On 17 December, our master’s students will go on a well-deserved break for the holidays and the autumn semester will be over. Here’s a short overview of how the MSc in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) programme has been going so far for this year’s cohort.
At the end of August, we started with the two-day introduction programme where our new group of students began getting to know each other and learned about the Problem-Based Learning educational system, the city of Maastricht and UNU-MERIT. This was swiftly followed by the start of their first classes in September: core courses on methods and skills, and an introduction to public policy, public economics and policy analysis.
In the meantime, the cohort elected a new board of the MPP student association DEMOS (Hailey Halligan, Ingrid Reinten, Siavash Ghasemi, Sara Federio Albaina, Thibodhi Sujarirat and Abdisalam Mohamud) and Education Programme Committee representatives. Most of our students participated - whether as speaker, discussant or attendee - in this year's Public Policy MPP Conference, which was a great success! We had the specialisation kick-off event in October, and the thesis track was also launched.
Other events – such as a briefing of the work of UNRWA, a meeting with representatives of the World Food Programme and meeting up with alumni that reunited in Maastricht 10 years after their graduation – all filled up the schedules.
Our Office of Student Affairs ensured that we celebrated Halloween and the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas, and at the final MPP Townhall we held a Christmas wheel of fortune.
The last three and a half months have gone by incredibly fast, and we are looking forward to the spring semester and the start of the specialisations.
Wishing all of our students and staff happy holidays and a wonderful start to 2025!
