The College of Public Policy (CPP) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) aims to connect global policy environment to issues pertinent to Qatar, stated the dean of the college.
“We are one of the newest colleges under HBKU. We want to be a policy school that connects the global and local policies in a fresh way. The focus of the college is to bring the global policy environment connected to local issues pertinent to Qatar,” Dr Leslie Pal, dean, CPP, told Gulf Times recently.
CPP started from this Fall Semester with the programme Master of Public Policy, teaching topics related to policy analysis and evaluation.
“The Sustainability Development Goals were developed globally. But they are implemented by individual countries. Qatar is very active in this field and these policies are implemented in the local context,” noted Dr Pal.
The dean explained that the students of the college are engaged in policy analysis, trying to understand how policies are defined, implemented and evaluated.
They will also deal with global policy issues and policy analysis.
“The Master of Public Policy programme focuses on two broad areas which are social policy on topics such as education, healthcare, family, social protection among others. The other area is policies on energy and the environment,” described the official.“This is a masters programme with a research component as the students will be working for their capstone project in small teams. They will address real policy issues related to Qatar and will be under the supervision of the faculty members,” he said.
“We are educating the people who are going to contribute to the policy discussions. They are going to be capable of policy discussion and assessment and improving the capacity to make effective policies. This way, we are contributing to the efforts taken by HBKU and the Education City in general for a knowledge economy,” added the official.
According to the dean, media literacy is the way to counter disinformation. He also added that he was looking at some co-operation with the research institutes and other partners in the Educations City to find ways to counter disinformation.
Dr Leslie Pal
