SPP Faculty Explore Case Teaching and Design

Assistant Professors Evelyne Hübscher and Anand Murugesan, Associate Professor Michael Dorsch, and Visiting Professor Sara Svensson have been awarded a Teaching Development Grant to incorporate case-study teaching into core courses on public and economic policy at the School of Public Policy (SPP). "We were motivated to apply for the grant in part," explained Hübscher, "by our participation in an intensive two-day workshop this past fall.

Assistant Academic Dean and Director of SLATE and Case Program at Harvard Kennedy School Carolyn Wood led the October 2015 workshop at SPP. "Many faculty who participated in the workshop were already using various techniques to cultivate active learning in their classrooms, so it's a natural extension of this work to add case method into the mix," Wood said.
"Cases will provide our diverse students with the opportunity to apply the different sets of analytical tools and skills that they develop at SPP to work out innovative, effective, and suitable policy solutions," commented Associate Professor Marie-Pierre Granger. "Students learn better when teachers help them think things through for themselves than they do when teachers tell them what to think," said Assistant Professor Simon Rippon.

In addition to exploring how to most effectively incorporate case studies into the courses they teach, SPP faculty are also exploring how they might develop their own cases – perhaps by partnering with colleagues at CEU's Center for Teaching and Learning, and at the Open Society Foundations (OSF). "Working with materials in the OSF archives and interviewing OSF personnel would give our faculty and our students more of a hands-on understanding of the problems and opportunities that arise in the work of transnational NGOs," said Professor Yahya Sadowski.

"I'm very excited by the initiative that our faculty have shown to build on the workshop that Professor Wood led last fall and that was fortunate to attend. Case teaching is one important tool to realize SPP's commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to teaching. This grant will enable our faculty to redesign courses and to identify cases that are particularly relevant for our students," commented SPP Dean Wolfgang Reinicke.