What. Can. Be.
The Campaign For Columbia SIPA.
SIPA tackles problems that are complex, large scale, and urgent. With outstanding faculty and students, in one of the great research universities of the world, in the City of New York, we stand at the forefront of working toward global solutions. Please join us as we launch a new campaign to secure our future.
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Table of Contents 5
Letter from the Dean
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National and Global Economies
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Global Politics and International Relations
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Energy, Environment, and Sustainability
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Economic Development and Poverty Reduction
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Global Cities, Governance, and Innovation
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Defining What Can Be
The Campaign for Columbia SIPA
Merit E. Janow
Dean, School of International and Public Affairs
Whether seeking to reduce poverty, improve economic growth, foster well-governed and more sustainable cities, or understand and reduce conflict, we work around the globe to bring fresh ideas and new approaches to policy analysis and implementation in the 21st century.
You will also learn about SIPA’s new multi-year fundraising campaign — What Can Be — which builds upon our 70-year history to imagine a new era of impact in the world. What Can Be will fund areas essential to SIPA’s future. It will increase financial aid for our students, support the high-impact research that is the hallmark of our academic community, ensure new hiring in critical fields, and create new programs. Our success will also support key University priorities in areas such as climate response, data and society, global solutions, and just societies.
In the pages that follow, you will find examples of our impact — from remarkable student initiatives to leading-edge faculty research to alumni leadership at the highest levels of government, NGOs, and the private sector. Our community spans the globe but we share a common commitment: to drive progress on the critical challenges facing humanity.
SIPA is one of the special places in the world that can bridge the gap between the academy and public policy and work for global solutions, informed by deep knowledge of the world and local conditions. We hope this brief glimpse into our vibrant community inspires you to join us in this effort. There has never been a more important time.
SIPA’s mission — to educate the next generation of leaders and problem-solvers and contribute our knowledge to advance human progress — has never been more relevant, nor your support more essential to our success.
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What Can Be?
National and Global Economies.
How can economies work for everyone? From Brexit to the 2016 U.S. election and in elections around the world, a populist wave has led nations to rethink and sometimes reshape economic and trade policies. SIPA scholars are tackling many issues that underlie these historical shifts — economic growth and income inequality, financial system stability and regulations, the impacts of globalism — and helping to find new policy solutions to very complex challenges.
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Strengthening economies, governments, institutions, and futures. The reach of SIPA scholars and alumni is deep and broad, extending to all facets of the modern global economy — macroeconomic policy, labor, global trade, capital markets, monetary policy, and financial regulations. Nobel Prize-winning SIPA Professor Joseph Stiglitz and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Professor Jacob Lew worked at the highest levels of U.S. policy making. Professor Guillermo Calvo, a leading expert in the macroeconomics of emerging markets, is a former Chief Economist of the InterAmerican Development Bank. Professor Takatoshi Ito advised Japan’s prime minister and held senior positions in the Ministry of Finance and the International Monetary Fund. China expert Professor Shang-Jin Wei served as Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank. Professor Arvind Panagariya helped shape India’s economic policy as a member of the cabinet to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Professor Jan Svejnar’s research has been
highly influential in the transitional economies of the former Soviet Union. Dean Merit E. Janow is a former senior official of the Office of U.S. Trade Representative who later adjudicated complex trade disputes for the World Trade Organization Appellate Body. Professor Sharyn O’Halloran, a political scientist and economist by training, has focused her research on financial regulations and market competition. Professor Ailsa Röell has analyzed market trading architecture and its impact on liquidity and price formation. As central banks, global financial institutions, and leading policy makers continue to respond to a rapidly changing global economy, SIPA’s expertise will be even more vital to our economic future.
The Campaign for Columbia SIPA National and Global Economies
Central to stable economies and the world. Central bankers aren’t always well known, but they’re always important. Their work moves markets, stabilizes major economies, and ultimately affects the lives and livelihoods of billions. SIPA is committed to training the financial policy makers and central bankers of tomorrow — the future leaders who will go on to help set monetary and fiscal policy for nations around the world. Over the last two decades our alumni have risen to senior positions at more than 50 central banks worldwide — including the United States, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and other countries. SIPA scholars, too, serve at the highest level and bring the fruits of that experience back to the classroom. Professor Richard Clarida was recently selected as Vice Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve; Professor José Antonio Ocampo is currently a board member at the Central Bank of Colombia.
