Learning Goals: International Policy and Development

IPD prepares students for rewarding careers researching, analyzing, and creating effective solutions to the world’s most pressing policy and development challenges. Graduates pursue successful careers in nonprofits, think tanks, governments, businesses, and international organizations. 

The program learning goals align with the mission and vision of the Middlebury Institute and the larger Middlebury Strategic Framework to prepare graduates to drive change in pursuit of a more just world. 

Fundamental competencies

Integrated into most courses: 

• Communicating in written and oral forms with different audiences
• Higher-level thinking, problem structuring, and evidence-based decision making using an ethical compass
• Engaging in collaborations on interpersonal, team, organizational and inter-organizational levels
• Work with and support others appropriately and effectively in socially, culturally, and linguistically diverse environments (intercultural competence and/or language studies)
• Design and implement applied research projects, ideally in the context of a project for an actual organization (practicum)

Program-specific competencies

Delivered mostly via core courses:

• Use methods of rigorous inquiry and evidence-based decision-making, including collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and synthesizing data and drawing practical actionable inferences (research methods and qualitative and quantitative data). 
• Understand and apply basic principles of economics and how to conduct economic analysis to better understand the global and local trends and developments (economics)
• Develop solid understanding of development paradigms, theories, systems, and practices and develop solid understanding of international and local policy and political systems, players, and processes and how they play out in relation to key issues of their interest (development/policy).