In order to further expand the global vision of SAI’s MPA candidates, the MPA Education Center of SAI recently selected 4 MPA candidates with outstanding performance to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University to participate in the autumn advanced workshop on the government administration and policy analysis as organized by Shanghai MPA Education Steering Committee.

    The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, as the first school of public administration in the US, has rich experience and a wide range of approaches in teaching public administration. During the workshop, the professors of the school provided interesting courses. The trainees come to have an in-depth understanding of the organizational structure of the US governments at various levels through classroom learning, and had got a more direct and clearer cognition of the US government system via the visits to the New York State Council, Onondaga Council, Cazenovia Town Offices and other US government authorities at various levels.

    In the class, trainees actively raised questions to professors and had heated discussions on the hot topic “How to Make Market Play a Decisive Role in Resource Allocation and Better Play the Role of Governments” in combination with the different realities of China and the US. All the trainees compared the theories learned in the classroom of Shanghai Part Institute, China’s realities and the local conditions of the US and analyzed their strengths and weakness, achieving sound results in the learning. In the on-the-spot study, all trainees visited Candelabrum Nursing Home of Onondaga and the regulation engineering site of Onondaga Lake where they gained the deepened understanding of the old-age care models in the US and the cooperation model of the US government and corporations on environmental regulation.

    This is the first workshop that MPA candidates went abroad to take part in and have precious opportunities to lrarn advanced experience of other countries in the public administration. In addition to acquiring the knowledge, the trainees also made friends in the US. Once a classmate from an associate school needed to receive medical treatment promptly late at night, two of SPI MPA candidates volunteered to send the patient to hospital. The deed demonstrated their morality as the Party school members and was lauded by the leading teacher and all trainees of the workshop. All members of the workshop unanimously held that the trip to the US not only helped them acquire new knowledge and thoughts on public administration, but also played a positive role in their completion of the following-up MPA courses and their actual work in the future.