The Keough School, in partnership with the Pulte Institute, hosted its i-Lab Showcase on Friday. The annual event was an opportunity for Master of Global Affairs students to present their summer fieldwork and internships, research and creative activities, conducted in conjunction with partners across the world as part of the i-Lab's Global Partner Experience — a learning-by-doing approach that allows MGA students to work at the front lines of today’s most pressing challenges.

With the Showcase, MGA students officially kick off their final year in the program, which they will spend analyzing and synthesizing literature, data, and observations gathered as part of their fieldwork and internships to inform their final deliverables.

The event also included discussions on topics important to global development professionals, such as how to design and implement projects and policies that improve people's lives in low- and middle-income countries.  

The 2023-2024 Global Partner Experience Projects include: 

• Team A - Evaluating Agriculture Initiatives
  PARTNER: Global Ministries: The United Methodist Church
  RESEARCH QUESTION: How might we optimize the impact of UMC's agricultural projects to foster sustainable economic growth and food security?
  
  
• Team B - Evaluating Household Resilience
  PARTNER: Catholic Relief Services, CRS
  RESEARCH QUESTION: How might we determine what factors enable or threaten long-term household resilience to create sustainability programming?
  
  
• Team C - Building Resilience through Innovation
  PARTNER: National League of Cities, NLC
  RESEARCH QUESTION: How might we leverage innovation competitions to effectively enhance local governments' capacity to address climate-related challenges in small- to mid-sized cities?
  
  
• Team D - Assessing Stabilization Intervention Effectiveness
  PARTNER: Center for Strategic & International Studies, CSIS
  RESEARCH QUESTION: How might we identify effective strategies for conflict prevention and stabilization efforts by the Department of Defense in fragile states in West Africa?
  
  
• Team E - Promoting Conflict Prevention & Stabilization
  PARTNER: U.S. State Department
  RESEARCH QUESTION: How might we improve interagency collaboration to increase the effectiveness of conflict prevention and stabilization efforts in fragile states?

About the i-Lab
The i-Lab comprises Keough School Master of Global Affairs students, four core faculty advisors, a program manager, and faculty and staff consultants across the University of Notre Dame. i-Lab teams work with their partner organizations for the full calendar year as a group of three to four, traveling to different parts of the world in the summer to collect data. Returning to campus, they reflect together on what they have learned and, from their data outputs, prepare deliverables tailored to the needs of their partner organizations. The i-Lab is taking a different approach to policy and service delivery, focusing on human needs and experiences to devise innovative and effective solutions to address a range of social challenges.

For more information, please contact i-Lab Program Manager Alan Medina at amedina5@nd.edu.