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By Phil Williams
pwilliam@franklin.uga.edu
Rebecca Greenspan finds the honor a little daunting--and exciting. She is the first student accepted i n the university’s new program leading to a master of arts degree in non-profit organizations.
“I am really excited to be in this program,” says Greenspan, who is currently media relations coordinator of the Georgia Museum of Art. “Non-profit organizations are so important, and they take in everything from major multinational corporations like the Red Cross to local rape crisis centers. Now is the time to push ahead with non-profits.”
The need for an advanced degree is not in dispute, according to Jeffrey Brudney of the department of political science and Tom Holland of the School of Social Work, coordinators of the program. While there are a few other interdisciplinary master’s degree programs in non-profit organizations nationwide, UGA’s is the first in the Southeast.
“Non-profits are the fastest growing section of the economy,” says Holland. “There are well over a million non-profits in the country and a gross under-supply of well-trained people to manage them. Most people involved with these organizations were trained for something else.”
 Although the new degree program at UGA is coordinated by the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Social Work, it also involves faculty from the School of Law, the College of Education, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
The degree program was approved in May by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. Students are now being admitted for the first class, which will begin in January 2001.
The new degree is part of the Institute for Nonprofit Organizations, which is located in Tucker Hall. Other faculty members in the institute, besides Holland and Brudney, are Stephanie Lindquist and Mark Robbins, assistant professors of political science; Mary Anne Lahey, senior public service associate in UGA’s Fanning Institute for Leadership; and Richard Rohs, professor of agricultural leadership.
“Tom and I have long had complementary interests in non-profit organizations,” says Brudney. “Tom’s interest is in the broad scale of how non-profits work, while I am more interested in how to recruit and retain volunteers and work with them effectively. Nearly all non-profits use volunteers. I’m interested in how to make the partnership between non-profits and volunteers better for both parties.”
Greenspan, who received a bachelor’s degree in English from UGA in December 1999, was delighted when she discovered the fledgling program in her own back yard in Athens.
“I found out about it from a friend’s husband, and I was so pleased,” she says. “I can’t imagine not wanting to work for non-profits. Some people sort of have the idea that people who want to work in non-profits are tree-hugging, granola-crunching vegetarians. In my case, that happens to be true, but it’s not true for everybody.”
The primary objective of the master of arts in non-profit organizations is to educate graduate students for careers in the non-profit sector. The curriculum provides background knowledge about non-profit organizations and key skills in administration, leadership and practice through internships.
The core curriculum for the degree includes courses in theory and management of non-profit organizations, fund raising and development for non-profit organizations and administrative law. Six core courses, an internship and three electives are required for the degree.
“We plan to start relatively small, with six to 10 students on our maiden voyage,” says Holland. “But spring semester is our grand opening, and we hope to grow. We will be intimately linked to the entire field and not just a place granting a degree. We want to be a leader in Georgia and the Southeast and eventually the nation.”
Brudney says that interest in non-profit organizations has increased dramatically in the past decade.
“There is a rising interest in the scholarly community,” he says. “Membership in our major professional association has quadrupled in the past 10 years. It’s an area of rising academic and practical interest. Two new journals in the field have begun recently.” |
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