Harris Student Organizations

There are plenty of ways for Harris students to get involved and gain real-world experiences outside of the classroom. For example, we have more than thirty Harris Student Organizations (HSOs) in which students can build community and do meaningful work. We attended an HSO fair and stopped by a few tables for a glimpse into their work.

Christian Johns, MPP Class of 2024: Black Action in Public Policy Studies (BAPPS) has grown in the past few years to become a diverse community of Blackness around the globe. We do exceptional work around community development outside of Harris. We’re really excited about Hire Black Harris, which is a career development program, and Black Policy Review, with articles and commentary about Blackness here and around the world.

Semeredin Kundin, MPP 2024: BAPPS has been instrumental for a lot of our experiences. We have found great value in the community, professional support, and social and community development.

Carrie Collins, MPP Class of 2024: My favorite thing about working with Chicago Policy Review, the student-run news organization, is that it matches the quantitative policy skillset at Harris to a qualitative skillset. Seeing someone go from being nascent in that skillset to confident in communicating out the work we do here is incredibly valuable to my Harris experience. This year, we’re really emphasizing the skill-building initiative to make ourselves available to the Harris community in the form of office hours and skill-building sessions, from writing for social media to writing about a policy topic you care about.

Mercedes Garcia, MPP Class of 2025: It’s exciting to be part of the first year of Data, Ethics, and Policy and build on the work that the MSCAPP students started last fall—they fundraised more than $20k since November 2022. We are developing goals and a speaker series that reflects the interests of the student body on data and ethics covering pressing issues like AI implementation in the workplace.

Varun Thampi, MPP Class of 2024: At Harris, we often focus on academics, so International Development Policy Association (IDPA) is a chance to learn what development looks like from the ground up. We organized a talk last year with development practitioners from India working within the government to make changes at the local level. We talked with them about challenges at the local level and how to deliver solutions to people on issues such as child malnutrition and protecting children from abuse. They talked about how to work in those contexts and showed us how to translate what we learned at Harris into the real world through a practitioner lens.

Grant Castle, MPP Class of 2024: Last year IDPA brought in Leni Robredo, former Vice President of the Philippines, to speak with members. We were able to directly ask questions about economic development, misinformation, and democracy issues. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Madeline Pattis, MPP/MSW Class of 2024: Harris Community Action (HCA) is a great way to connect to the larger Chicago community. We partner with small nonprofits on the South and West sides on projects. It’s a way to connect our degrees with the real world and have some applied experience and support the community. We do a fellowship where we recruit 100 Harris students to partner with about 20 nonprofits ranging from local high schools, South Side Blooms (which does community gardening), Musicbox (focused on giving kids access to instruments), and Chicago Furniture Bank (which provides furniture to folks in need).

Kathryn Strimbu, MPP Class of 2024: I was an HCA fellow last year, which meant that I worked directly with a nonprofit. I came back to manage partnerships this year. I think HCA provides an opportunity to do meaningful work with organizations that aren’t necessarily getting access to resources. It’s a great way to see other parts of the city outside of the UChicago bubble. I like that we give an opportunity to students to explore the nonprofit sector. In turn, Harris students can provide a big picture look at things that nonprofits might not have the resources or bandwidth to dig into.