Doctoral student,
Harvard School of Education
"The MAPSS experience is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill academic variety. It's an extremely tense program that combines an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social sciences with the freedom and flexibility to pick and choose courses geared to particular likes and dislikes. What the MAPSS program offers is that awesome ability to be armed with crucial, almost mind-numbing theories and methodologies that actually applies in the real world.
After MAPSS, I accepted a USAID-funded program position in Madagascar focusing on civic education. I was responsible for strengthening relationships between civil society organizations, public and private schools and government. Everything worked out wonderfully and the experience was both challenging and rewarding. I was able to integrate past experiences as political aid worker (in Cambodia, Haiti and DC for various USAID and State Department funded missions) with the intellectual capital acquired at Chicago. I'm currently working as an expert consultant for a private management firm in DC. We're collaborating with the newly elected President of Haiti to develop a comprehensive decentralization strategy to be implemented throughout the 10 Haitian Departments. Our goal is to use this strategy as one credible way to reduce poverty in this island nation.
I came into the MAPSS program with no expectations other than the sincere willingness to learn. Slowly but surely, however, I began asking myself hard questions about my research and then eventually found myself knee-deep in studies that looked at psychosocial and environmental constraints to at-risk youths in America and abroad. I'll be joining the 2006-07 cohort at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
There's no doubt that this interdisciplinary approach to learning will pay off for many more years to come."
