Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago offers ISPP scholars a Certificate in International Development and Public Policy upon successful completion, through a series of workshops and lectures, held at ISPP and conducted by faculty, practitioners and other experts associated with the University of Chicago.

In the past years, the lecture series hosted highly esteemed professors and alumni of the University of Chicago including Michael Greenstone (Director of the Becker Friedman Institute), John Mark Hansen (Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science), Marvin Zonis (Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at the Booth School of Business) and Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer (Professor of Economics at the Harris School of Public Policy)

Immersive Learning Projects (ILPs) are high impact and unique learning experiences for scholars at ISPP to collaborate on real time projects guided by project leads from client organisations. ILP is a great way to provide the scholars a platform to completely immerse in live projects related to public policy that enables learning by doing. In the past few years, ISPP Scholars have attended ILPs at E&Y, Sattva, NITI Aayog, and Population Foundation of India, among others.

1. Writing and Communication Lab: Engaging public policy stakeholders requires a sound understanding of the policy landscape, skills to conduct research, write scientifically, and the ability to repurpose scientific writing into communication formats that suit stakeholders. The Writing and Communication Lab at ISPP offers apprentice-style training to develop scholars' verbal, non-verbal and writing skills to effectively communicate in development, corporate, and academic settings. The Lab also works closely with the Careers team to support students’ career development needs.

2. Antarang Leadership Lab (ALL): The Antarang Leadership Lab (ALL) is an experiential lab. Antarang means ‘intimate’ and the lab is meant to create a comfortable space where scholars can have conversations amongst friends on issues that are relevant to their personal development as leaders. ALL gives our scholars hands-on, practical experience to build their leadership skills to help them both at ISPP and when they start working. ALL aims to make our scholars more aware of themselves and their surroundings.

3. Policy Praxis Lab (PPL): Public policy governs every action one takes as well as the outcomes of these actions. The Policy Praxis Lab will train one to understand why and how to make public policy work for the public. The lab explores a range of policy-related questions: How should markets be organised? What is health policy? How does public policy handle the diverse interests of people? How do we find out these diverse interests? How do we make people agree on a common set of choices, allowing them to choose differently from the same set? Through a series of policy exercises characterised by curiosity and empathy, through thought experiments as well as real life experiences of successful and unsuccessful policy interventions, scholars will be trained to master the science and art of ethical policy objectives.

4. Policy Parallax: Policy Parallax is a monthly discussion group that brings unconventional, out-of-the-box, quirky perspectives and analytical frameworks to bear on some of the most wicked public policy problems. The purpose is to expand the universe of possible alternatives and extend one's range of curiosity by bringing radically different viewpoints to the discussion.

ISPP trains its scholars to be leaders for policy action by training them rigorously in management, communication, and leadership skills. ISPP has its dedicated Careers Support Cell which assists each scholar to explore prospective career pathways and towards enabling career opportunities of the scholar’s choice. At ISPP, we have designed our own career support process - The Three Es towards Employment - to competently leverage on the varied skill sets and domain expertise that our scholars offer.

The ‘Tea and Policy’ session is a unique initiative where we invite public policy professionals from a diverse range of industry backgrounds to engage with our scholars. These events are structured to be free flowing discussions which not only provide the scholars with an avenue to network with industry leaders but also gives them an insight into the day-to-day workings of a policy professional.

A few policy professionals who have engaged with our scholars include Aman Jain (Google), Priti Srivastava (Reliance Industries), Rajesh Chadha (Brookings), Anu Madgavkar (McKinsey), Nirat Bhatnagar (Dalberg), Ranen Banerjee (PwC), etc.