While MAIR students participate in off-campus internships and global programs, the Maxwell School’s MPA Workshop gives MPA students the chance to work as consultants for a real world client on a team of their peers. Many of these projects work with international entities or focus on serving international communities.

While the number of international projects varies from year to year, MPA students always have a chance to further hone their professional skills with a project to add to their portfolio. In 2018, MPA and joint MPA students worked with the following clients with a global perspective.

Client Project
Global FoodBanking Network Emerging Markets – Food Systems Analysis
Hopeprint Empowering Resettled Refugees to Thrive
InterFaith Works of Central New York Qualitative and Quantitative research report concerning economic and workforce issues facing low-income immigrants (including refugees, migrants and immigrants)
RAND Corporation, National Security Research Division North Korea Strategy for Security on the Future of the Korean Peninsula
RAND Corporation, National Security Research Division Middle Eastern Rivalries and the Future of the Region
Refugee & Immigrant Self-Empowerment Assessment of RISE monitoring and evaluation procedures
U.S. Department of Justice, International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program A Pilot Community Policing/Community Prosecution Project for Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism in Kenya
United Nations Office for Project Services, UNOPS Ghana Suppliers Sustainability Initiative

For the 2018 MPA Workshop, students used ranked preference voting to narrow a larger list of projects down to 18. Then, students ranked their top four projects from the final list. These rankings were used to assign students to teams according to their project rankings. This method saw 97% of students receive their first or second choice project. MPA students were able to add a global perspective to their degree with these projects, further enhanced by taking a variety of international relations courses at Maxwell.

RAND and IDA project teams traveling to Washington, DC to deliver presentations on their projects.
Project teams arrive at RAND to give presentations.
RAND and IDA Team Members, 2018. Left to Right: Andrew Sander, Max Tucker, Matt Heggy, Sam Friedman, Tim Schmidt, Ryan Pensyl, Ryan Gross, Phil Porter, Taylor Hart-McGonigle, Chih Yun Huang, Minyang Wang, James Heller

Featured image of the Globe by Andrew Smith from Flickr. Creative Commons.

Internationally Focused Projects for MPA Students, 2017

Internationally Focused Projects for MPA Students, 2016 & 2015