Client-Focused Projects and Opportunities

Policy Lab is a nonpartisan, service-learning initiative that gives undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to research real-world policy questions and to draft useful research for policymakers, issue advocates, and other change agents. Policymakers submit a question for a group of 3-4 students to research. The students conduct hours of in-depth research and then craft a policy memo that typically includes background information; insights from the scholarly literature; a sense of what other cities, states, or countries have done; and suggestions for how the policymaker might proceed.

Open to all Duke undergrad and graduate students.

The goal of the CX Lab is to improve the citizen experience working directly with organizations in the Durham community. Using human-centered design, students work with local organizations to design improved customer and employee experience. Student teams act as consultants to local organizations, using the design process of Discover, Design and Deliver, to understand, improve and measure the user experience.

Open to all Duke undergrad and graduate students.

Part of the Hart Leadership Program, Democracy Lab is a project-based opportunity for all Duke undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in: researching how to make democracy more representative, empowering, and effective, and learning how to create change and develop leadership skills in relationship with community partners in NC and beyond. The projects supported by the Democracy Lab at Hart link democracy work to community-based research.

Open to all Duke undergrad and graduate students.

PEP is a leadership initiative for Duke undergraduates interested in political engagement and includes coursework, support for summer internships, and mentoring. A collaboration between the Hart Leadership Program and POLIS: Center for Politics, PEP is designed to inspire, cultivate, and prepare future leaders in democracy and provide them pathways to meaningful participation, contributing to more diverse and inclusive political representation at all levels in the United States.

Open to all Duke undergraduates in their junior year who are interested in political leadership, broadly defined. 

To participate as a student or client, contact Suzanne Katzenstein: sk272@duke.edu

During the spring semester, teams of first-year MPP students serve as consultants for real-world clients with policy or research questions related to their organization’s mission or operations. Over the course of the semester, teams research and analyze their client’s question, produce a professional-quality report, and brief their client on their findings and recommendations. The experience is part of the MPP core class PUBPOL 804 (“Public Policy Analysis II”).

Open to Duke MPP students.

 

All students work closely with a faculty advisor while completing a yearlong capstone master’s project in the final year. Students can work on a project with a client that involves a variety of methodological approaches, or a project based on quantitative methods that may or may not have an actual client. A client-based project addresses a policy problem and recommends a specific course of action to resolve it. Students are encouraged to build their projects from their summer internships where possible and to deepen their policy-area expertise by taking appropriate elective courses.

Open to Duke MPP students.

This initiative places MPP students as non-voting members on local nonprofit leadership boards for one calendar year. The partnership offers nonprofits strategic support from graduate students with policy-specific knowledge and the opportunity for students to learn about nonprofit governance.

Applications welcome by Duke MPP students.

Both MPP students and nonprofit organizations who are interested in participating in the SBLI program should contact Mackenzie Phillips (mackenzie.phillips@duke.edu) or Annalisa Kristofferson (annalisa.kristoffersen@duke.edu).