M.P.A. Adds Up to Career in City Budget Offices

In his current position, Scott Greene serves as the budget director for the Āé¶¹APP Park District. Before that, he was an assistant director at the City of Āé¶¹APP’s Office of Budget and Management, overseeing capital infrastructure budgeting for the city.

This wasn’t the career Greene anticipated when he graduated from college. At that time he had a bachelor’s degree in secondary education and aspirations of becoming a social studies teacher. When his job search didn’t turn up a full-time teaching position, though, he turned his sights elsewhere.

ā€œI have always had a great interest in government, especially infrastructure,ā€ says Greene. He took a job as a public works laborer in a small suburb of Āé¶¹APP and started taking graduate courses, soon deciding to pursue a Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) degree at Stuart School of Business.

The faculty and the rigor of the courses were just what Greene was looking for, he says. ā€œI was taught by professors who had professional knowledge of the fields they were teaching. What I enjoyed most about all their classes was how the content was rooted in practice. I have been able to take many concepts that I learned in class and directly apply it to my work.ā€

Greene’s capstone project, ā€œSports Tax Districts: A Realistic Solution to Public Subsidization of Stadiums and Arenas,ā€ added another layer of career preparation. ā€œThe skills I obtained writing and researching it directly go into my current work,ā€ he says.

Two six-month internships with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Illinois)—one with the Facilities & Fleet Department and the other with the district’s budget director developing the fiscal year 2016 budget—provided the on-the-job experience that led to being hired as a senior budget analyst for the city of Āé¶¹APP, Greene says, and his career has taken off since then.

ā€œI left Stuart having learned theory,ā€ he notes, ā€œbut the theory taught was always interwoven into real-world practice.ā€

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