Diplomacy Lab Provides Term-length Group Projects Integrating Policy Analysis and Liberal Arts into the Traditional Engineering Classroom

Science in diplomacy, the use of trained scientist to inform and support foreign policy objectives, has been a part of U.S. foreign policy since the time of Benjamin Franklin. The Diplomacy Laboratory project, a public-private partnership, allows the Department of State to ‘course source’ projects to seek input from universities and to recruit talented students to consider careers in diplomacy. This paper provides a summary of a case study using a DipLab project as part of a term-length, writing assignment in courses for undergraduate and graduate environmental engineering students. An overview of DipLab and suggested best practices to integrate DipLab projects into engineering courses is also included.