Program Features

Top 5 Reasons to Pursue an I-MPA Degree

Top five reasons to pursue an I-MPA degree

  1. Distinguished university
    The University of Pennsylvania is a highly selective Ivy League university that has been ranked 4th among all US universities in the Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education college rankings.
  2. Innovative and structured curriculum
    This one-year, skill-based graduate professional degree program provides eight carefully constructed, well-integrated courses that help train students to become an ethical, effective, and entrepreneurial leaders.
  3. Diverse faculty and affiliates
    Faculty come from a range of countries—Bangladesh, China, India, the US, and others—and most speak more than one language. They are leaders in their fields—among them, government, nonprofits, business, social entrepreneurship, and consulting.
  4. Leadership and problem-solving
    Working in a cohort setting, students conduct research projects and work on real-world problems as individuals, group members, and as a class.
  5. Supportive and dynamic community
    Each and every student has an academic and professional advisor who meets with the student regularly. The program offers extracurricular experiences including meetings with distinguished leaders in government, business, academia, philanthropy, media, and other fields, and other networking and social events.

Advising, mentoring, and paid fellowships

The Penn I-MPA advisor meets and communicates regularly and individually with assigned I-MPA student-advisees throughout the year. In addition, certain extracurricular experiences bring the I-MPA advisor and all members of a Leadership Task Group together.

In addition to communicating with their I-MPA advisor, each I-MPA student also interacts regularly with the I-MPA faculty members and senior staff members.

During spring break, top-performing I-MPA students may be eligible to apply for an all-expenses paid, faculty-led service-learning fellowship trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. As Joseph P. Tierney Fellows of the Penn Partnership for Innovation, Cross-Sector Collaboration, Leadership, and Organization (PICCLO), students tour the Crescent City; meet top business, government, and nonprofit leaders; and learn firsthand about the public-private partnerships that were essential to the region’s human, physical, and financial recovery process in the decades following Hurricane Katrina.

In the summer immediately following graduation, academically qualified I-MPA students who served as leaders of the group-organized, class-wide capstone project in I-MPA 6095 may be eligible for Fox Leadership International Alumni Research and Service (FLIARS) awards of up to $5,000. FLIARS awards help to support recent I-MPA alumni in unpaid post-graduation internships or other jobs with community-serving nonprofit organizations or public service agencies in the US or abroad.