LIST OF PANELS

Social equity was adopted as the fourth pillar of public administration, along with economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Johnson and Savara (2011) defined social equity as the active commitment to fairness, justice, and equality in the formulation of public policy, and management of all institutions serving the public directly of by contract. Public administrators, including all persons involved in public governance should seek to prevent and reduce inequality and injustice based on significant social characteristics and to promote greater equality in access to services, procedural fairness, quality of services and social outcomes. This demonstrates a unique set of opportunities and challenges to public policy study in defining, measuring and evaluating social equity in public policy.

The purpose of this course is to provide participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to critically think, understand and analyze social equity and public policy. This course will introduce students to a wide range of public policy areas along with the core dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and economy. More specifically, this course advances the participants’ understanding about social equity and its relationship to public policy both from conceptual and practical perspectives.

Upon the successful completion of this pre-conference course, participants will be able to:

1) Compare and analyze the conceptual underpinnings of social equity

2) Critically apply the importance of social equity within public administration/public policy

3) Discuss measurement approaches relating to social equity analysis of public policies and

4) Engage in constructive dialogues on critical concepts related to social inequities in our

society.

Course readings and class activities will help participants develop these competencies.

Preconference Course