Georgetown University’s Capitol Applied Learning Labs (CALL) will launch a new “D.C. Semester” program at the Capitol Campus in partnership with four different programs in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) starting in the Fall 2025 semester. 

The program, announced in a Feb. 12 email, will welcome its first cohort this fall, geared toward students studying economics, government, justice and peace studies and women’s and gender studies. The residential program will offer main campus students in the College the opportunity to live and take classes on the Capitol Campus and pursue an internship downtown related to their degree.

Although the university has offered the CALL program since 2019, this marks the first offering of programs designed for specific majors.

Billy Jack, professor of economics, said the experience will allow students to explore a new environment without going far from the Hilltop.

“I think of this as the semester abroad that’s not abroad. It’s in a different environment,” Jack told The Hoya. “It’s at the heart of policymaking, politics in D.C., and for people with interest in those areas, I think that can be especially invigorating.”

Joseph Hartman, associate director of undergraduate studies in the government department, said the D.C. Semester program will help students gain practical career experience without sacrificing their studies.

“Government students, you’re thinking not only about, ‘I’m interested in this to major,’ but, ‘What am I going to do when I finish?’” Hartman told The Hoya. “A lot of kids want to go to law school. People want to work on the Hill or get into public policy. And one of the nice things about the CALL is it’s located right there.”

“Getting academic work down there — so, my constitutional law class, or we’re going to offer a department seminar in political theory — makes it easier for students who are really interested in the practical component to also keep on pace with their academic work and connect them up,” he added.

Each of the four major programs within the program will form a cohort to connect students and center their semester experiences related to their course of study. The centerpiece of the D.C. Semester curriculum will be a four-credit internship seminar in which students will reflect on their internship with other students in their major cohort. Participating students will also take one major core course, one major elective, two one-credit professional development workshops and a core requirement course or a free elective.

Tad Howard, an associate dean in the College who advises students at the Capitol Campus, associate dean for CAS Capitol Campus advising and associate dean for strategic integration, said the cohort experience will allow students to have an experience that stretches beyond typical academic and professional experiences.

“The idea being students will not just have courses and an internship, but that throughout the semester, if you’re in the econ cohort, or if you’re in the government cohort, there’s this extra thread of experiences that you’re having, that the sum is greater than the parts,” Howard told The Hoya.

Elham Atashi, director of the justice and peace studies program, said participating students will be able to understand abstract principles at work through hands-on opportunities. 

“Justice and peace issues are complex, and our goal is to ensure students not only understand these challenges but also develop the skills needed to address and transform them,” Atashi wrote to The Hoya. “The D.C. JUPS/CALL semester builds on this foundation, expanding the ways students can fulfill their social action requirement.”

Scott Pawley (CAS ’28), who intends to double major in government and economics, said he found the opportunity intriguing given the program’s focus on earning academic credit for an internship.

“I think one of the biggest things would be having the ability to get credit for the internship since I know that’s kind of tough normally,” Pawley told The Hoya. “It does seem like a potentially good opportunity.”

Besides the existing CALL program, Georgetown currently offers two undergraduate programs, one in public policy and one in environmental studies, which see students spend their first two years on Georgetown’s main campus and their junior and senior years at the Capitol Campus; the first cohort will move into the Capitol Campus this fall. Several programs at the Capitol Campus have garnered criticism for taking students far away from student life on the Main Campus.

Pawley said he felt the program’s downtown residential requirement at the CALL could hold students back from participating in the D.C. Semester. 

“I also know a lot of people who have been interested in the public policy major but don’t really want to go to the Capitol for that,” Pawley said. “That’s a longer commitment, since it’s two years, but I wonder if there’d be similar hesitation.”

Howard said the D.C. Semester aims to provide students with the opportunity to connect their majors to internship programs and he hopes future students will come to regard a semester downtown as a formative part of their Georgetown experience. 

“In some ways, it lets us double down on what the mission of the CALL has been all along, which is to get students thinking about connections between their intellectual interests and what might happen next,” Howard said. “And this builds, I think, organically, in that direction.”

“We intend for the Capitol Campus to see a lot of students, and for it to be normative that every student wants to spend a semester there,” he added.