Washington D.C. Off-Campus Program

About The Program

Each spring quarter, the Government Department offers the DC Off-Campus Program that provides a unique and exciting opportunity to live, study, and work in the nation's capital. This is your opportunity to experience American politics up close. Through the program, you will work in internships related to politics and take courses on the American political system and the history of the Washington Metropolitan area. You will meet with high-profile practitioners in the policy arena, many of them Dartmouth alums excited to share their experiences with you. Living in community is a key part of the program. We will live in the same building and have many meals together. We will get to know the city together, visiting the classic monuments as well as DC's different neighborhoods.

DC DSP Director '25 & '26

Applications

Applications for the Spring 2027 Washinton, D.C. program open on October 1st, 2025 and close on February 1st, 2026.

Students will be notified of their acceptance in March.

To apply for the program, click on the website for the Frank J. Guarini Institute for International Education

Apply for the Program

GOVT 93

Internship Reflections

The internship component of the Washington DC Off-Campus Program is aimed at giving you practical experience working in the world of politics, policy, and government. The purpose of the independent study paired with the internship is to provide opportunities to reflect on your work experience in terms of your own professional development and career goals, and to make connections between the work you're doing in the internship and your academic classes. Internships are a classic example of experiential learning or high-impact learning. There are three steps to experiential learning as it is typically taught and understood at Dartmouth: having an experience, participating in academic learning about that experience, and reflecting on the connection between the experience and the academic component. The assignments associated with Govt 93 focus on the reflection component, through weekly logs, and presentations about your experiences.

GOVT 94

The History and Politics of the Washington Metropolitan Area

Most people think about Washington, D.C. in terms of its status as the capital of the United States. Going to Washington means working for Congress, the President, a government agency, or one of the thousands of public and private organizations focused on influencing national politics. But Washington is also a city in its own right, and the center of a broader region populated by people whose families have lived here for generations, with its own history, culture, neighborhoods, and political issues. In this class, students will develop and demonstrate (1) in-depth knowledge of conflicts between the federal government, local governments, and DC residents over representation and governance; (2) their own perspective on DC and regional governance; (3) close engagement with the way that monuments and memorials shape the city’s physical space; and (4) a broader perspective on the area’s history, culture, and neighborhoods.

GOVT 95

Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy

This course examines the degree to which human rights shapes U.S. foreign policy and vice versa. We begin by studying the role that the United States played in shaping the status of human rights concerns in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the history of U.S. efforts to draft and ratify the other UN human rights treaties. We analyze the participation of the U.S. government in various human rights venues within the United Nations, taking various ideological perspectives into account, and we will study scholarly research that assesses the effectiveness of international human rights law in protecting human rights.