.
Home » Education » Graduate » Graduate Courses
International development is a complex process that goes well beyond economics and requires a balanced and inter-disciplinary approach. However, economics forms a key element of that inter-disciplinary framework. The present course emphasis on globalization, markets, privatization, foreign investment and exports as key elements of a viable development strategy. A basic knowledge of economics, both micro and macro, is essential to understand what drives economic growth. Students interested in poverty reduction have to answer questions such as: Does globalization help or hider poverty reduction? Is it better to provide subsidized food for the poor, or a cash grant (dole)?
Much of the advancement in development thought in recent decades has been guided by the trial-and-error of differing, carefully-monitored research approaches and the analysis and comparison of the resulting data through statistical methods. Statistical analysis informs development policies from education and re-hydration therapies to foreign direct investment and small business development programs. In this course, students will: (1) determine which statistical techniques are appropriate for your data, (2) execute and interpret basic statistical analyses, (3) practice the presentation of your analyses, and (4) read and evaluate development literature that uses statistical analysis.
The main purpose of this course is to learn the principles, methods, practices, and skills of research as they apply to international development. In operations, monitoring and evaluations, and such other branches of development, research skills and competencies are equally vital for effective performance. Conceptualizing, identifying, planning, and implementing a development project requires the best of research skills.
This course takes students one level beyond the introductory course to statistical methods. It covers one-way and two-way analysis of variance, repeated measures designs, simple and multiple regression and correlation analyses, analysis of covariance, simple and multiple logistic regressions. The statistical methods in this course are applied to both health and development dataset such as the WHO Health Indicators and World Bank Development Indicators.
IDEV 622 - Introduction to Human Aspects ofDisasters and Complex Emergencies
This is usually a two-weekintensive summer course held in Geneva, Switzerland. The course, administered in partnership with theInternational Center for Health and Migration (ICMH), will focus primarily ondisaster relief and reconstruction. Individual lessons will address a variety of subtopics such as rapidassessment, psycho-social health, reproductive health, monitoring and evaluation,relief organizations, GIS, and communicable diseases. Classes will consist of lectures, guest lecturers,assignments and field trips.
IDEV 623 – Food Aid and Food Security in HumanitarianSettings
This is usually a two-weekintensive summer course held in Rome, Italy. The course will explore thedynamics of the use of food aid, the largest single component of humanitarianemergencies. The course will review policies that guide the use of food aid, asprincipal controversies surrounding the use of food aid in emergency andtransition settings. The course will also explore assessment techniques used togauge the vulnerability of affected populations and their needs for food-basedinterventions. Lastly, the course will explore the food aid management systemand its logistics. Field visits will be conducted to the principal UN agenciesinvolved in food aid as well as diplomatic missions that determine food aidpolicies.
The purpose of this course is to provide learners with basic knowledge and skills of concepts, principles, and methodologies pertaining to the evaluation of health and development interventions. At the end of this course the learner should be able to judge the ability of a specific evaluation method or combination of methods to measure both the process and impact of a specific intervention with known objectives and to design and execute with assistance an evaluation project.
This course has been designed with the purpose of learning about GIS theory and application sin support of international development initiatives. Students enrolled in this course are required to spend 75% of their time in the computer lab in order to complete a series of exercises designed to learn basic GIS development using state-of-the-art GIS software with the ultimate goal of completing a class project.
This course focuses on knowledge and education as they bear on the challenges and strategies for developing countries. From a knowledge perspective, emphasis will be given the criticality of universal primary education, scientific and technical literacy, workforce training, local research and development activities, and knowledge acquisition and its subsequent integration and dissemination within the context of a developing country.
Violent conflict that engulfs countries, parts of countries and in some instances groups of countries and regions, have become commonplace, especially in the developing world. Today it is hard to understand development and do development without understanding conflict and coping with conflict. This course is designed to provide students an in-depth understanding of conflict and its relationship to sustainable development and international health.
Organizational Leadership and Management in Developing Countries is an interdisciplinary course which examines the complex challenges inherent in managing not-for-profit and governmental organizations in developing countries. Central to our examination is the role of social, political and financial influences upon policy space. Within this context, the class focuses upon negotiating constraints in policy development and implementation and draws comparatively from experiences in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States.
