ADVOCACY & POLITICAL ACTION SPECIALIZATION
Overview
The Advocacy and Political Action specialization prepares you to magnify your impact and create meaningful change in the civic engagement, political, and advocacy arenas. Whether your passion for social justice and human rights is in immigration, criminal justice, food security, the environment, or any other issue, you’ll need to expand your skillset and learn the strategies and tactics to successfully mobilize people, organizations, and systems.
You’ll jump right into studying advocacy and organizing, while building on your strong foundation in management, finance, and policy from your core coursework. You can develop deep knowledge in the specific issue area you most care about through a variety of electives, and understand how to apply your learnings to issue campaigns, grassroots organizing, lobbying, and political campaigns. You’ll hit the ground running, bringing your skills to the field through Advocacy Lab and Capstone—working with real-world organizations.
You’ll graduate prepared to organize members of your community, lead a nonprofit issue advocacy campaign, run for elected office, and be a catalyst for positive change around the world.
PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS
Below is an overview of the required coursework. For detailed information, view the program checksheet
DEGREE CORE Requirements
Students must complete the following courses:
specialization REQUIREmentS
Students must complete the following courses:
Electives
Focus Areas
Focus Areas are optional groupings of courses to help you choose electives. You can go deeper in your specialization and develop more advanced skills by choosing electives within the specialization-related focus areas below. To pursue depth in a focus area we suggest completing 9 credits. To pursue breadth, you may also choose electives across focus areas.
Tools and Skills
The Tools and Skills focus area highlights what you need to bring to your advocacy work. Research and planning within the context of a specific organization, coalition, or campaign, are the essential ingredient to success. Long before your campaign becomes public, you need to think about mission, strategy, teams and the data necessary for planning. These courses will help those who plan to run campaigns gain requisite depth in the structural elements of advocacy.
Policies and Issues
The Policies and Issues focus area is a deep dive into issues for which we build and launch advocacy and political campaigns. Depending on your own areas of interest, you can develop critical intimate knowledge in the specific issue area you most care about through these courses, and consider how to apply your learnings to issue campaigns, grassroots organizing, lobbying, and political campaigns. This will allow you to hit the ground running, bringing your knowledge of the issue into the real-world of policy and political change.
School-wide Focus Areas
In addition to the courses in the specialization-related elective focus areas above, to gain a breadth of knowledge and skills you may also wish to choose electives from across course offerings, including from the school-wide focus areas or a different specialization. Relevant school-wide focus areas for you to consider as an Advocacy & Political Action student include, Cities; Education; Environment & Climate Change, and more.
capstone
The Capstone Program, a year-long consulting or research project that's required for all Advocacy specialization students, puts you out in the world, resolving a problem or conducting an analysis for a client organization.
Students must complete the following courses:
CAP-GP.3401 & 3402 Capstone: Advanced Projects in Policy, Management, Finance, and Advocacy I & II
or
CAP-GP 3148 & 3149 Capstone: Advanced Research Projects in Quantitative Analysis I & II
Authoritative curriculum information can be found exclusively in the University Bulletin. All other content, including this webpage, is for informational purposes only. You can find the curriculum for this program on this page of the Bulletin.
