Duke Semester in India
The Duke Semester in India (DSI), launching in spring 2013, is a joint collaboration between the Sanford School of Public Policy and the Global Education Office for Undergraduates. The program affords students the opportunity to learn more about the diversity of India and add depth to their knowledge of policies and practices in diverse sectors related to economic and social development and poverty reduction through field work and classroom experiences.
Building on the success of the Global Semester Abroad (GSA) program, which takes place in Udaipur, India and Beijing, China, DSI will operate alongside the GSA for the first seven weeks, sharing classes and infrastructure with the GSA. Both programs will study development and global health, designing and implementing a research project based in a nearby village. Students will select from among NGO partners who work in a variety of development sectors, including education, microfinance, the environment, women’s rights, maternal and child health, traditional medicine, and child development.
During the second half of the semester, i.e., after the GSA students have left India for China, students in the new DSI program will build upon these research projects – examining the sectors they have selected from the larger policy perspective, and simultaneously, comparing practices on the ground as implemented by NGOs in other (southern) parts of India. The knowledge they have acquired during the first half of the semester, and the experience and familiarity they will have gained while living in different locations, urban as well as rural, will provide the foundation upon which these later, more probing, investigations are built.
Two classes during the second half of the semester will help structure this learning, providing opportunities, first, for integrating ground-level practices (micro) with macro-policy debates, and second, for comparing programs and practices in different parts of India that vary on dimensions such as language, socio-economic composition, historical institutional development, political trends, and economic growth rates.
Students will stay with families in different locations and interact with a variety of actors and organizations, which will help develop more comprehensive understandings of how India works for different segments of its population.
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Last revised: 1 December 2011
