Stanford in Government (SIG) creates a culture of civic and political engagement on the Stanford campus by offering opportunities for Stanford students to engage with and pursue policy as public service. SIG believes that direct public service plays an important role in communities, but that institutional reform fundamentally changes structures and systems for lasting public benefit. To inspire students to help enact institutional reform, SIG funds more than 60 fellowships for students each year at policy-related organizations, connects students with opportunities to hear and learn from policymakers, and coordinates a variety of civic engagement education initiatives.
Stanford in Government was founded in 1963 as the Stanford in Washington program, and in 1985 became a founding program of the Haas Center for Public Service. For the last 30 years, SIG has been a key part of the Haas Center’s public policy pathway for public service and offers programming and internships through local, state, national and international opportunities in government.
In keeping with the University’s founding principles, the SIG community ensures Stanford students continue to contribute to government service. SIG also reflects Stanford’s hallmark entrepreneurial spirit with its completely student run programming—a characteristic that sets it apart from similar organizations at peer institutions. Stanford in Government is an organization that creates government service opportunities so that students, in Jane Lathrop Stanford’s words, “will become thereby of greater service to the public.”