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In the fall DU will become one of only 12 universities worldwide to launch the Master’s in Development Practices (MDP) program, a newly conceived degree program through the Josef Korbel School of International Studies.
The program will combine on-campus courses with new “global classroom” technology, practical workshops and field research on four continents.
“[The MDP students] will have a very challenging 25 months. They have 16 core courses, several electives, four [international] trips, a five month internship here in Colorado and fourteen practitioner-led workshops on development,” said Daniel Wessner, director of the MDP program.
The program will cut across four disciplines, including health sciences, social sciences, engineering and management.
The first class of the degree program will include 25 students from all over the world, according to Wessner. During the program, through the use of the Promethean Board, new technology that essentially works as a large scale two way computer screen and websites such as Webex and Skype, students will be constantly engaged with people from their own communities working to build sustainable development strategies. Classes will also be co-taught by DU professors and professors at campuses in other countries through the new Internet technology.
Wessner said the goal of the program is to transform the current approach to international development by bringing together people to develop an applied, scholarly and collaborative approach that will reflect empathy with the different situations and perspectives of people in diverse contexts and locations.
“The end of this could be thousands of people accessing open source learning materials about sustainable development, not just 25 students at a time in a graduate program. For our DU students in the program, they [will be] relating to large numbers of diverse communities worldwide… it’s pretty radical stuff,” Wessner said.
To test out the theories, topics and technology that will be central to the program, Wessner is currently teaching an undergraduate course called Strategic Peacebuilding that utilizes the global classroom technology, includes live web discussions with Vietnamese students and tackles some of the topics at the core of the MDP program.
The initiative for this new program grew out of a challenge extended to universities all over the world by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2008 to create programs in development practices. Of 176 universities that initially showed interest in the project, DU is one of only a dozen that will launch the program in the fall.
However, Korbel is not the only school at DU launching new programs in the fall.
The Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences division will be offering socio-legal studies major to undergraduates in the fall. The new liberal arts major will explore how the law impacts people’s lives and vice versa, how social institutions and their values influence and are influenced by the law and how the law constrains or empowers members of and groups within society, according to Ann McCall, dean of the AHSS department.
The Sturm College of Law will offer two certificate programs in international law and employment or “worklaw” next year. These certificate programs are similar to undergraduate majors, according to Martin Katz, dean of the College of Law.
Both certificate programs will give graduates of the law school more area specific expertise, making them more attractive to potential employers, Katz said.
Proposals for an environmental law as well as a business law certificate are also in the works, according to Katz. Katz said both might be available as early as next year.
Katz said the law school is also working on constructing a new International Legal Studies LLM program, although it is still in the planning stages.
Daniels also is launching a new one-year MBA program in the fall, according to Associate Dean Daniel Connolly.
“We’ve had the dual degree programs, [where undergraduate business students] go on in a 5th year and get the MBA, but what we are doing is we are opening up the program to other students who have gone to accredited business schools and have an[undergraduate] business degree,” Connolly said.
