Capstone in Political Analytics

The capstone course is the culminating experience for students in the Political Analytics program. Students will have the opportunity to tackle a complex, real-world political analytics challenge for a sponsoring organization. The capstone provides students with analytics experience in a “live” setting and is intended to expose students to the problems, timelines, and communications needs of actual political decision-makers. Working in small teams while being mentored by a program faculty member, students will apply core knowledge, concepts, and frameworks acquired during the program and practice the hands-on skills they have developed in their classes. Throughout the semester, student project teams will interact with the sponsoring organizations as virtual consultants, scoping the problem, acquiring the data, conducting analyses, and ultimately presenting their findings and recommendations to the project sponsor.