Joseph Stiglitz
Center on Global Economic Governance
“Inequality is not inevitable,” writes Joseph Stiglitz, who has emerged in recent decades as a leading critic of the growing income inequality. Passionately decrying the failure to share prosperity more widely, he challenges the policies and politics that have fostered polarization and the divides in national and international politics.
SIPA’s Center on Global Economic Governance engages with the world in real time, anticipating the next crisis rather than reacting to it.
Leveling the playing field.
Professor Stiglitz is more than a highly visible participant in international debates about the kind of society we should aspire to and what kind of policies will help get us there. He’s also a university professor who received the Nobel Prize for his breakthrough research on how imperfect or “asymmetrical” information affects markets. Long distinguished among the world’s leading economists, Stiglitz also served President Bill Clinton as a member, and then chairman, of the Council of Economic Advisers in the mid-1990s. He later went on to become chief economist of the World Bank. With his combination of engagement and achievement, Stiglitz embodies SIPA’s greatest aspirations for its scholar-practitioners.
Economic governance for an uncertain world.
From the financial crisis of a decade ago to the looming trade wars of today, effective responses depend on a complex matrix of actions by national and international institutions. The Center was created to support new research and policy initiatives that cut across boundaries and address major challenges to the global economy. Since its inception in 2012 it has convened the world’s leading economists and other academics, central bankers, policy makers, and leaders from global financial firms, and it continues to foster dialogue for strengthening the global financial system. Its annual China forum has welcomed Nobel Laureates, Chinese business and policy leaders, and academic experts for forward-looking dialogue about China, the West, and the role of the state in economic growth.
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What Can Be?
Global Politics and International Relations.
A safer future for every nation. While the challenges have changed over the decades — from building multilateral institutions to managing ascending nuclear powers to confronting extremist threats and escalating humanitarian crises — SIPA continues to produce the conceptual frameworks, practical policies, and experts that help shape international collaboration for the safety of people everywhere.
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The policy mavens. As new tensions and threats emerge from sources both foreseeable and unexpected, SIPA’s scholars and experts are providing guidance to policy makers around the globe.
Among SIPA’s many distinguished faculty are Professor Robert Jervis, an acclaimed scholar of the theory and practice of international politics; Professor Richard Betts, a leading scholar of national security strategies and war and peace; Professor Stephen Sestanovich, whose geopolitical expertise was shaped by his high-level diplomatic experience following the breakup of the Soviet Union; Professor Edward Luck, who made pivotal contributions to the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which authorizes member states to take necessary steps when civilian populations are threatened by genocide or ethnic cleansing; and Professor Michael Doyle, an expert on international ethics, whose current work focuses on the worldwide refugee crisis. With the recent addition of renowned scholars including Stephen Biddle, a highly respected expert who advised U.S. military leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Thomas J. Christensen, a China and international relations scholar and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, SIPA is poised to take its leadership in international affairs even further.
Immersive learning for a complex world. SIPA’s curriculum in international politics integrates classroom teaching and experiential learning that includes crisis simulations, Capstone consulting projects, and field-based research. Students tackle pressing problems of every conceivable kind, from humanitarian assistance in Turkey and Jordan to cyber capabilities for NATO to the role of social media in violent extremism. In 2016 a team of SIPA students went deep inside Liberia with United Nations peacekeepers to study how, almost 15 years after the end of a damaging civil war, the organization engaged with citizens as it prepared to halt its operations. Students traveled throughout the country, from rural villages to the impoverished slums of the capital city, Monrovia, interviewing government officials and ordinary citizens struggling to rebuild the war-torn nation. In the process, students gained a profound appreciation for the resiliency of people coping with the devastating effects of war, and some were inspired to pursue professional work in the field.
The Campaign for Columbia SIPA Global Politics and International Relations
Building secure cyberspace. Over the last two decades, global Internet access has grown from less than 1 percent to about 40 percent. This unprecedented interconnection has enriched many lives but also created new vulnerabilities, with cybersecurity costs expected to reach more than $1.2 trillion by 2030. Recognizing the importance of secure cyberspace, Dean Janow joined executives from Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase in convening 30 senior-level cybersecurity experts, finance executives, and leading academics to identify the most effective security policies for governments, cybersecurity companies, and other IT-dependent organizations. Known as the New York Cyber Task Force, the group issued a report entitled “Building a Defensible Cyberspace,” highlighting policies and practices to help defend the Internet without sacrificing the utility, flexibility, and convenience that are so essential to our economies and personal lives. Jason Healey, a senior research scholar at SIPA and cybersecurity expert, was the lead author.
