This is a course about the future. It is a survey course, so we'll expose you to several issues, from domestic concerns like healthcare to international considerations, from security to the use of military force. We also focus on policy advocacy. We are aided in this effort by learning directly from veteran legislators about how you get proposals adopted. And how you might build a sustainable consensus, an effective compromise. These lessons are applicable to most any community. Whether it is your local town council or the UN General Assembly. The skills are transferable. Our approach holds that sometimes it is insufficient to sit in the academic ivory tower and emit theoretical proposals for solving public challenges. There's compelling public interest to encourage citizens to combine such efforts with engagement. Many of your speakers have worked for decades tying to advance their own notions of sound public policy. We offer some tactical skills on how to get your ideas implemented. In fact, the office of the Dean upstairs has a big poster which reads simply, leadership is the art of getting things done. Indeed. There is no politically correct view in this classroom. Our speakers have different political experiences. There is no right answer however to what is the best political philosophy. Especially on age old questions such as how to balance individual liberty with an effective central government. Some of our students are conservative. Some are liberal. There are Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. Regardless, we are committed to helping them all sharpen their skills as policy advocates and leaders. So we'll talk about issue framing and coalition building. And we'll discuss strategy and tactics for securing consensus for sustainable policy implementation. Here in the United States, we live in a country that is a proud, though quite imperfect democracy. The truth is, most democracies do a poor job of planning and preparing for the future. We tend to be focused on the next election, and the next quarterly business report. So, how do we prepare students to be leaders in the arena of public policy? The approach of this school for VA and MPP students alike, blends economics and data analysis, and political science with psychology and policy history. And we acknowledge the fact that many of these issues young professionals will confront in the future are changing dramatically driven by technology. Think, for example, about policy for using drone strikes. Think about citizen privacy versus government spying. Think bioethics. These are issues many of the great public policy schools founded in the 1960s were ill-equipped to grasp. They are the issues the next generation will have to solve.