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Date: September 17, 1999
Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School Welcomes a Diverse Group of Master's Degree Candidates
PRINCETON, N.J. -- The 17 candidates for the Master of Public Policy (M.P.P.) degree at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs this year include three foreign service officers; a field director for International Children's Trust in Latin America; a rocket scientist from Cape Canaveral; a CARE staffer in southern Africa; a commander in the Coast Guard; an environmental advocate; and the head of the Coordination Department in the Albanian prime minister's office, with responsibility for coordinating all efforts for the Kosovo refugee crisis. They've worked in Israel, Germany, Russia, Portugal, Mozambique, Morocco, Albania, Malawai, Romania, India, Vietnam, Great Britain, Iran, Sweden, Mexico, Ecuador, Belgium, and Lesotho.
This diverse and distinguished group is on campus to attend the School's one-year degree program for midcareer professionals in public policy, which provides rigorous training in quantitative reasoning and policy analysis, preparing degree candidates to return to their careers with the intellectual breadth, organizational skills, and self-confidence necessary to assume leadership positions in an increasingly complex public service environment.
"The experiences these men and women have had as professionals in many aspects of public policy enhance all the programs at the School," said Assistant Dean Robert Hutchings, director of the M.P.P. program. "They share their real-world experiences with students in our master of public affairs programs, who typically have less professional experience than the M.P.P. students, as well as with the faculty and the larger community. In return, their year at the School gives them the tools they need to make the leap to the next level of their already highly accomplished careers."
As part of bringing these professionals' insights to the community, two of the M.P.P. candidates, Patricia Hiddleston and Liam Mahony, will give a lecture titled "Fieldwork in Human Rights: Two Experiences" on Tuesday, October 5 at 4:30 p.m. in Bowl 1, Robertson Hall. Hiddleston was the sole full-time international human rights observer in Rwanda following the withdrawal of the UN Human Rights Mission in 1998 and is co-author of Leave None to Tell the Story, a book on the Rawandan genocide; Mahony spent most of the past decade with the NGO Peace Brigades International and is the co-author of Unarmed Bodyguards: International Accompaniment for the Protection of Human Rights and the author of Risking Return: NGOs in the Guatemalan Refugee Repatriation.
In order to be admitted to the program, students must demonstrate leadership, creativity, a commitment to public service, the intellectual ability to thrive in a demanding academic environment, and at least seven years of relevant professional work experience. Students in the M.P.P. program select their courses from among the offerings available to all Woodrow Wilson School graduate students. In consultation with faculty advisers, M.P.P. candidates develop programs of study that are coherent and rigorous while also tailored to their individual needs, drawing mainly from the School's course offerings supplemented by courses available in other University departments. Additionally, M.P.P. candidates participate in policy workshops consisting of teams of M.P.P. and M.P.A. students working as a group to analyze current policy issues and formulate specific policy recommendations.
After their year at the Woodrow Wilson School, the M.P.P. candidates plan to continue on their established paths. One describes his goal as to "start [my] own type of relief organization to help in the fight against poverty in Africa"; one wants to "return to Europe . . .to work on issues relating to conflict resolution and on European foreign policy" another plans to "continue working in some effective way for excluded children"; and yet another defines her future goal as working "in the area of the development process in Vietnam," and serving as an advocate for women's issues in Vietnam's Parliament.