Dipali Mukhopadhyay
What comes after peace? Dipali Mukhopadhyay is an expert on how states rebuild themselves after war and violence. She conducts field work in war zones, spending weeks at a time in perilous countries like Afghanistan and Syria. Professor Mukhopadhyay’s research entails considerable risk, but the rewards are worth it. She helps shed light on the limits of foreign-led democracy promotion and counterinsurgency, and provides practical insights for NGOs, governments, and journalists. In Syria, Mukhopadhyay has documented efforts to create good governance amid terrible civil and regional war and humanitarian crisis. Mukhopadhyay brings these lessons back to her highly popular courses at SIPA, providing rich, empirical insights into the institutions and conditions her students will one day work in.
Arnold Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Two sides of the same coin. When General Dwight D. Eisenhower became Columbia University’s president in 1948, he championed the creation of an academic center that would promote an understanding of the “disastrous consequences of war upon man’s spiritual, intellectual, and material progress.” Founded in 1951 — and today known as the Arnold Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies — it has become one of the world’s foremost centers on international relations. Its scholar-practitioners publish new research, serve as consultants and experts to government bodies, and prepare SIPA students to undertake emerging challenges in governments, think tanks, and militaries around the world. Eisenhower said that “peace and justice are two sides of the same coin,” and the Institute’s agenda reflects that: crisis and diplomacy in the Koreas, a new security framework for Europe, and military strategy in Syria, among other issues.
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What Can Be?
Energy, Environment, and Sustainability.
Preserving resources for the next generation. From clean energy solutions to greener, more livable cities, SIPA is committed to fostering the knowledge, policy, and entrepreneurial innovations to improve the sustainability of the planet we all share.
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Center on Global Energy Policy
Can a tax help save our environment?
The threat of climate change to the environment, the economy, and even national security is real and growing. Many climate economists have come to believe that taxing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, the primary contributors to climate change, is a key element of any strategy to address climate risks in a cost-effective manner.
Indeed, an increasing number of influential businesses, scientists, NGOs, policy makers, and thought leaders have called for such a tax. While the prospects for such a tax in the United States might seem unlikely today, politics can change and legislative windows can open — and close — rapidly. In order to prepare policy makers for the next opportunity, SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy is working to quantify the complex arithmetic of carbon taxation with a combination of unique energy and tax policy models that will show the factual costs and benefits of such a system.
Only with accurate and reliable tools can policy makers make informed decisions on whether and how to implement a carbon tax policy in the United States. Researchers at the Center are among world leaders in the area of carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Cutting the cost of carbon capture, finding ways to utilize or store CO2, and improving methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere are all key strategies for responding to climate change. In these and other areas, the Center, under the leadership of Jason Bordoff, a professor of professional practice and a leading energy policy expert, remains committed to providing an independent, interdisciplinary platform to conduct research, communicate insights, and train future leaders, each focused on the global energy system of today and tomorrow.
The Campaign for Columbia SIPA Energy, Environment, and Sustainability
A startup solution that harnesses the sun. In Sierra Leone, only 10 percent of businesses and households are on the electrical grid. Come nightfall, 6.5 million residents must either sit in darkness or pay for expensive and polluting kerosene or battery-powered torchlights to cook, read, and work. Easy Solar — a startup created by Nthabi Mosia, Alexandre Tourre, and Eric Silverman, all members of SIPA’s Class of 2016 — is addressing this challenge by helping to provide the country with low-cost solar energy. The company, a winner of the 2016 Dean’s “Public Policy Challenge” Grant, provides affordable solar lamps through rent-to-own plans that leverage a mobile-phone-based payment system. In the last year, Easy Solar has established 17 distribution points across six of Sierra Leone’s 14 districts, becoming the country’s leading solar company. They recently passed the milestone of 10,000 products sold, meaning that 50,000 residents are benefiting from their innovation. “Clean, affordable, and high-quality energy services are the key for Sierra Leone’s inhabitants to start businesses, pursue education, and make better lives for themselves,” said Mosia.
The human cost of climate change.
