Beginning in the fall of 2018, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs will offer a bachelor of arts in public affairs, drawing from the three fields the school is known for: public policy, social welfare and urban planning.
The major has a public service ethos and it will connect the dots between theory and action by combining critical thinking, social science methodology and community engagement, said Meredith Phillips, newly named chair of the undergraduate program. Phillips is an associate professor of public policy and sociology who has taught at UCLA for two decades.
“Every class will be focused on societal problems, issues that students care about, and how we can develop reasonable solutions,” Phillips said. “In our classes, we’ll discuss competing values, empirical data and evidence, and different conceptual frameworks for understanding the world. Our students will be developing skills in the service of solving problems, which is really what distinguishes this major from others.”
