“Every day of your life you deal with death:” Incorporating dirty work into the MPA curriculum

Abstract

Aspects of public service often involve tasks sometimes considered taboo, including working with grit, grime, blood, guts, grease, and stigmatized populations. Yet scholarship in our field directly incorporating dirty work remains limited yet growing. Importantly, if MPA students are not trained in how to work with and manage public sector employees engaged in such work, there is a chance for misunderstanding and mismanagement. In this paper, we draw on the concept of dirty work and showcase several ways how it can be incorporated into the MPA curriculum through topics such as regulation and compliance, emotional labor, budgeting and procurement, and public health. We rely on stories from deathcare workers throughout the U.S. to supplement the points. A dirty work practitioner from a large Iowa medical examiner department lends expertise in each section, and we conclude with case scenarios and questions for incorporating dirty work into MPA classes.