Outside Voices

The Public Policy Studies major at the University of Chicago attracts scores of excellent undergraduate students. All of these students take part in a capstone experience in their senior year. A new option for the capstone experience is the Policy Project Seminar, a one-quarter course devoted to honing policy analysis and communication skills.

Writing is the focus of the Project Seminar, and in the inaugural Autumn 2022 offering, students prepared a long policy essay, along with a related short op-ed. For senior Public Policy majors, the expectation is that these pieces of writing will be of professional quality, something that has value outside of the classroom.

The theme adopted for our opening Project Seminar was “Chicago Through a Policy Lens”: all of the student projects took on Chicagoland policy issues. Future iterations of the Project Seminar will have different themes – Education and Justice are scheduled for the next two editions – but the commitment to outstanding written work will remain.

I am proud to introduce the first set of Project Seminar op-eds. These pieces are short, and opinionated, but they are neither casual nor gratuitous; within the Project Seminar, they are as meaningful as the essays. Public Policy thinking that does not reach and engage the public is a rather sterile exercise. Brief, opinionated pieces, from writers whose opinions are well-grounded in the facts and steeped in theoretical considerations, are a vital element of the process of making better policies – and in the case of the Autumn 2022 Policy Project op-eds, a better Chicago.

Jim Leitzel

Executive Director

Public Policy in the College