The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS), founded in 1919, is a premier school of international affairs. At Georgetown’s Washington, D.C., and Qatar campuses, SFS provides a rigorous education grounded in both theory and practice while instilling the Jesuit values of service.

Father Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., was ordained in 1916 and became dean of Georgetown College a year later, but the deanship was soon interrupted. The War Department (now the Department of Defense) requested participation on a board comprised of five educators who designed the academic program for the Student Army Training Corp. The Training Corp educated new military personnel to prepare for America’s entry into the First World War. This experience drew attention to the lacking American education in diplomacy, which helped shape Fr. Walsh’s conception of the SFS. He realized Georgetown University, with its D.C. location and values of service, would be the ideal home for the United States’ first school in international affairs.

The school’s use of the name “Foreign Service” preceded the formal establishment of the modern United States State Department Foreign Service six years later in 1924. The school intended to prepare students for all major forms of foreign representation in the public and private sectors, including in commercial, financial, consular, and diplomatic fields.