McCourt School

From Navy Officer to Newmark Scholar

Kimberly Iverson — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:59:53 +0000

THE HUMAN BEHIND THE POLICY

Every U.S. Navy destroyer undergoes a combat systems upgrade, an industrialized process where shipbuilders gut the vessel, replacing old machinery with new equipment. Watching his ship, the USS Chafee, transition from naval operations to an industrial environment after deployment in the Indo-Pacific, Navy Surface Warfare Officer Malachi Seib (MPM’28) gained a perspective he has carried with him.

“Everybody who’s worked in policy understands that resources are finite,” said Seib, a recipient of the Craig Newmark Veterans Scholarship Fund, which increases access to a McCourt School education for active-duty servicemen and women, veterans and military-connected students. “We want to fund everything, and we want to do everything, but we physically can’t. Sometimes the right decision doesn’t always feel like it when you can see and feel the disappointment coming from a sailor over a decision that had to be made.”

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The Power of Public Policy Degrees Beyond the Federal Government

Judi Ketteler — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:59:26 +0000

McCourt graduates discuss the value of their degrees outside the federal government.

As an English and sociology major in undergrad, Jennie Sparandara (MPP’07) wasn’t very familiar with policy degrees. It wasn’t until she started working in the nonprofit sector that she began to appreciate the role of policy in shaping social impact. Eager to learn more, she determined McCourt was the top of the list for Master of Public Policy (MPP) programs. “I knew I would leave the program with hard skills that would be applicable to a variety of different career paths.”

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Data and Political Polarization

Kimberly Iverson — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:58:41 +0000

MAPPING THE DIVIDE

For empirical social scientist Chris Warshaw, data is a tool for examining the foundational gears of American democracy.

The McCourt School professor, who has both a Ph.D. and a J.D., explores the intersection of data science and election law to evaluate how public opinion informs policy. The focus of Warshaw’s extensive research is on understanding and addressing political polarization in the United States.

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Honoring George Akerlof

Jackie Allder — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:57:41 +0000

HUMAN-CENTERED ECONOMICS

A look back at George Akerlof’s storied career

" After more than a decade at McCourt School of Public Policy, Distinguished University Professor George Akerlof is retiring, and it’s impossible to overstate what he has meant to the McCourt School and to Georgetown,” said Robert M. Groves, former Interim Georgetown University President and current senior advisor to the Georgetown president. “From his Nobel Prize-winning contributions in economics to the students he inspired in the classrooms, his mark on Georgetown is deep and lasting.”

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Bringing Clarity to Complex Policy

Ian Jones — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:53:21 +0000

ALUMNI PROFILE

Heather Vaughan (MPP’11) draws inspiration from working with policymakers on one of Congress’ most high-profile committees.

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Life as a Senate Policy Advisor

Ian Jones — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:42:39 +0000

Building bridges across the aisle is all in a day’s work for a Senate policy advisor.

ALUMNI PROFILE

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The Conflict Transformation Lab’s ‘Gut Punch’

Kinda Ahmed — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:37:47 +0000

BRIDGING DIVIDES

The Conflict Transformation Lab trains students to talk across divides.

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Winning with Evidence

Susie Frank — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:35:53 +0000

https://evidenceforjustice.georgetown.edu/

STAFF PROFILE

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Defining Economic Dignity

Susie Frank — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:30:36 +0000

NEW RESEARCH CENTER

The new Economic Dignity Lab takes on the future of work.

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Meet the McCourt Scholars

Christina Breda Antoniades — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:26:55 +0000

From aiding Syrian refugees to conducting research on pressing environmental issues, this distinguished class of scholars is poised to make a lasting impact on lives across the globe.

Studying Arabic and supporting refugees in Amman, Jordan, as a Boren Scholar reinforced for Sofia Alsamadi the vital importance of strengthening U.S. national security policy through globally informed public service.

