Summer Field Placement

The summer field placement is an essential component of the MPA in Development Practice curriculum. The three-month placement is designed to provide students with practical work experience in sustainable development practice and provides a holistic learning experience, deeply grounded in the local environment. 

Students have worked in teams of up to 5 at the following sites:

Intended Learning Outcomes
The MPA-DP field placement aims to provide a challenging real-world experience for aspiring practitioners, with the following core learning outcomes:

• To gain a first-hand understanding of key interconnected sectors of education, agriculture, environment, health, nutrition, energy, infrastructure, water, gender and community development;
• To demonstrate effective use of project cycle management through problem identification, analysis, design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation;
• To integrate knowledge of cross-sector issues, local insights and community participation into field training projects and activities;
• To identify effective strategies for policy interventions to advance sustainable development (at the local, national and global level);
• To demonstrate a critical use of self-reflection and inter-personal skills and dynamics to analyze attitudes, perceptions and biases;
• To communicate important achievements and challenges in implementing a multi-sectoral project (through videos, multi-media presentations and project reports).

To learn more about selected student experiences in the field, see our MPA-DP videos, here.

Susmita in Bangladesh from Field Studio.