Master of Science in International Relations and Politics (MS IRP)
Thank you for showing interest in CMIST’s Master of Science in International Relations and Politics (MS IRP) at Carnegie Mellon University!
CMIST is committed to offering dynamic and unique academic programs which prepare students to respond to the most vital questions facing our society today. CMIST was founded on the belief that graduates from international relations, security studies, and political science in the twenty-first century must be equipped with applied technological comprehension and skill sets that will help shape global relationships and cooperative policies around emerging technologies moving forward. An exciting part of this evolution includes our ambitious plans to create dynamic and unique academic programs for the changing landscape of socio-political technologies and their impact on international affairs and domestic policies.
With this charge in mind, we are temporarily pausing our Fall 2024 admissions for the Master of Science in International Relations and Politics (MS IRP). This pause will allow us the flexibility to grow our faculty while redesigning an academic core to more closely align with the distinctive evolution of CMIST at Carnegie Mellon University. While we will not be accepting MS IRP applications for the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year, we invite you to watch this space or our social media accounts for updates about our exciting new graduate program offerings in the near future.
The Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST) seeks to train the next generation of political scientists who can examine and understand domestic and international government institutions and processes in the twenty-first century’s continuously changing global political structure. War has been a constant in our students’ lives, and that unfortunately does not look like it will change soon. But what is changing is the political landscape of war – from wars between nations to non-state actors like ISIS and Boko Haram. Coupled with an increasingly global society, international relations and politics are extremely important for preparing students to analyze and manage uncertainty and transformation in many pursuits and places.
The Master of Science in International Relations and Politics (MS IRP) serves four academic goals.
1) To allow students to specialize in one of four conventional areas of political science.
The first is to allow students to specialize in one of four conventional areas of political science: international security, international relations, American politics, and comparative politics.
CMIST also offers a unique subset of courses focused on international security. CMIST has robust course offerings in cybersecurity and international conflict. Students who select the international security concentration will analyze the role of cyber warfare and cybersecurity in international politics – past, present, and future. The coursework tackles the social-scientific dimensions of cybersecurity with a focus on the implications of the cyber age for modern statecraft, warfare, elections, and politics, more generally.
2) To equip students with strong methodological skills.
A second goal is to equip students with strong methodological skills. Students pursuing the MS IRP will master the diverse skills needed to conduct advanced quantitative and qualitative research. This will be a significant advantage for our graduates in both the policy world and when applying for PhD or JD programs.
Students are required to take Regression Analysis for Political Science I and II. Regression Analysis for Political Science (RAPS) I will teach students to conduct bivariate and multivariate linear regression models. Students will learn about analysis of variance, parameter estimation, hypothesis testing, interpretation of estimates, model fit, models with dummy variables, model predictions, model diagnostics, and basic data visualizations.
