This interdisciplinary concentration aims to provide students with the tools to analyze policymaking processes and implementation and to evaluate policy decisions and outcomes from multiple perspectives. The concentration will take an interdisciplinary approach to case-study analysis and student research.

Students who intend to declare a policy studies concentration must, at the time of declaration, design a curricular concentration plan, which indicates how the student will meet concentration requirements 1–6 listed below. Ideally, student plans will utilize students' major or other curricular interests as a focus for policy analysis and develop some expertise in a specific policy area. However, in order to ensure the interdisciplinary nature of the concentration, students may not count more than eight credits from any one department (including methods courses) toward the concentration.