School of Public Affairs Launches Inaugural Fellowship Program in Partnership with Local Cities

“It's going to help bring some of the real world back into the classroom,” Dr. Roddrick Colvin said of San Diego State University’s new City Management and Urban Studies Fellowship Program.

“If your goal is to eventually be city manager for Carlsbad, or if your goal is to be Chief of Staff to the Mayor of San Diego, or deputy mayor, if we do this right, this is the program that applicants come to,” Colvin said.

The CMUSF program pairs graduate students with local cities for a 10-month, immersive fellowship that combines in-class learning, hands-on fieldwork, and a capstone project, all designed to prepare Master’s in Public Affairs students for impactful careers in city management.

Through their selected city and donations, students receive stipends and scholarships while completing the program. In the first year of the program, one student was placed with the City of Chula Vista and another with the City of Coronado.

“They might do ride-alongs with the police department,” Colvin shared. “They might spend some time at their local fire department. They will go out and test water with parks and recreation. They will help develop waste reduction and recycling policies. It's going to be really dependent on what the local city needs.”

While this is the first year of the program, Colvin says  this fellowship could expand to “placing four or five students every year in four or five different cities around the county.”

The different cities will bring unique experiences to the students while completing their fellowships.

“A city like Chula Vista is going to have a whole set of different policy issues than the City of Coronado,” Colvin said. “We want students, depending on their interest, to be locally placed and exposed to those issues.”

The fellowship program is available to graduate students who have completed between 15 and 24 course units. Applications must be submitted by May 31, 2025. For more information on the program, click here.

“I have been informally joking with my colleagues that within a decade, I expect every city manager to have come from SDSU,” Colvin shared. “We're creating the pipeline for them to start working in city government, learning all the ropes, and eventually becoming employees at the local jurisdiction.”