.S. and is open to all entering Wagner students. The course aims to achieve four things: 1. Create the foundation for an open, inclusive classroom experience where people can share and learn from the diverse educational and professional experiences students bring to the classroom. 2. Familiarize students with the type of active learning approaches typical of the Wagner classroom, including developing critical thinking skills, active dialogue and discussion, case studies, and group projects. 3. Ensure students have basic familiarity with the institutional and political dynamics at the core of the U.S. political system, understand how the U.S. system differs in significant ways from other political systems, and acquaint students with basic knowledge of the U.S. nonprofit sector. 4. Expose students to some core competencies and expectations in terms of professional communication, both written and verbal.

This interactive workshop serves as an introduction to the many NYU Libraries resources and services available to Wagner students that will help students develop skills appropriate to graduate-level research. In the session, we will cover fundamental research strategies that will prepare students for course assignments and Capstone projects. Students will develop awareness of valuable library resources, learn strategies for framing and conducting literature reviews, and learn about further support services including the NYU Data Services, who can assist with learning quantitative, qualitative, and geospatial analysis. The session concludes with some information about how to effectively cite and integrate sources, with a special focus on APA Style, which Wagner students will use most frequently. Through some short exercises, students will gain practice in developing a search strategy to find high-quality research resources, in situating your work within a larger scholarly context, and in citing scholarly and popular sources in your work.

This four week, non-credit workshop equips NYU Wagner students to strategically navigate the complex world of public service careers. Through research, reflection, discussion, and written assignments, students develop core career planning skills and articulate their professional goals. The course centers on the “F.O.R.” framework: identifying Fields of interest, exploring relevant Organizations, and understanding potential Roles within them. Students will apply this lens to analyze past experiences, evaluate current opportunities, and plan for future impact. Activities include building a 90-second elevator pitch, exploring career pathways, and learning how to describe professional interests with clarity and confidence. Emphasis is placed on the “S.E.E.” strategies to help students maximize their time at Wagner and to be Smart, Experienced, and Engaged. The course culminates in an individualized action plan to guide students’ academic and career decisions throughout their graduate studies and beyond.

This workshop provides participants with the fundamental steps of how to plan and implement transformation initiatives using the PMP methodology and best practices. Project Management forms the basis for effectively delivering improvements to business processes, deploying new technologies, transformation using data and metrics and communicating change management. During the workshop key focus areas will be reviewed including, project initiation, project definition, creation of work breakdown structures, scheduling using Gantt charts and network diagrams, risk management, budgeting and controlling resources, quality assurance (testing), auditing and project closeout. Additionally, participants will learn the concepts of "Lean Six Sigma" and DAMAIC methodology.

This 0-credit workshop will drill down on fundamentals of written English. We will cover punctuation, articles, passive/active voice, how and when to cite others’ work and best practices for self editing. Our focus will be on memos, but the lessons will be applicable to all written communications deliverables. Using short in class assignments and a memo you could possibly use in another class, the course is geared toward Wagner students who want to improve sentence mechanics.

This noncredit module focuses on those math skills that are essential to statistics, microeconomics, and financial management. Students taking quantitative courses are encouraged to take advantage of this review.

This short, non-credit class aims to give students an overview of the key elements of successful writing, and equip them with the tools to approach any writing assignment, from memos to emails to reports to research briefs. This class is designed to be a companion piece to other coursework, and students will be asked to bring in assignments from other courses to work on in class. Topics covered include introductions, structure and organization, paragraphs and sentences, and the use of evidence. All work will take place in class—there will be no additional assignments. Any student who attends for the duration of the course will have access to additional tutoring hours with the instructor through the end of the semester. Writers of all levels are welcome.

This non-credit, 3-session module introduces students to the basic functionalities of Microsoft Excel such as basic formulas, absolute versus relative cell reference, formatting, and time-value of money financial functions. The module is held in a computer lab and every student has a computer. It is intended for students with limited or no Excel experience, and is designed to be taken concurrently with CORE-GP 1021 (Financial Management).

The objective of this workshop is to provide an overview of using LLMs as practical tools for data collection and analysis, and allowing students to create a repeatable workflow to collect, clean and analyze data. The workshop will initially focus on the basics of how LLMs operate, and how effective prompt engineering can reduce the margin of error and increase productivity when executing specific tasks. With a focus on QAing and translating subject area expertise into detailed instructions, the goal is for students to gain experience with using AI for general tasks, as well as for initial data cleaning. After introducing prompt engineering, the workshop will focus on how to leverage AI in order to have access to technical data sources without prior knowledge of programming. The workshop will cover the tools that now let AI connect to external data, such as APIs and MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectors, and give participants the chance to use them directly. Ultimately, students should gain experience asking AI to work with these sources and extract large amounts of data that can later be used for research. The workshop will then shift to creating repeatable workflows, and configuring specific instances of the models to specialize in one task. Students will learn how to turn AI from a chatbot into a highly specialized assistant that can automate tasks in the realm of data collection and analysis (such as using the web to collect data and perform light analysis). Finally, the workshop will close with an overview of how workflows can be made available beyond a single person's account. The options discussed will include sharing a workflow's instructions with a colleague, deploying it across multiple people within the same organization through a shared Claude or ChatGPT workspace, and publishing it as a standalone application that anyone can use. As a non-credit workshop, there will be no final grade assigned. However, by the end of the workshop, students will be expected to develop a set of project instructions that turns Claude or ChatGPT into a guided, highly specialized assistant capable of using the web to collect data and perform light analysis.