PROGRAMS OF EXCELLENCE COLIN POWELL SCHOOL FOR CIVIC AND GLOBAL LEADERSHIP
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PRO GR AMS OF
Excellence Preparing students for leadership is central to the mission of the Colin Powell School. Helping them find paths to positions of power and influence— to places where they can make a difference—is an important part of that project. To that end, six years ago, the Colin Powell launched its Semester in Washington, DC Program. Each Spring, with the generous support of the MCJ Amelior Foundation, we take fifteen Colin Powell School students to Washington, DC for semester-long public service internships and special courses and programs led by seasoned practitioners. In 2018-19, the program was organized as a partnership between the Colin Powell School and the Joseph R. Biden, Jr School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. Each school sent fifteen
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SEMESTER IN WASHINGTON DC students, most of whom interned on Capitol Hill. The two in-person seminars were taught by Jon Cardinal, Director of Economic Development for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Mike Donilon, Senior Adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden. Over the course of the semester, the students had the chance to meet many senior political leaders. They spent several hours each with General Powell and with former Vice President Biden. Over the past six years, a third of the students who spent the semester in DC have stayed on in Washington in full-time public service positions. All of them have left the experience with a clearer sense for how to be leaders in service to our nation. As Layana Abu Touq, one of the recent Semester in DC participants, explains, “Coming from a Muslim Palestinian background, I was born into politics,
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