Guided by i-Lab Co-Directors Tracy Kijewski-Correa and Steve Reifenberg, you’ll work with other students, global partners, and faculty-mentors in multiple disciplines to address real-world issues and challenges.

Equality and Inclusion

Conflict Transformation

Climate Change and Adaptation

Global Health

Community Resilience

Educational Opportunity

Displacement and Migration

Food and Water Security

Poverty and Economic Development

+ others

Semester 1

Integrating Mindsets & Skillsets

In this first semester, you’ll be immersed in innovative approaches — design thinking, systems thinking, human centered design, negotiation, and implementation science. Your creativity will be unleashed as you build a toolkit of knowledge to better understand, redefine, and solve problems.

Semester 2 + Summer + Semester 3

Global Partner Experience

During this year-long period, you’ll be part of an interdisciplinary team focused on addressing a specific compelling global challenge. You’ll engage closely with a global partner (a respected and high-impact organization or agency with an established relationship with Notre Dame), a Notre Dame partner (a University institute or center with scholarly expertise in your area of focus), and a Notre Dame faculty-mentor.

With insights gained from related coursework, you’ll deepen your understanding of the culture, history, and context of your future field site and develop a proposal, work plan, and budget. Once prepared, you’ll pursue immersive fieldwork for 2-3 months, depending on your project.

After extended time for analysis, synthesis, and reflection, you’ll develop a professional-quality product and prepare individual research and reflective work based on your experience.

The i-Lab global partner experience is fully funded for all students.

Semester 4

Enriching Your Policy + Practice Portfolio

In this final semester, you’ll continue to build your portfolio of skills through career development opportunities and elective coursework at the Keough School. Dive deeper into the global issues that concern you the most—from water policy to food insecurity, migration to climate change and more.

You’ll also have the opportunity to elect skills-based policy lab courses, where you’ll get intensive, hands-on experience in topics such as big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

By graduation, you’ll have the training, connections, experience and professional skills to take your international career to a new level of real-world impact.

United States

Project: Adapt and utilize a care policy scorecard to monitor and evaluate unpaid and paid care work policies in the US federal context

i-Lab Global Partner

Every year, students in the i-Lab work with diverse partner organizations, engaging thoughtfully with local actors and communities worldwide.

View Previous i-Lab Projects and Partners

The Keough School provides student funding for the i-Lab experience, with generous support from the Monaghan Family i-Lab Experience and the Pulte Endowment for Excellence for Global Affairs.