Maxwell School of Syracuse University

The Maxwell School of Syracuse University is recognized as one of the world’s best graduate schools of public affairs. The great variety of educational missions that co-exist under its roof creates not only choice, but depth and dimension. Maxwell is home to strong professional master’s degree programs in public administration and international relations; the MPA program is consistently ranked number one in America by U.S. News & World Report, and the IR program was recently ranked among the nation’s top ten by Foreign Policy magazine. Maxwell also offers MA and PhD programs in the social sciences (anthropology, economics, geography, history, political science, and sociology), plus an innovative Social Science PhD program with unique, cross-disciplinary opportunities. No other major graduate school of public affairs houses public administration, international relations, and the social sciences side-by-side in this manner. And, while Maxwell is a graduate school, it is also home to faculty and instruction for Syracuse University’s undergraduate social science students. Given this mix, it is not surprising that Maxwell faculty members’ research is wide-ranging and includes both pure scholarship and applied studies. In fact, to help encourage and nurture interdisciplinary research, Maxwell hosts or co-hosts ten centers and institutes, each focused on a different category of public affairs concerns. The School is noted for its friendly, welcoming culture. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni rally around a sense of mission. The graduate student body is small; faculty members are accessible and apt to treat their students as peers. The resulting collegiality helps carry students through their Maxwell careers and long past graduation. In fact, Maxwell’s alumni are widely known for their fierce loyalty to the School and to one another.