Woodrow Wilson School

PtonGrad2000
Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:24:32 +0000

Toto, the Woodrow Wilson School’s primary distinguishing characteristic is its policy conference and its task force work group exercises. These classes are organized on a ‘think-tank’ model. An important and difficult public policy question is identified and presented to a small group of students. The students, with the guidance of the professor leading the class, identify the salient issues, decide on organizational hierarchies, divide responsibility for researching the separate issues and then go to work. Individual researchers conduct interviews, dig into public data repositories and sometimes perform field research in preparation for writing papers analyzing their portion of the public policy problem. (Task forces and policy conferences have often traveled overseas at Princeton’s expense to research these issues.)

When the papers have been completed, they are individually presented to the group and then distributed for discussion. The next step involves hours of group debate. Now that each of the students has become knowledgeable about the details of the issues, intelligent and lengthy discussions are carried on as the group tries to arrive at consensus (or at least a majority opinion) regarding the primary public policy question.

Finally, a group paper or statement is drafted expressing the findings and providing public policy recommendations. These papers often have real world implications. On numerous occasions, Woodrow Wilson School papers have been distributed to members of Congress, representatives at the United Nations and other policymaking bodies and these papers and their recommendations have shown up in debates (and sometimes even decisions) made by these bodies.

The exercise is exciting and collaborative. The prestige of the Wilson School opens doors in Washington D.C. and elsewhere allowing access to government officials at the highest levels. Even former U.S. Presidents have made private presentations to Wilson School undergraduates in these exercises. Other undergraduate public affairs programs may have something similar to this but, if so, I’m not aware of them.

I hope this helps. If you check the archives of the Daily Princetonian and Princeton’s website, you should find a great deal of information about the undergraduate program.