The purpose of this course is to develop a framework for the analysis and understanding of the theory, methods, approaches and information management related to large natural disasters in developing countries in the Americas. A number of recent political and social issues are addressed and analyzed within this framework. The course stresses the active participation of the students including research on case studies (i.e. Hurricanes Mitch and Georges, Venezuela floods, El Salvador earthquake, etc.) and training on SUMA tool for the management of human relief supplies.
Individual and organizational development necessitates behavioral and organizational change, and change requires learning. The Payson Center has developed a course, “Learning How to Learn with Technology” to equip individuals with the necessary tools for analyzing and solving problems and on-demand and on-time learning. These tools built upon the science of instructional design, developmental and social psychology, and artificial intelligence.
This course explores aspects of the potential impacts of new information and communication technologies (ICT) on International Development. The initial part of the course introduces the learner to issues pertinent to the phenomenal rates of global expansion of ICTs comparing among different countries and different world regions. Following this macro perspective, the course focuses on the several ICT technologies, as well as the sectors in which they can be applied in the developing world.
This graduate course provides students with an overview of environmental issues in developing nations, and it addresses strategies, policies, and technical approaches that will enhance environmental quality as part of the developmental process. The course begins with a survey of major environmental challenges, including resource depletion, pollution, and population, and a discussion of sustainable development as the over-arching solution to those challenges. Students will read and discuss case studies in the course packet, visit relevant websites, and prepare team presentations analyzing environmental issues in a developing nation or region of their choice.
In this new millennium of rapid change, globalization, and the privatization of international development, we seek to understand how political activity intersects with economic activity and how that nexus impacts the Global South. While the course title reads “international” political economy, we should acknowledge that “global” might be a more appropriate term, thereby including increasingly important non-state actors. Students use the concepts and theories of global political economy to analyze aid, trade, investment, development policy, monetary relations, and regional integration in order to understand how the world has worked in the past, is working now, and is likely to work in the future.
Five Decades of Development”, analyzes the concept and practice of development as it evolved since the end of WWII and is organized around four dimensions: international context, development theories and strategies, donor policies and programs, and developing country performance.
The concept of development projects is relatively recent in history of international relations. It implies that a much more powerful nation choose to provide resources through development projects to less empowered nation to assist in that nation's economic or social development. Terms such as quality of life, improved economic conditions, empowerment, and greater participation in society are all use to qualify the end product of development projects. As we review systems tools for improving the functioning of development projects we must first clearly specify the outcomes expected.
IDEV 671 – Foundations of Law andInternational Development
Thiscourse offering arises from the recognition that knowledge of international lawand its relationship to national legal systems is one of the fundatmentalelements of international development practice.
This course will provide thestudent with an overview of the law as background to the field of internationaldevelopment. The course will offer a summary on what constitutes internationallaw, how it is made, and how it is applied. It also will touch upon the issuesof states and sovereignty, and jurisdictional matters (states' jurisdictionalreach over people and territory; extraterritorial jurisdiction; and sovereignimmunity.) It will discuss the use of force in interational relations, and theUN-based collective security system. The international law backdrop will leadinto the interrelationship of domestic law and international law, and finallythe law as it applies to countries in transition.
Sustainable Human Development (SHD) is one of the core courses designed to help students learn some of the basic issues of international development. SHD will provide you with valuable concepts for understanding development. These concepts are certainly not perfect, or even complete. They include sets of standards and measures that will change as we learn more. In fact, our ability to describe how societies develop is evolving as we experience successes and failures in our efforts to direct development. The value of these concepts is that students will be able to combine them in various ways to build a flexible framework of understanding.
SHD 1& 2 concentrates on explaining measurement, concepts, and theories of sustainable human development. Students will also be able to apply concepts readily and immediately to the policy issues, and thus see the links that exist. For example, a discussion on the concept of inflation and inflation theories can be made readily meaningful if one were to look at inflation data in one or more countries and try to apply the theory to the real world.
This framework should give students both a discipline and a strategy for learning. As a discipline, it provides a common language and some common assumptions about what creates successful development and what are the relative priorities. As a strategy for learning, this framework invites those of you who would make the world better to set objectives and work toward them.
