“While touring schools throughout the Midwest and Northeast, I heard about the new program that the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies offered,” explained M.A. student Timothy McGowan, ’23.

“This program was the Integrated B.A./M.A International Studies program, where students would work on their M.A. requirements while concurrently working on their B.A. in International Studies. I’ve known from the start that I wanted to get my M.A. in International Studies and this program let me work amongst other graduate students at an earlier stage in my career than most other programs.”

According to McGowan, “These professors were always more than happy to stay after classes and talk about the subject matter because they were truly passionate about what they taught.”

McGowan’s studies have prepared him for career paths in international development, while internships and other projects have given him real-world experience he can bring into his post-grad pursuits. He was part of the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker team, which gave him a chance to monitor various government responses to COVID-19 and expand his skills in research and analysis.

“Through this internship, I’ve researched the conflict in Myanmar and in Southern Thailand so I can provide classified security consultation to various parties that work with HDFF,” explained McGowan. “Along with this, I helped train humanitarians in hostile environment awareness training in a week-long training course where we instructed [them] on what to do in some of the worst possible situations they could encounter.”

This internship allowed him to see what a career in security and development could look like and what risks face humanitarian and global development professionals working in the field. 

His next chapter is still being written, but McGowan has the knowledge and skills needed to step confidently into a career that he can spend a lifetime building and evolving.

“Through my work in HDFF,” he said, “I was able to get experience working in a foreign country and learn what goes into development security. This experience means a lot to me as I now feel like I have experience in the real world that backs up my studies in graduate school.”