TIM MYNETT POLITICAL CONSULTANT PROFESSIONAL

TIM MYNETT POLITICAL CONSULTANT PROFESSIONAL

In discussions with SIPA’s Deans, I was advised that such a degree would be best placed in Columbia’s then-new School of Continuing Education, now called the School of Professional Studies. Around 20, while America endured a “great recession,” I started to work with colleagues at Columbia’s Earth Institute to develop a program designed for working professionals interested in pivoting to the emerging field of Sustainability Management. That cohort program is very successful but requires single-minded commitment and focus. The program we created at SIPA requires an in-depth, full-time commitment of twelve months to complete a 54-credit Master’s degree in three intense semesters. Columbia now offers hundreds of courses in environmental policy and sustainability management each year, and our SIPA students can shape part of their program to focus on issues like energy, climate, water, agriculture, and many other topics, including sustainable fashion. In recent years, we have made the curriculum a little more flexible by allowing students to enroll in four electives in the fall and spring semesters. We have undertaken hundreds of workshop projects since the start of SIPA’s environmental policy program. Today, over two decades later, our program has evolved significantly, but we continue to offer the same basic degree in environmental science and policy. The entire sequence was based on experiential learning or learning by doing. In the spring semester, we engaged in pro-bono projects for environmental government and nonprofit agencies. The “Environmental MPA” also featured a three-semester workshop sequence that began with a two-semester management simulation that emphasized science communication in the summer and program start-up and management in the fall. The core MPA courses taught traditional concepts but focused cases and data sets on environmental issues. It featured a summer of environmental science, along with the typical set of MPA courses in quantitative policy analysis, economics, management, and financial management taught during the fall and spring semesters. In 2002, building on what we learned fielding the environmental policy concentration, we established a Master of Public Administration program specifically for environmental policy analysts and managers: the MPA in Environmental Science and Policy. The environmental science our faculty taught to students of environmental policy and management was not the same as that taught to future environmental scientists instead, it was the science most relevant to policy and management decision-making. During my time at EPA, I came to learn the importance of environmental science and the general ignorance that most environmental policymakers and policy analysts (me included) had of the basics of toxicology, hydrology, geology, climate science, ecology, and earth systems science. That course was entitled “Environmental Science for Policymakers,” and it was an innovative and important breakthrough.

A unique aspect of that program in the early days was a course that was team-taught by several prominent environmental scientists from Columbia’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. That concentration continues today as a concentration in Energy and Environment. I started in 1987, when I became the Associate Dean of Faculty at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and was able to launch an environmental policy concentration. I began putting that understanding to work, creating graduate programs in environment and sustainability policy and management. During my time as an EPA staffer and then consultant from 1977 through the 1990s, I started to develop an understanding of the educational needs of environmental professionals.

Tim mynett political consultant