Glenn Denning
Reducing threat to food supplies for 500 million. One in eight people in developing countries goes hungry every year, and global warming is threatening to make the problem worse. In the summer of 2018, Glenn Denning, a food security expert and director of SIPA’s MPA program in development practice, oversaw 12 SIPA students working with the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society. The project, which deployed state-of-the-art climate data and tools to reduce the threat of climate variability to food security, took place in six countries across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, where almost half a billion people face extremeclimate-related risks to their food production.
Scott Barrett
Failing forward. According to SIPA Professor Scott Barrett, “Failures may outnumber successes, but failures can also lay the groundwork for future success.” Barrett studies international negotiations and is a prominent advisor to international organizations and governments. By examining complex issues like disease eradication, tuna overfishing, and nuclear proliferation, Barrett is getting ready to tackle the biggest challenge of all: climate change. He’s developing new theoretical models based on game theory that can make global cooperation on climate change possible.
“If carbon emissions continue on their current path, asylum applications to the European Union will nearly triple by the year 2100.”
the current refugee crisis to rising temperatures. Their 2017 paper examined weather patterns in the countries of origin for asylum applications between 2000 and 2014, demonstrating that weather shocks in 103 countries around the globe directly influenced migration into Europe.
That’s the prediction of Professor Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at SIPA and Columbia’s Earth Institute, and Anouch Missirian, a PhD candidate in sustainable development, who drew worldwide attention with research linking
“Though poorer countries in hotter regions are most vulnerable to climate change, our findings highlight the extent to which countries are interlinked, and Europe will see increasing numbers of desperate people fleeing their home countries,” they wrote.
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What Can Be?
Economic Development and Poverty Reduction.
Change for the better. According to recent World Bank estimates, 10.7 percent of the world’s population lives on less than $1.90 a day. Like so many global challenges, persistent poverty won’t be solved by any one institution or single approach. Across disciplines — from big data to entrepreneurship, public policy to economics — SIPA’s community of scholars and students is dedicated to helping lift the world’s most vulnerable to a better future.
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Working toward a future that works for all. Conducting research in South Asia, China, Africa, and the United States, SIPA microeconomists are in search of fundamental insights that provide practical responses to the challenges of economic development and persistent poverty.
One important and complex question of economic development is whether manufacturers in developing countries will adopt new technologies to increase the quality of their output. By studying the manufacturing of soccer balls in Pakistan, Professor Eric Verhoogen, who directs SIPA’s Center for Development Economics and Policy, discovered that an innovation that reduced costs was not adopted by some firms because, under the existing compensation
scheme, workers’ wages would go down. He found that when workers share in the benefits, new technologies are more likely to be adopted. Another SIPA scholar, Professor Douglas Almond, whose research focuses on issues related to infant and childhood health and education, found that when New York City public schools began giving students report cards on their weight in an effort to fight childhood obesity, simply labeling children as overweight neither encouraged nor led to weight loss the following year. Professor Almond and his colleagues suggested a more constructive response that includes supportive services and information about effective weight management.
The Campaign for Columbia SIPA Economic Development and Poverty Reduction
John Mutter
Breaking the disaster-poverty cycle. When disaster strikes, it is often poor people and underdeveloped countries that suffer the most. Professor John Mutter, a SIPA geophysicist who leads SIPA’s PhD program in sustainable development, is one of the world’s leading voices on the relationship between poverty and natural disasters in the developing world. His research shows that the poor suffer disproportionately because they often live in circumstances especially vulnerable to disasters, like low-lying coastal areas or poorly designed housing.
Seizing opportunities, improving lives. Long a hallmark of the business world, entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as a promising avenue to develop effective policies for the public good. To this end, SIPA has launched a number of initiatives that encourage students to pursue creative approaches to pressing issues. Among these is the Dean’s “Public Policy Challenge,” an annual competition in which student teams propose innovative technology-based solutions to help solve global problems. Drawing on mentors, technical training, and financial support provided by SIPA, students compete to demonstrate that their projects can be implemented quickly and make a meaningful impact. Winning teams receive shares of a $50,000 prize pool to support further development of their proposals.
Mutter predicts that climate change will drive an even greater wedge between the haves and the have-nots.
Expanding technology’s reach.
Professor Mutter was a leading voice about the shortfalls in official death tolls in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.
