Students will have the opportunity to experience presidential campaigns first-hand next semester through a new program in GW’s Semester in Washington Politics program.

GW is partnering with Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire and the Bipartisan Policy Center in D.C. to create an interactive class between the college campuses on politics and elections, with a focus on the presidential nomination process for the 2016 election, according to a release published Wednesday.

Guest lecturers, including political thinkers and reporters like Democratic strategist James Carville and Mitt Romney’s campaign manager Matt Rhoades, will visit classrooms on both campuses. Students from both universities will interact via videoconference.

Gregory Lebel, an assistant professor of political management and the director of the Semester in Washington Program, has worked with officials at Saint Anselm to establish this new program over the past year. He has also combined the Semester in Washington Program with some students in Graduate School of Political management, giving the graduate students an opportunity to also participate.

Lebel, a New Hampshire native who has been “involved in and excited by” presidential politics for years, said in an interview that the 2016 presidential election provided the ideal opportunity for a partnership between D.C. and New Hampshire.

“We have the opportunity to let students see what the presidential nomination process looks like through the lens of Washington, through the parties, and so on and so forth, and to have the opportunity to augment that with a view from one of the states – New Hampshire, being one of the best to see it,” Lebel said.

GW students will travel to New Hampshire for a week in October to work on a presidential campaign of their choice in Manchester, N.H. Lebel said the open presidential seat in the upcoming election will allow students a chance to work on multiple campaigns of both parties.

“This gives them the opportunity to see politics playing out first hand,” Lebel said. “They get to see how a presidential campaign takes shape and then runs.”