By now, I’m sure you’ve read a little about the Summer Field Placement and/or internship requirement for MPA-DP students. So today, I’m sharing the second post in a guest series by current student Amanda Grossi, MPA-DP 2016, in which she reflects on her summer in Nairobi, Kenya.
Archive for MPA-DP – Page 5
Throughout the weeks you’ve read a lot about the experiences of our students in the MIA and MPA programs. For some students, however, that’s not enough, as there’s a small group who are interested in learning more about the MPA in Development Practice. Read More →
**Correction: It seems that our blogging platform has a mind of its own when it comes to homonyms (peek vs. peak) We apologize for this obvious mistake and hope you won’t hold it against WordPress (or us).
As a second-year graduate student in the Master of Public Administration in Development Practice (MPA-DP) program, I have many long, grueling hours under my belt spent in the many nooks and crannies of Lehman Library. Luckily, I’ve had great classmates (and now best friends) to work by my side. Mariela Maccado, MPA-DP ’16, is one of my classmates and truly an intelligent and inspiring emerging development practitioner.
Mariela Machado Fantacchiotti
Prior to SIPA, Mariela was a telecommunications engineer with five years of work experience. Through the MPA-DP program, Mariela has combined her previous telecommunications-engineering education and experience with recent development studies. Mariela has accomplished a lot at SIPA, so I wanted to share with you a little bit about how the MPA-DP program has supported her efforts.
“I came [to SIPA] to learn how to design, deploy and make a project sustainable overtime, while at the same time addressing the social and economic needs,” Mariela says. She later applied that newfound knowledge to her three-month summer field placement at Inveneo in San Francisco, which is a nonprofit social enterprise that delivers the tools of technology—sustainable computing and broadband—to those who need it most in the developing world in order to transform lives through better education, healthcare, economic opportunities and faster relief.
There she worked alongside their engineering department, studying drones for Inveneo’s upcoming “Drones 4 Good” project, and researching Internet policies and laws in Cuba focusing on information and communication technologies (ICT) development and freedom of speech. “MPA-DP prepared me to understand development in a broader sense,” Mariela adds. “I could now understand sustainability taking into considerations all the different axis, from human centered design to M&E post implementation plan. Thus, I was able to give Inveneo a new perspective on how to design, implement and measure ICT4D projects.”
To learn about other summer placements from 2010-2015, please check out our Summer Field Placements Map.
All of the summer placements on the map were introduced to the incoming students at the MPA-DP annual fall retreat. Held every year within the first month of school, the fall retreat is open to both first and second-year students, and it takes place in upstate New York. Considering the MPA-DP program is “small by design,” the retreat is a key programmatic milestone in building up both the unique MPA-DP spirit and a strong cohort community at the beginning of the academic year.
More than 80 students attended the retreat this September (pictured above). It’s a great kick-off event to the fall semester and provides an opportunity for the students to learn about program offerings, as well as to get to know each other and chat informally with the program staff.
For more information on the summer placements this year, or about the annual MPA-DP retreat, please feel free to email [email protected].
[Photo courtesy of Annum Hussain]
One of the most beloved SIPA traditions is SIPA follies, an annual variety show put on by second year students poking fun at life at SIPA. Some of the skits are scandalous that they are never put online! (#WishIwaskidding). One skit that DID make it on to the internet (and go viral) was Development Boy, a light hearted parody of SIPA’s lauded MDP (MPA-DP) Program to the tune of Estelle’s American Boy.
You too can enjoy it here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA-ALiizsm8
As most of you may know, SIPA is a place where you come to do an MIA (Master of International Affairs) or an MPA (Master of Public Administration). When encountering new people at school, the first question you get asked is usually “what’s your concentration?”, or sometimes an even more blunt, “Are you EPD?”. Walking around our beloved International Affairs building, you can’t help hearing stories about the endless “Conceptual Foundations” course readings, or the “light” assignments for the Politics of Policymaking course, better known as POP.
But although these two programs might encompass the majority of Seeples [SIPA students], there is a third, not so well known category, popularly identified as the “MDPs”. MDP or MPA-DP is the acronym for the Master in Public Administration in Development Practice program. MPA-DP is a relatively new program, originally quite small but it is increasingly becoming more popular. We are the returned Peace-Corps volunteers; the ones who leave NYC for some of the most remote corners of Africa every summer; and the sometimes peculiar crowd that always hangs out together on the 6th floor.
But aside from this subtle uniqueness and its smaller size, are we really that different? As a second year MPA-DP student myself, I wouldn’t say so. Academically, the main difference in the first semester is that the MPA-DP core course is called “Foundations of Sustainable Development”, and as its name suggests, rather than focusing on international relations, like the MIAs, or policy-making, like the MPAs, we study what is behind sustainable development. Aside from that, we share all the quantitative and economic courses, the core and all the parties.
From then on, MDPs have to take courses on the various disciplines that shape development. The goal of our program is to train well rounded practitioners who can understand the broad picture, being familiar with key topics in the development world such as public health, food security, nutrition, infrastructure, environmental issues, among others. This multi-sectoral curriculum is our “concentration”. This is not to say that you cannot specialize in something if you want to, because we have plenty of electives left to choose all sorts of courses at SIPA and Columbia. Likewise, a certain number of MPAs and MIAs are also welcome in core MPA-DP classes every semester and if they wish to construct this kind of interdisciplinary knowledge, they also have electives to do so.
So ultimately, aside from your concentration or lack of thereof, I think SIPA is a school that gives you enough space to explore other disciplines and take the subjects you like (disclaimer: in your 2nd year). All the MIAs, MPAs, MPA-DPs, and even the more mysterious PEPMs, EMPAs and ESPs, share facilities, courses, professors and the privilege of being part of a school that has plenty of amazing people in every program.
Blog post submitted by Mariana Costa Checa. Mariana is a second year student in the MPA in Development Practice program at SIPA.
"The most global public policy school, where an international community of students and faculty address world challenges."
—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs
