AppSent Wins Inaugural McCourt Policy Challenge
The McCourt team will go on to compete at the National Invitational Public Policy Challenge at the University of Pennsylvania
Congratulations to McCourt students Natalie Duarte, Nahal Jalali, Amir Jilani, Julian Koschorke and Kirstin Roster for their winning proposal, “AppSent” an innovative mobile-based application that directly addresses absenteeism and poor performance in Math and English in middle schools in the District of Columbia.
AppSent takes a proactive approach to the problem of absenteeism as a precursor to poor academic performance and high school dropout by creating a platform for effective and timely communication between teachers, students, and guardians.
The inaugural Georgetown Public Policy Challenge selected a team to represent the McCourt School at the University of Pennsylvania’s 2015 National Invitational Public Policy Challenge this March. The Challenge is hosted annually by the Fels Institute of Government at Penn.
Modeled after MBA business plan competitions, the competition challenges student teams to develop a policy proposal and civic campaign plan to achieve significant change in their communities.
Seven McCourt School teams developed a policy proposal to address a wide-range of local and regional issues from high rates of HIV infection in Washington, DC to crowdsourcing healthcare service reviews to tracking and reducing food waste by local restaurants.
Professors Mark Rom, Barbara Schone, Margaret O’Bryon, Micah Jenson, John Buttarazzi, and Simone Bunse served as judges, along with previous Challenge competitors Suzanne Falk and Madeline Pongor.