Thirty-five students from colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad have been selected to participate in the Woodrow Wilson School's 2009 Junior Summer Institute (JSI). This year's program, which begins Thursday, June 11 and ends Friday, July 31,  will help prepare students for graduate study and careers in public policy and international affairs

JSI is designed to provide participants with the tools of critical thinking, speaking, writing, and quantitative reasoning and the skills and experiences necessary to create, analyze, implement, evaluate, and affect policy in a multicultural, multi-ethnic society. 

Coursework includes seven weeks of policy-related classroom instruction, including a policy workshop on either a domestic or international policy issue.  As part of the program's culmination, students will present a comprehensive final report on a current policy issue that will encompass the skills acquired and the knowledge base gained over the prior seven weeks.

This year the domestic policy workshop will be taught by Ron Brady, M.P.A .’92, and will focus on education policy.  Ron is the founder of the Foundation Academy Charter School in Trenton, NJ. 

The international policy workshop will focus on the future of US-European relations.  It will be taught by Ambassador James Gadsden M.C.F. '85, former U.S. ambassador to Iceland from 2002 to 2005 and U.S. Foreign Service veteran. 

Five of this year's JSI students are Thomas R. Pickering fellows. The Pickering Fellowship is sponsored by the U.S. State Department; undergraduate students are prepared academically and professionally to enter the United States Department of State Foreign Service upon completion of their graduate degree in International Relations.

Established over two decades ago, JSI convenes rising college seniors to provide the unique opportunity to interact and discuss a broad range of coursework, field research, and policy analysis with leaders within the public policy, government and nonprofit sectors.

It is part of the Public Policy & International Affairs Fellowship Program (PPIA), a national consortium of top public policy and international affairs graduate schools that prepare college students for advanced degrees and careers serving the public good. In addition to Princeton's PPIA Junior Summer Institute, there are four other schools that host a PPIA Summer Institute, including the University of California at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Michigan.