Practicum in Transportation Policy, Operations & Logistics
(PUBP 722, Spring 2003)
Syllabus
Last updated: 1/28/2003 2:56:00 PM
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Time: |
Tuesday, |
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Meeting locations: |
1. GMU 2. VDOT Bristol District Office, via interactive TV 3. VDOT Richmond Office, via interactive TV |
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Instructor: |
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Telephone |
703-993-2275 |
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Fax: |
801-749-9198 |
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E-mail: |
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Websites: |
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Office location: |
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Office hours: |
Generally Monday – Friday, |
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Sections: |
TP1 for students enrolling using interactive TV 001 for students enrolling for attendance in |
This course is the capstone of the Master’s in Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics.[1] The objective of the course is to engage students in an in-depth field study of ongoing transportation policy, operations, and/or logistics situations, and the design and delivery of actions to manage or resolve problems and opportunities.
For Spring 2003, the subject of the Practicum is critical infrastructure
security. It will be taught in conjunction with another seminar course, PUBP
710.008, Research Seminar on Critical Infrastructures, Technological and Natural
Disasters and Public Policy. Both classes will meet together. The webpage of
the other course is http://mason.gmu.edu/~tlaporte/critinfrastructuresS03.html.
The objective of the spring 2003 practicum is to evaluate critical infrastructure security problems for selected clients and formulate recommendations for managing them.
Students will present their analyses and recommendations at the end of the semester. The venue and organization of the project presentation will be determined as part of the project.
The primary requirement of the course is to produce a report and recommendations to the external client(s). In addition, the first several weeks of the semester will utilize a seminar format for the discussion of several core background readings in the area of critical infrastructure, technological and natural disaster, and public policy. This background material will be assigned sequentially during the first several weeks of the class.
The student’s grade will be based 50% on the overall quality of the formal reports and presentations for which he or she is responsible (that is, on the performance of group products), and 50% on the instructor’s assessment of the individual student’s contribution to the overall effort. To inform that assessment, each student will submit a self-assessment to the instructor on the date of the scheduled final exam for the course. The self-assessment will include a description of the student’s contribution to the overall project, as well as what he or she learned. The self-assessment should also contain an assessment of the course PUBP 722 and of the TPOL program, and suggestions for improving them.
A project course is different from a normal course in that there is not a set schedule of lectures and discussions. Rather, much of the work of the course takes place outside the classroom, working individually or in teams. Organizing this work and maintaining project control and quality is itself a major task, and requires effort. The following are possible project roles:
· Project leader/coordinator
· Project webmaster
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Project
librarian (documents, e-documents, data)
· Project report coordinator
· Project presentation coordinator
· Project communications coordinator (liaison with outside parties to avoid multiple repeated requests to the same sources).
· Task leaders
In addition, the project itself will involve a number of tasks. The initial work of the course will be to define tasks and assign responsibilities.
Classroom and interactive television (ITV) time have been reserved according to a normal weekly schedule, and the instructor is available to meet with the class at this time. However, given the project nature of the class, it may not be necessary to meet as a whole every week.
Subgroups of the class may wish to use the ITV facilities for meetings during the scheduled class time on weeks when the full class is not meeting, or for a portion of the meeting time on weeks where status meetings are scheduled, or at other times as available.
The university has provided a WebCT site for the use of the class for posting and exchanging information. If additional resources are required, every effort will be made to provide them.
The course instructor is
Recent research areas include: technical standard setting
through consortia; policy objectives and general requirements for deploying
signal preemption and priority systems in the greater
He earned his B.S. in civil engineering at
Plagiarism: All work must be your own. Inappropriate use of the work of others without attribution is plagiarism and a George Mason University Honor Code violation punishable by expulsion from the University. All students should familiarize themselves with this honor code provision (http://www.gmu.edu/facstaff/handbook/aD.html). To guard against plagiarism and to treat students equitably, written work may be checked against existing published materials or digital data bases available through various plagiarism detection services. Accordingly materials submitted to all courses must be available in electronic format.
[1] Students may be enrolled either in the Master of Science in Professional Studies in Transportation Policy, Operations & Logistics or the Master of Arts in Transportation Policy, Operations & Logistics.