In rural regions in Latin America, Internet access is often scarce. Doctors and nurses can’t easily go online to consult the latest medical resources, and as a result their patients suffer. A team of SIPA students traveled to the Dominican Republic to study the feasibility of providing rural clinics with an offline technology known as “Internet in a Box” — a digital library, the size of a cellphone, housing data originally downloaded from
Recent winners include Alice Bosley and Patricia Letayf, whose Kurdistan-based company, Five One Labs, is the first startup incubator in a region that is home to more than a million displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees. Other successful startups include NaTakallam, which employs displaced persons as Arabic-language tutors, connecting them via Skype to individuals and institutions around the world, and the most recent Challenge winner, A4Ed, which aims to improve refugees’ access to formal education and employment opportunities by using mobile phones and blockchain technology to maintain easily accessible records of their educational and experiential backgrounds.
the Internet. Students shared a prototype of the device and consulted with local clinicians to refine recommendations for improving ts contents. Each year, more than 500 SIPA students work in small teams to tackle real-world problems like this — often outside the United States — for an external client.
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From STEM education to clean cooking, these signature Capstone workshops provide a valuable opportunity to make an impact where it’s needed most.
What Can Be?
Global Cities, Governance, and Innovation.
A laboratory for innovative public policy. SIPA’s location in New York City provides a special opportunity to study innovative policies in a complex and challenging urban environment. Faculty and students engage in policy analysis and applied projects with Wall Street and City Hall, in addition to the United Nations and other multilateral agencies, institutions, and international NGOs.
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Grounded in the real world. Recent UN statistics tell us that 54 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a number projected to rise to 66 percent by 2050. If public policy of the future will increasingly deal with urban challenges, SIPA is prepared to lead the way. Among SIPA’s leading scholars and practitioners of urban affairs are David N. Dinkins and Michael Nutter, former mayors of New York City and Philadelphia, respectively. Professor Ester Fuchs served as a senior advisor to Mayor Dinkins and to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Professor Steven Cohen is widely recognized as a pioneering expert on urban environmental policy. He’s also the coauthor, with SIPA’s William Eimicke, of perhaps the preeminent text on public management. Each year, the School welcomes public officials from near and far — Atlanta, London, Karachi, and elsewhere — to share hard-learned lessons on effective urban governance in areas such as education, sustainability, labor, tourism, immigration, fiscal management, criminal justice, voting rights, gun control, and more.
SIPA counts among its graduates two of the United States’ most prominent current mayors, Bill de Blasio of New York and Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, as well as Steven Fulop of Jersey City. Our Global Mayors Forum and Dinkins Leadership and Public Policy Forum provide highprofile opportunities for leaders to discuss contemporary urban policies, programs, and initiatives. And our executive programs educate public officials from around the world, including, most recently, a group of Brazilian mayors who completed an advanced training in public management and leadership.
The Campaign for Columbia SIPA Global Cities, Governance, and Innovation
Floatable trash in NYC.
Suresh Naidu
Paper cups. Candy wrappers. Cigarette butts. SIPA students concentrating in urban policy probably didn’t expect to get so intimate with the contents of the city’s overflowing trash bins, but it was there they analyzed and comprehensively tracked how garbage accumulates and, in some instances, ends up in New York City waterways.
The spoils of democracy.
Employees or lobbyists?
Does democracy constrain economic growth? Given China’s impressive progress in recent years, it’s no surprise that some commenters have wondered if one-party rule might be preferable when it comes to developing economies.
Assistant professor Alexander Hertel-Fernandez studies the politics of organized interests. His 2018 book, Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers into Lobbyists, examines how employers are recruiting employees into politics — and why all Americans should care.
The effort was part of a series of student-faculty projects for New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection and, later, the 125th Street Business Improvement District in Harlem. Drawing on the data they collected, students worked with faculty to make recommendations that led the city agency to implement a new protocol for surveying the type, quantity, and source of street litter. The ultimate result will be cleaner streets and waters for everyone to enjoy.
Recent research by a team led by SIPA professor Suresh Naidu finds little support for this view. Using extensive empirical data and sophisticated modeling, the research team confirmed that transitioning to democracy actually increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving the provision of public goods, and reducing social unrest. Their findings also suggest that democracy isn’t just beneficial; it’s also contagious, tending to take place in regional waves, with countries more likely to transition to democracy when the same transition recently occurred in other countries in the same region. The reverse, it turns out, is also true. Naidu and his colleagues identify a significant and robust positive effect on GDP per capita — specifically, increases of around 20 percent in the 25 years following a democratization. “We find little support,” they write, “for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies.”
