Broaden and reimagine our professional offerings to equip students for the future of policy.
We are educating the next generation of policy professionals in a time when the skill set needed to succeed is changing and government needs professionals more than ever. At the same time, where, when and how students learn is also changing, and debt makes it hard for students to enter public service.
Goal: Create opportunities and find support for a talented and diverse student population.
Progress:
• We have increased funding for pilot programs to provide living stipends and more financial aid.
• We have raised about $12 million for financial aid for our professional students.
• These increases in financial aid and an intentional change in efforts to reach a broad set of applicants has enabled us to attract a much more diverse student body.
Next Steps:
We continue to raise funds for student support, to broaden our outreach and to recruit a diverse student body.
Goal: Launch curricular reform both within and across MPP/MIDP programs, to achieve synergies.
Progress:
• We created a unified core basic statistics course for both MPP and MIDP students to satisfy their statistics core requirement together.
• We restructured the financing of the MIDP program to incentivize cross-program activities and offerings.
• We are hiring two new Professors of the Practice who will be teaching in both programs, and we are encouraging more of the faculty to do the same.
Next Steps:
Continue to find synergies across programs.
Goal: Rethink MPP architecture, including flexibility and more modular options along with group projects.
Progress:
• We implemented group projects as an option for our MPP students for their Masters’ Projects.
• Students can select concentrations in six areas.
• We have created new tags for our courses with substantial DEI content to guide student interest and explore a possible concentration.
• As a pilot, a few students have been able to take classes together with our new hybrid MNSP degree students.
Next Steps:
We hope to add more opportunities to focus on or earn recognition in specific skills areas. We hope to increase modularity, or the ability of students to take part of our program online.
Goal: Experiment and expand hybrid and online executive/modular options and/or mid-career degree options.
Progress:
• All our professors now have competencies to teach online and can create digital content in our newly-built recording studio. We have built a content library based on the many class materials prepared by our faculty.
• We have created an Office of Digital Learning led by a new Director of Digital Learning.
• We have added a new executive Master of National Security Policy program (MNSP), which has a hybrid format for working professionals.
• Our residential students are able to take some hybrid classes.
• We have broadened Executive Education across the school to provide more topics and sessions, launching new programs in corporate social responsibility, behavioral economics and policy, program evaluation, and human-centered design. In 2022 we launched a new executive program in cybersecurity capacity building.
Next Steps:
We will continue to ensure our new programs stay strong and we will explore other options.
Goal: Consider new graduate degrees and/or stronger concentrations.
Progress:
• We launched a new hybrid degree, our executive Master of National Security Policy. With an incoming group of 19 strong students, a great faculty lineup, and a unified curriculum, the program is off to a great start.
• We also added concentrations for our MPP program. Students can graduate with an MPP concentration in:
1. Energy and Environment
2. International Development
3. Social Policy
4. Tech Policy
5. Health Policy
6. National Security
Another new program option is the team-based master’s project.
Next Steps:
We are continuing to explore options and working to ensure our new programs are strong. We are currently evaluating the creation of a new hybrid mid-career Masters of Public Affairs degree.
Goal: Broaden new competences in data science, analytics and governance technologies, as well as ethics of technology.
Progress:
• We explored a dual degree with data science at Duke but it did not progress.
• We have hired more faculty in technology policy.
• We are currently searching for a new ethics professor (Payne chair).
Next Steps:
We are interested in hiring faculty who can teach data science and governance of technologies.
Goal: MPP skills certificate in systemic racism and structural inequality.
Progress:
A faculty group set criteria for inclusion of classes. We identified classes and have shared them online to help interested students identify which classes to take.
Next Steps:
Analyze whether we can continue to offer sufficiently robust offerings to create a skills certificate.
