Public Administration - Senior Thesis

The Public Administration subfield explores two types of questions: how government policies are implemented and how public agencies are run. If you are interested in questions about how government is structured, organized, managed, specifically exploring how bureaucracies’ function, how public services are delivered, and even questions about the budgeting, ethics, and human resources involved in these organizations, your thesis would focus on public administration. Research in Public Administration employs a range of methods, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Examples of previous capstone projects and the methodology they used:

Bilingual Education: Understanding California’s Language Education Debate from the Perspective of Teachers, Parents, and Students (Observations and interviews)
Evaluating Michigan State University’s Best Practices in Implementing Title IX Policies, Procedures, and Resources (Case study)
School Financing and Inequity: How the Education Finance System is the Gateway to Inequality in America (Quantitative study with publicly available datasets)
Park Equity in Los Angeles (Case study examining public parks in Los Angeles)
Business Improvement Districts and Gentrification in Ethnic Enclaves through Social Media (Descriptive analysis of social media posts)
Homelessness Crisis in California: A Comparative Analysis Between Brentwood, Compton, and Los Angeles (Case study)
Non-Citizen Voting: Effects of Non-Citizen Voting in School Board Elections (Case study)
A Critical Analysis of Factors Influencing Recidivism in Southern California (Quantitative study with publicly available datasets)
Analyzing California’s Housing Needs: How One Southern California ‘Boom Town’ is Addressing the Housing Epidemic (Case study)

Each of these thesis projects is available in the Undergraduate Journal of Political Science.