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Technology to Serve the Public Good

Christina Breda Antoniades — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:25:34 +0000

Broadening Access with Ethical Innovation

STUDENT PROFILE

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Leading the JPPP Undergraduates

Kimberly Iverson — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:19:49 +0000

Q&A

Data, Humility and the Long Game

GROWING UP IN EAST AFRICA, James P. Habyarimana understood policy through the bitter taste of a malaria tablet. When he learned that well-designed infrastructure to manage water flows could reduce the population of mosquitoes that transmitted disease, he became interested in how broader systems shape individual lives. Today, this concept drives his research and teaching, as he guides the next generation to look beyond surface-level symptoms and evaluate low-cost solutions to economic development challenges.

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Closing Capitol Hill’s Tech Gap

Kinda Ahmed — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:17:18 +0000

TECH FLUENCY

A new Tech & Public Policy Center fellowship helps congressional staffers reframe technology’s role in policymaking.

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MPiP Turns 20

Judi Ketteler — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:14:46 +0000

STUDENT ORG

McCourt Policy in Practice (MPiP) Looks Back, and Forward, at 20 Years

Reflections on two decades of student-led consulting and service in Latin America and the Caribbean

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Class Brings Narratives to Data

Nathan Diller — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:06:11 +0000

IN THE CLASSROOM

FINDING A STORY IN THE DATA

There’s an art to storytelling — even in a field as technical as data science. Asif Bhatti (MS-DSPP’23), an adjunct lecturer at the McCourt School of Public Policy, set out to combine the two in his recent Communication for Data Science class. The goal of the class, according to Bhatti, was to teach students to deliver quantitative and qualitative analysis in an effective narrative form.

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Lessons from the War On Drugs

Judi Ketteler — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:03:41 +0000

This former drug czar is helping to shape the next generation of policy experts.

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR RICH-ard Baum (C’87, SFS’93) has been teaching his War on Drugs class at McCourt for a dozen years, but his new book, Inside America’s Opioid Crisis: 12 Hard Lessons for Today’s Drug War (Bloomsbury), has transformed how he teaches.

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Dismantling Disinformation

Ian Jones — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:44:51 +0000

An online manipulation expert researches paths to better social media.

AS A NEW MOTHER JOINING baby-related Facebook groups, Associate Research Professor Renée DiResta was dismayed to see the level of anti-vaccine sentiment — but more disappointed in how her feed filled with anti-vax posts and quickly descended into recommendations on ever-more fringe topics, from flat earth to Pizzagate. She became keenly interested in why the recommender technology within social media platforms performed this way, as well as in the ethics of social media.

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Advocating for Youth Civics Initiatives

Kimberly Iverson — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:29:56 +0000

Experiential Civics

STUDENT PROFILE

Creating civic engagement opportunities for young people motivates a youth advisory council advocate.

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Climate Policy and Everyday People

Jackie Allder — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 06:40:20 +0000

Get to know Aseem Prakash, McCourt’s newest faculty member.

Shaping Climate Policy

WHEN PROFESSOR ASEEM Prakash, McCourt Chair at McCourt School of Public Policy, first entered the world of public and environmental affairs nearly 30 years ago, he expected science and data to spark change. That was unsurprising considering his background: He worked on Procter & Gamble’s marketing team, utilizing his economics degree and MBA, before earning a joint Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.

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Welcome from the Dean

Carole Roan Gresenz, Ph.D. — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 06:23:20 +0000

A Note from the Dean

MORE THAN FOUR DECADES AGO, GEORGETOWN began a certificate program in public policy with two faculty members and a handful of students. That evolved into the Georgetown Public Policy Initiative in the late 1980s, followed by the Georgetown Public Policy Institute in the 1990s and, in 2013, to today’s McCourt School of Public Policy. The pace of transformation over the last several years has only increased: McCourt has risen in profile and impact and stands now as one of the nation’s leading policy schools. In 2024, McCourt relocated its home to Georgetown’s Capitol Campus. And, in this past year, we celebrated another historic milestone when we welcomed our first class of undergraduate public policy students to McCourt.

We are enormously proud to be both part of the leading edge of Georgetown’s future as an anchor on the Capitol Campus and to be able to offer the university’s undergraduate students the opportunity to immerse themselves in an interdisciplinary, policy-centered education in the very center of national policymaking. In the upcoming year, our undergraduate student population will more than double; we will graduate our first cohort of seniors in the spring of 2027; and we will begin offering a minor in Law, in collaboration with Georgetown’s Law School.

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