A sexual health study in the Dominican Republic. Federal water policy in Mexico City. A bus rapid transit line through Nairobi, Kenya.
These are just three of the globe-spanning projects that 14 UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs graduate students are tackling this summer as they adjust to life in a foreign country and work for six to 12 weeks on internships for international organizations located in the Dominican Republic, Turkey, India, Kenya, Switzerland, Panama, Mexico and China.
Most of the students are traveling under the auspices of the International Practice Pathway program, the experiential component of Luskin’s Global Public Affairs initiative that exposes students to a broad range of policy and practice in communities around the world. The work that they do varies widely, from providing direct operational support to an organization to conducting onsite research.
Social work graduate student Elise Silva, for example, is working at the Instituto de Sexualidad Humana under the auspices of the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo to interview sex workers and collect data on the structure and composition of their personal networks and their use of technology.
No matter what facilitates their travel, every student working abroad this summer is driven by his or her innate curiosity about the world and motivated to better understand their circumstances and themselves, according to Steve Commins, associate director of Global Public Affairs.
You can read about their summer adventures on the UCLA Luskin Abroad blog.
