The Policy Summer Program for High School Students

The Policy Summer Program for High School Students

Dates: July 16 – 27, 2023



Registration is closed

About the program

The Policy Summer Program provides high school students with a foundational understanding of the policy making process as well as the skills needed to develop and introduce public policies. Through a combination of lectures, group discussions, and an immersive hands-on project, students will develop skills in evidence-based survey design methodology and techniques to identify interesting policy issues and translate them into survey questionnaires for qualitative and quantitative evidence analysis. Students will have the opportunity to explore their interest in pursuing a career or undergraduate and graduate degrees in public policy.

Learning Outcomes

  • Be familiar with basic public policy concepts, including survey design and the importance of taking an evidence-based approach in public policy thinking and decision-making.
  • Have acquired an introduction to public policy statistics and research methods.
  • Be able to think critically about and engage in basic policy analysis, including understanding types of variables, census versus inference, sample statistics, causation vs. correlation, and the role of survey questions in causal inference.
  • Conduct data analysis in Excel to analyze survey results and develop graphical representations of data.
  • Apply learnings into a real policy inquiry project to develop research questions related to a public policy topic, design appropriate survey questionnaires, conduct data collection, analyze data, and present their insights.
  • Have increased preparation and confidence to pursue policy-focused degree programs and careers.

 

Program Partners

Faculty

Dr. Susan Mayer

Professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the College and served as the Dean of Harris from 2002 to 2009

Rohen Shah

Research Fellow at the University of Chicago and Ph.D. student at the Harris School of Public Policy, where he studies how tools from behavioral economics can be leveraged to improve outcomes in education, voting, and entrepreneurship.

Who Should Attend?

  • High school students registered in Mawhiba (King Abdulaziz & his Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity)
  • Proficiency of written and spoken English
  • Have intermediate knowledge in mathematics.
  • Availability to attend the full program.

 

Contact Us

Please feel free to contact us at exed@kapsarc.org if you require additional information or support.