Online Collaborative Governance Graduate Certificate

New Tools - Better Results - Public Good

Online Collaborative Governance Graduate Certificate

Diverse group of students working together at a table

Become the kind of leader that organizations, communities, and governments need now: inclusive, strategic, and collaborative. 

Program Overview

  • Designed for working professionals, government and nonprofit leaders, and PSU grad students.
  • 5 courses total: 16 graduate credits, complete in just over a year.
    • 3 core courses offered fully online — flexible and interactive for busy schedules.
    • 2 elective courses — options vary by term and may be offered online or in-person.
  • Courses available to start any academic term.
  • Not sure? You can take individual courses without committing to the full certificate!

Why Collaborative Governance?

The most pressing public challenges—climate change, homelessness, health equity, economic resilience—require diverse stakeholders to work together. Leaders across sectors say collaboration skills are critical but often lacking. This program gives you the tools to lead change in your organization and community through inclusive, results-driven partnerships.

In my work with the food security coalition, I apply the skills and techniques that [the Collaborative Governance Certificate Program] taught me all the time—how to manage a group, how to help them make decisions together, how to get what a large group knows out into their collective knowledge.

—Liz Oberhausen, Food Security Coalition Project Manager

 

Flexible, Applied, and Designed for Your Schedule

Core courses are offered in an innovative and highly interactive online format. Most students complete the program in five terms (just over one year), even while working full-time.

Not ready for the full certificate? You can enroll in individual courses to gain targeted skills.

Learn from Internationally Recognized Leaders

Courses are taught by faculty affiliated with the National Policy Consensus Center, home to Oregon Consensus, Oregon Solutions, and Oregon's Kitchen Table. These programs are known across the United States for their real-world collaborative governance and community engagement. You'll be part of a learning community shaped by experience, practice, and deep commitment to collaborative problem-solving.

What You'll Get:

  • Practical, graduate-level instruction from collaborative governance experts.
  • Highly-interactive online classes with live discussion and group work.
  • Opportunities to apply what you learn in real-world collaborative governance projects or a problem in your own workplace or community.
  • A professional network of peers and practitioners.

Key Skills You'll Develop: 

  • Build effective partnerships across sectors, organizations, and departments.
  • Assess and identify appropriate interventions for multi-party public issue conflicts.
  • Design multi-party processes for policy agreement or collective action implementation.
  • Conduct interest-based negotiations and manage conflict in multi-party settings.
  • Identify and learn how to work with power dynamics to drive meaningful engagement and joint problem solving.
  • Facilitate joint learning that brings together cultural, lived, and technical knowledge to help groups build understanding.
  • Support groups to align and secure broad-based resources and authorities to ensure effective implementation.

Through the collaborative governance program, some of the key things that I found really helpful were the decision support tools that have been introduced to me in the classes, and not getting bogged down in looking for the perfect piece of data that’s going to give us the answer. There is no perfect piece of data that’s ever going to give us an answer, because collectively we have to make meaning together.

—Pam Peck, Metro Resource, Conservation, and Recycling Manager

Accreditation 

Portland State University is fully accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. 

Contact 

For program information and student advising:

Kristen Wright
(503) 725-9078
kjwright@pdx.edu

For registration and admissions:

Public Administration Department, Main Office
T (503) 725-3921
F (503) 725-8250
publicad@pdx.edu