Although the Harris School is already well-known in the United States and especially in Chicago as a high-caliber policy school, Dean Susan E. Mayer has been working to further expand its reach. In particular, one of her goals as Dean has been to increase international programs and opportunities for students. Although just a beginning, the list below describes the first of these programs.

Paris-Chicago PhD Workshop

Through a joint initiative between the Harris School and the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (more commonly known as Sciences Po), select PhD students at both institutions will have the opportunity to collaborate in a transatlantic workshop.

In May, immediately following the official opening of the University of Chicago Center in Paris, participating students from the Harris School will attend a three-day workshop in Paris with their Sciences Po colleagues concentrating in similar fields of research. After the initial cooperation, the students will continue to work on their collaborative research projects until they meet again to present their work. For this second portion of the workshop sessions, the Sciences Po students will travel to Chicago.

Sciences Po has long been the primary institution for educating future French civil servants and its alumni include Jacques Chirac, Laurent Fabius, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Hubert Védrine, among others. “This is a wonderful opportunity for both schools,” explained Thomas Froyland, Assistant Director of International Exchange Programs at the Harris School. “Two leading institutions in public policy, policy practice, and civil service have a chance to develop a programmatic relationship that benefits students at both institutions.”

Laurent Fabius to Teach at the Harris School

Former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius returned to Chicago and the Harris School as a visiting senior lecturer in April and May 2004, again teaching a course on the European Union. This year’s course is entitled “European Union: Operations and Issues of Reality.” Said Froyland, “The class was enormously popular among MPP students last year, and the School is very happy to host M. Fabius again.”

The Harris School and the Universidad Iberoamericano

In February, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded the Harris School and the Universidad Iberoamericano (IBERO) a grant as part of its Training, Internships, Exchanges, and Scholarships (TIES) Partnership Initiative. The three-year grant will enable the two universities to extend their existing partnership and help establish a graduate program in public policy at the IBERO.

The Harris School and the IBERO will provide scholarships for Mexican students enrolled at the Harris School, sabbaticals for IBERO faculty to visit the Harris School, internships for Mexican and American Harris School students to work together both in Mexico and Chicago, and ongoing collaboration between Harris School and IBERO faculty members for creating a graduate policy program at the IBERO.

The new partnership builds on the Harris School’s and the IBERO’s successful certificate program for mid-career Mexican policy professionals. Started in 2001, the Diploma Program on Social Policy is coordinated by Harris School alumna Gabriela Pérez-Yarahuán (MPP’96), who is also covered in this issue’s article on alumni in Mexico. The TIES funding is provided by the Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development and USAID/Mexico.