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
Hertel-Fernandez calls this practice “employer mobilization,” and it has become increasingly common in the American labor force, where one in four employees — as many as 40 million in total — has been contacted by their managers about voting, political candidates, public policies, or political issues.
Defining What Can Be. SIPA has long been recognized as one of the world’s leading centers for policy-relevant research, training, and engagement on pressing global challenges, and today we are poised for even greater impact.
Our faculty have never been stronger, our students more talented and global, or our mission more important and urgent. To meet that mission head-on, together with leading alumni and donors, we are embarking on the most ambitious campaign in the School’s history, on behalf of our students and faculty, and the programs and partnerships that reach around the globe. A growing circle of donors is joining SIPA’s $150 million commitment to putting advanced policy ideas into action, redefining What Can Be — for SIPA and for the world.
What Can Be
For students. The success of SIPA students is a top priority. SIPA has always welcomed remarkable students from around the world and from diverse backgrounds. Our students are extraordinarily equipped, and determined, to succeed and contribute, whether in government at all levels, in the private sector, or through not-for-profit organizations. Our impact as a school depends on bringing the very best here to share their perspectives and hone their leadership. In a highly competitive admissions environment, we must ensure that SIPA remains a top destination for outstanding students from around the world — and that we provide them the means to succeed. That’s why we are seeking $13 million in new support for our need-blind admissions policy and expanded financial aid funding for both domestic and international students. What Can Be
For faculty. SIPA is a policy powerhouse. Our thought leadership ranges wide: international trade, finance, and development; global security and foreign policy; energy and the environment; global urban policy; and well beyond. With 76 full-time faculty and more than 300 adjuncts, SIPA scholars and practitioners bring advanced ideas and immense experience to today’s global issues and to the education of tomorrow’s leaders. We do so within the vast academic resources of one of the world’s great universities. To stay a leader, though, we must constantly meet new challenges. The world is changing at an accelerating pace, requiring new kinds of expertise. The academic marketplace is changing too, as we compete with better-endowed peer schools for top faculty. For a global policy school, New York City is clearly an attraction, but it comes with a price: one of the world’s great cities is also one of the nation’s costliest for the people who make us great. To open up new possibilities for faculty, we look to partner with donors who, whether by endowing funds for the long term or providing funds to be spent in the gift year, share our commitment to SIPA’s work inside and outside the classroom. Together, working toward a goal of $25 million in faculty funds, we can build on our strengths and build out areas of emerging importance for our students and the world.
What Can Be
What Can Be
Engines of innovation require fuel, and, as in any institution, philanthropic dollars energize our efforts to cross new boundaries of thought and action. As we work with students and faculty to build out SIPA’s areas of expertise, resources are the only limit to What Can Be.
An inspiring collaborative learning environment is essential to student success and achievement. As the anchor of Columbia’s International Affairs Building, SIPA serves as a convening ground for students, faculty, and leaders from around the world to gather on campus, share ideas, and work together.
For innovation.
By creating Possibility Funds in support of programs, donors open up the future of policy teaching and research. Their gifts may propel a project within one of SIPA’s major interdisciplinary research centers taking on issues from energy to governance. They may underwrite students’ Capstone projects or other real-world experience in working on problems with partners around the world. Or they further programming in specialized degree programs such as our PhD in sustainable development, the first of its kind in the United States. In contributing toward an overall goal of $90 million, campaign donors can help provide SIPA’s unique academic programs the much-needed margin for innovation.
For a global hub.
By setting a capital goal of $15 million, we aim to improve the physical and technological environment for students, faculty, and visitors commensurate with the quality of our world-leading programs.
What Can Be
For adapting to a changing world. Given the breadth and complexity of SIPA’s programs, the SIPA Annual Fund proves key in fulfilling the School’s mission. The Fund supports a wide range of core programs, from scholarships for our students to faculty and research, as well as allowing the School to be nimble in addressing opportunities and pressing concerns as they arise. Inspired by momentum, we are setting a target of $7 million in the SIPA Annual Fund. We are grateful for your efforts to help SIPA become all that it can be. For more information on SIPA’s What Can Be campaign and to learn how you can give, please visit sipa.columbia.edu/whatcanbe or contact Roberta Smith at 212-851-7986 or at devsipa@columbia.edu.
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What. Can. Be? For more information on SIPA’s What Can Be campaign and to learn how you can give, please visit: sipa.columbia.edu/whatcanbe