The Catholic University of America, founded in 1887 by the U.S. Catholic bishops with the support of Pope Leo XIII, is the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States. Established as a graduate research center, the university began offering undergraduate education in 1904 and today is home to 12 schools and 21 research facilities. Catholic University is the only American university with ecclesiastical faculties granting canonical degrees in three disciplines.
The university's verdant 193-acre campus, located just north of Capitol Hill, allows students easy access to the wide range of educational, cultural and political opportunities that Washington, D.C. has to offer.
Master of Arts in Integral Economic Development Management (IEDM)
The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. offers a groundbreaking, one-year Master of Arts in Integral Economic Development Management (IEDM), created in response to the increasing needs international organizations, nongovernmental and private entities face in terms of human development. The IEDM master's program is founded upon years of experience, research and practice and is the first of its kind in the world to create and to implement an integrated perspective that development entities demand —one that takes into account the social dimension of the person. Our students learn to develop innovative measures to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of development programs, while learning applied management and economics skills. The program has attracted talented development professionals from across the globe who recognize that development must be effectively planned, measured and evaluated. In sum, the IEDM program is supporting greater accountability and transparency to ensure that development programs are designed and implemented effectively.
Our students come from countries including Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Georgia, Nicaragua, Belgium, and Taiwan. They graduate with the technical skills to be able to design, implement, manage and evaluate programs to effectively produce sustainable results based on a better understanding of the macroeconomic environment, the role of institutions and an integral approach to development – economic development seen from the perspective of the whole human person and his/her social interaction.
This is what makes the IEDM program unique:
Integral Approach to Economic Development
This program is deeply rooted in the need to accomplish sustainable development through an integral approach. This approach seeks to strengthen the civil and social institutions involved, maintaining an integral view of the person in society and, consequently, a focus on the economic agent’s decision process acknowledging him/her in a holistic manner and in his/her social dimension.
Proposes Measures of Program Impact and Effectiveness
Reasonable questions have been increasingly raised about the effectiveness and accountability of international organizations, government and private sector leading economic development efforts. This program proposes new metrics that contribute to the improvement of traditional measures of development and objective program evalutations.
Highly Technical Degree
It aims at teaching technical skills applied to development implementations at the micro level within a macro framework. These skills include accounting, econometrics, management, finance, qualitative and quantitative market research, and project development, in the context of the interplay between the areas of politics, global health, food and nutrition, energy and environment, education in developing countries, and community development.
Public or Private Sector Concentrations
It addresses today’s challenges of private and public organizations in achieving integral economic development. It teaches the management skills necessary for building and growing strong institutions in a context of social and economic development.
