Public Administrator Generated Information on Economic Development

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR GENERATED INFORMATION ON ECONOMIC

DEVELOPEMENT INSTRUCTIONS: OPTION 3

For this assignment option, you will interview 1 public administrator and review select public

sector generated data for a chosen community. With this option, you will integrate qualitative

(interview information) and quantitative (statistical data on development status) to approximate

the typical approach to applied research and display the information you gain in an audio

embedded PowerPoint to satisfy this portion of course requirements.

It would be wise to interview someone from the same location as your Case Study Project. This

will give you a first-person perspective on some of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and

threats faced by community developers in this area. Note that you must interview an individual

directly related with city management and/or economic development. If you choose to interview

an individual not directly related to these topics, you will have points deducted.

The following list gives you some examples of job positions that your candidates may hold:

 Economic development council,

 Chamber of commerce,

 City manager,

 City council member,

 Director of economic development, or

 Mayor (or assistant/deputy mayor)

Request an interview with your chosen candidate by reading the following information

verbatim:

“I am a graduate student at Liberty University studying public administration and would

like the opportunity to ask you some questions about your position, role, and experience

with community economic development. The information gleaned from this interview will

only be used to facilitate personal learning, application, and synthesis of material related to

economic development in PADM 530, a graduate course in public administration at

Liberty University. The interview will be recorded only for the hearing of the professor.”

Before you begin interviewing the candidate, make sure that you have 10–15 questions planned

out that you want to ask.

Sample Questions:

 How does the local planning process impact economic development?

 What are the strategic approaches you use to economic development?

 How do businesses impact the economic development of this community?

 How do the human resources in this community impact economic development?

 Once you have a strategic development plan, what are the steps for implementation?

 What are the challenges facing leaders of economic development?

 What are the economic strengths of your city/town/etc.?

 What are some of the weaknesses of your economic development plan in your city/town?

 What are the opportunities for economic development within your city/town?

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 What threatens the potential for economic development within your city/town?

 What leadership traits are important for someone wanting to go into public administration/economic development?

The interview can be conducted in person or through videoconferencing (with a tool like Skype).

You are not required to provide an audio recording of the interview.

Once you have completed the interview, you will develop a PowerPoint presentation that

synthesizes the interview data with other sources of community data. You must include a

minimum of 4 sources in addition to the public administrator interview source. A separate

document listing all sources in current APA format must be submitted with the PowerPoint. The

PowerPoint presentation must include 12–15 slides. Your presentation must include a brief bio of

the interviewee as well as the logistics of the interview (time, place, location, and anything else

that will help the reader understand the setting).

Use the attached instructions titled “Recording Audio in PowerPoint” to complete an audio

recording for each powerpoint slide. The total presentation time must range from 20– 30

minutes.

Submit your PowerPoint presentation with audio by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Sunday of

Module/Week 3.