Sanford School faculty, students and alumni engage with North Carolina through research, events, podcasts, masters’ students consulting and research projects, internships and classroom projects at the statewide and local level. Take a look at some sample engagement projects.
Student Journalists Report on Durham
The 9th Street Journal began as a way to publish strong student journalism. Founded by Bill Adair, a Sanford faculty member and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the 9th Street Journal focuses outward. Rather than covering campus life, student reporters covered city council meetings, public schools, local elections, housing issues, and community life in Durham. The publication evolved into a functioning newsroom that complements, rather than competes with, local media. Read more about the project.
Strategic Planning for NC Schools
Professor Jenni Owen and students worked with NC’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green, his team, and other partners on a visionary mission: to make North Carolina’s public schools the nation’s best by 2030. Not just an academic group project, this was a collaborative opportunity to solicit input, conduct policy analysis, and generate recommendations for a state government agency that is striving to improve the lives of children across N.C. Read more about the project.
Consulting with Local Organizations
As a part of many Sanford courses, students apply what they learn in service of society. For example, Kanishka Desai MPP’26 took a human centered design course and was matched with the Durham Farmer’s Market. Her team developed creative policies aimed at increasing fresh produce sales while maintaining and enhancing the market's role as a community gathering place. Kanishka says as a part of the project, she got a better understanding about social change: “effective social change is about re-imagining how we might create solutions that resonate with people’s lived experiences and everyday realities.”
Students Serve on Local Boards
One popular program for Master of Public Policy students in the Sanford Board Leadership Initiative, which places MPP students with local non-profits. Students serve on the board of directors as non-voting members. James Burger MPP’25 was placed with the Thomas Mentor Leadership Academy (TMLA). James was impressed by the work the organization did, and he focused on writing grants. Using grant funds, the team launched a STEM enrichment program, including robotics kits and guest speakers. “The project wasn’t just about giving them hands-on STEM experience,” James said. “It was about showing them the possibilities that lay ahead in their personal and professional lives."
Ensuring Student Votes Count
Started by Professor Gunther Peck, the Student Voting Rights Lab provides opportunities for students to participate in research projects investigating barriers to youth voting as well as solutions to those challenges. Lab research shows youth voters are especially at risk in North Carolina: 18 to 25 year olds are 3.4 times more likely than voters over 65 to have their votes challenged. In Durham County, youth voters are nearly seven times more likely than older voters to have ballots challenged. In the 2024 election, 792 Duke voters found their ballots challenged by the Jefferson Griffin campaign. That’s more than a fifth of the total undergraduate population that voted in North Carolina in 2024. Students are energized to research the issue and make change.
Bridging the Divide: Convening Bipartisan Conversations
The Duke Sanford School of Public Policy and Polis: Duke’s Center for Politics hosted a conversation with U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and former U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) in Duke’s Washington, DC office. In front of an audience of policymakers and experts, both senators highlighted past legislative successes that depended on bipartisan cooperation. The hour-long conversation was a part of POLIS’ Bridging the Divide series with Senator Burr, a multi-part lecture series highlighting senior policymakers who have spearheaded bipartisan efforts.
Policy Lab
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 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. Close to 100 policymakers have participated.
North Carolina School Research Partnership
The Duke University School Research Partnership was established with support from the Office of the Provost and the Center for Child and Family Policy in 2006. The Partnership links Duke students and faculty members with local schools and school districts that request strategic research that can have an immediate impact on their policies.
Community Projects - Video
Explore sample video profiles of previous community projects.
- Master's Project - An experiment with local government tests whether small changes to a single letter could get more people to pay their taxes on time.
- Undergraduate Feature – Yadira Paz-Martinez PPS'25 is from rural North Carolina and works with migrant students there.
- New Ways to Teach About the Fight for Civil Rights - Teaching about the civil rights movement in a more nuanced way thanks to a Duke Sanford project.
- Behavioral Economics & Trash - PubPol 830.05 Behavioral Economics for Municipal Policy.
- 100 Duke & Durham Students Collaborate on Stage. Led by a Sanford MPP student, 50 Duke students and dozens of local high school students create a live show based on personal stories.
- Interdisciplinary Social Innovation - The Duke Interdisciplinary Social Innovators (DISI) includes students from the Sanford School of Public Policy, Fuqua School of Business and the Pratt School of Engineering.
- Duke Students Help Community Group Make Change