Helping the American family flourish is critical to solving the biggest challenges of the 21st century. The Family and Social Policy Specialty prepares you to understand the value of the family unit, the challenges facing the family, and the skills necessary to design, implement, and evaluate policy that influences the family.

Channeling science and technology toward prosperity while protecting human values requires policy experts with both humanistic and scientific training. The Science and Technology Specialty trains you to understand the challenges presented by rapidly advancing technology and to think critically about how to design, implement, and evaluate policy in this space. 

The Development and Sustainability Policy Specialty teaches you to understand the challenges and opportunities in economic developments as well as the skills that dominate the field of economic development. The concentration includes courses on ethics, program evaluation, international development policy, and specific field courses such as global health, education, and agriculture. 

Understanding how to pursue the national interest using all of the instruments of national power without losing our humanity requires a substantive moral and philosophical framework. The National Security and Intelligence Policy Specialty teaches you to understand the challenges nations face in the domain of national security and how to design public policy to effectively address these challenges.

The Advanced Policy Analysis Specialty is designed to instruct you in the advanced quantitative skills necessary to conduct rigorous policy analysis and impact evaluation. The concentration includes courses in machine learning, regression analysis, impact evaluation, and other data analysis and quantitative methods.

Credit Hours: 36
Cost: $1,350 per credit hour

Financial Aid information  

For Domestic Students:

Pope Leo XIII Scholarship

Merit scholarship awarded upon acceptance to the program. No additional application is needed.

Froehlich Scholarship

• CV / Resume 
• An essay of 500 to 1000 words that discusses the following question: "Discuss how your past work, and the work you hope to do in the future, aligns with the mission and guiding principles of the MPP program at Catholic University of America?"

Submit your scholarship materials to AS-MPP@cua.edu by May 1st.

For International Students:

Merit scholarship awarded upon acceptance to the program. No additional application is needed.

• Richard Gallenstein, Economics, Director
  • Expertise in development economics and experimental economics
• Jon Askonas, Politics, Assistant Director for Development
  • Expertise on American foreign policy, Russian foreign policy, and the growing use of technological warfare
• Gustavo Santos, Politics, Assistant Director for Curriculum
  • Specialization in political theory and Latin American politics and public policy
• Martha Cruz Zuniga, Economics
  • Specializes in development economics, international economics, and monetary economics with particular focus on migration, remittances, microfinance, poverty, education, and international transmission of shocks
• Michael Kimmage, History
  • Specializes in the history of the Cold War, in twentieth-century U.S. diplomatic and intellectual history and in U.S.-Russian relations since 1991
• Thomas Smith, Politics
  • Specializes in the history of political thought, classical political thought, Christian political thought, and liberal political thought.
• Paul Radich, Marketing
  • Specializes in virtue ethics & entrepreneurship, happiness & meaning/purpose, human flourishing, consumer behavior, political economy, creative problem solving/idea generation, and visual storytelling.
• Sr. Anna Wray, Philosophy
• V. Bradley Lewis, Philosophy
  • Specializes in political philosophy, legal philosophy, and ethics.
• Catherine Pakaluk, Political Economy
  • Specializes in applied microeconomics, economics of education and religion, family studies and demography, Catholic Social Thought, and political economy.
• Michael Promisel, Politics
  • Specializes in classical political thought, American political thought, and statesmanship.
• Sarah Gustafson, Politics
  • Specializes in French and American political thought, nineteenth-century political thought, liberalism, Catholic social and political thought, history of political thought, political economy, religion, and democratic politics.
• Sang Hoo Oh, Information Sciences
  • Specializes in ethical and social Implications of emerging technologies (AI; Big Data; and IoT), AI governance and policy, social informatics, computational social science, and the future of work.