HS 143a Social Justice and Philanthropy
Undergraduate/Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Examines the role of philanthropy in American society including individual, institutional, and societal-level factors that affect philanthropic efforts to create social change and the relationship between social justice and philanthropy. Students explore philanthropy from both theoretical and practical perspectives using an academic framework grounded in sociological theory and a semester-long experiential learning exercise in real-dollar grantmaking. Usually offered every year. |
HS 200f Social Movements for Emancipatory Development
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Students study theories of social mobilization; explore the relationships and tensions between state and non-state actors in social movements including NGOs, people's movements, and religious groups; study selected social movements for their lessons for sustainable development process, failures, and achievements; and articulate their own 'theories of change' about the role of social movements around critical problems for social inclusion. Usually offered every year.
Laurence Simon |
HS 204f Education, Gender and Development
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Reviews the relationship between gender access to education and development indicators such as reduced fertility, improved health, and women's access to employment, income, and decision-making. Students look at the broader factors behind these links, and at issues that prevent education from playing the expected role in overcoming inequalities and building human and social capital in developing countries. Usually offered every year. |
HS 205a Monitoring and Evaluation
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Focuses on concepts and methods of M&E to support projects or programs to contribute to improvements in human capital and sustainable development goals. The course is designed to give students experience in fundamental problem-solving, skills, approaches, and tools applicable to project M&E. Attention is given to the context in which projects take place, with examples from different countries and real-world experiences. Students are equipped with knowledge in the fundamentals of results management across the project cycle (theories of change, results chains, results frameworks, monitoring plans, and evaluation matrices), and introduced to a range of methodologies that can be employed by development organizations, foundations, government, non-government, and other groups aiming to achieve results. The concepts covered in this course lay the foundational knowledge for students to support M&E of a project. A more in-depth coverage of specific methods and analytical approaches is covered by other courses at Heller, including courses on Measurement of Inequality to Health and Development, Randomized Control Trials, Cost-Effectiveness, Evaluating Survey Data Using Stata, and Applied Cost Benefit Analysis for Development Practitioners. The course also builds on concepts learned in the fall course on Planning and Implementation. Usually offered every year. |
HS 205f Organizational Management for Development Practitioners
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Introduces challenges faced by managers in international and local development organizations and provides an opportunity for interactive learning of skill sets required to overcome these challenges. Students examine elements of new public management such as performance management, privatization, and partnerships and the changing role played by NGOs in development practice. Usually offered every year. |
HS 208f Introduction to Transitional Justice
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Introduces transitional justice as a field of research and practice. Over the last four decades, TJ has developed and spread across the globe as a set of theories, concepts, and tools to both understand and support countries emerging from authoritarianism and war. Most commonly associated with mechanisms like truth commissions, amnesties, and reparations, the field started as a focused set of tools tailored to the emerging democracies of Latin America in the 1980s. Today, it encompasses a rich and multidisciplinary field that spans continents and connects local, national, and international actors.
The module is divided into three sections. The first will provide an overview of TJ history, ideas, and mechanisms. The second will delve into some of the key debates that animate the field, exploring the relationship between TJ, peacebuilding, and the root causes of violence and conflict. Finally, the third will focus on the Module’s key take-home: more than a set of tools and mechanisms, TJ is best thought of as a movement, within which different actors struggle over the right to narrate history. We will end this section and the course with an in-depth look at the United States, where movements for racial justice and economic justice are incorporating TJ ideas and tools. Usually offered every year. |
HS 210a Coexistence and Conflict: Theory and Analysis
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Explores the sources of conflict at a global level as well as the ways in which conflict may be transformed to benefit people and societies, paying special attention to the role of power in shaping conflict and in attending to its transformation. It takes a cross-disciplinary approach to exploring and understanding global conflict analysis and resolution. Drawing on literature and research from the fields of peace and conflict studies, international relations and political science, law, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, this course will give students an overview of the tools of analysis necessary for engaging conflict constructively. We will examine the causes, patterns and dynamics of various forms of violence, including 'direct' and 'structural violence,' as well as the tools available to promote peace and justice. We will draw on the contributions and findings of various academic disciplines and the best practices of experts in modern peace and conflict research. We will also carefully reflect on how insiders and outsiders to a violent conflict can build stable peace by analyzing the practices of advocates and activists. Usually offered every year. |
HS 210f Comparative Approaches to Global Injustice and Social Inequality
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Examines historical, philosophical and political concepts of poverty, injustice and inequality from a comparative perspective, as seen by thinkers and activists primarily from the global South. It is based on understanding perceptions of race, ethnicity, social class and other markers of 'difference' in contemporary societies, how those perceptions lead to bias, social exclusion and marginalization, and how to assess policies designed to overcome those divisions. Country case studies examine responses to historical and cultural legacies of repressive systems based on colonialism, slavery, apartheid and caste. Usually offered every year. |
HS 217f Citizen Leadership: Problems, Policies, and Civic Actions
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Engages students in a rigorous examination of the concepts of Citizen Leadership and Citizen Service, as they have been used in the past, in an effort to support them in integrating these ideas into their career plans and personal development. Each session will involve readings on a specific aspect of Citizen Leadership or Service and an opportunity to discuss these aspects with guest speakers and resources, most of whom are Segal Program Founders, men and women who have exemplified them. Usually offered every year. |
HS 225a Fundraising and Development
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Offers a basic grounding in key concepts of private fundraising and development. It explores management and leadership issues associated with the rapidly changing field of development and philanthropy, especially within development NGOs. Students learn to analyze, plan, and evaluate a comprehensive fundraising program and create a professional fundraising portfolio. Usually offered every year. |
HS 227f Coexistence Monitoring and Evaluation
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Meets for one-half semester and yields half-course credit. Open only to students enrolled in the MA program in Conflict Resolution and Coexistence. Other students considered with permission of the instructor. May not be taken for credit by students who took HS 220a in prior years.
Provides an introductory review of the core concepts and practical steps of design, monitoring and evaluation in the field of coexistence and peacebuilding. The course will stress participatory methods in monitoring and evaluation, in which multiple stakeholders are involved in the process of planning, collecting, interpreting, synthesizing, and using information. The course will feature case studies and actual DM&E plans and evaluation reports. Usually offered every year. |
HS 228a Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Explores how entrepreneurship has become a driving force in the social enterprise sector, provides tools for developing and evaluating new ventures, and explores the blurring line between for-profit and nonprofit social initiatives. The course also teaches hands-on social venture business plan development tools, from assessing markets to developing financial and operating plans. Usually offered every year. |
HS 230a SID Field Practicum Course
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. May be repeated twice for credit.
Students will be evaluated based upon an approved proposal, terms of reference, and satisfactory evaluation from a field supervisor. Usually offered every semester. |
HS 231b MBA Internship
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Provides an opportunity for MBA students to carry out a formal internship with a client organization under the supervision of a faculty advisor. The internship allows students to apply principles from the MBA curriculum for a client organization. Usually offered every semester. |
HS 242f Development Aid
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Looks at the evolution of international development aid through multilateral, bilateral, and non-State actors; explores underlying theories of development and how theory has real world influence through aid strategies and programs; examines motivations, objectives and interests of aid programs; and introduces concepts and current debate on aid effectiveness. It helps students develop and articulate their own 'theories of change' to shape aid programs toward a more sustainable development. Usually offered every year. |
HS 247f Evaluation for Managers
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Focuses on program evaluation techniques of interest to managers, including balanced scorecard methods, needs assessment, participatory evaluation methods, process/implementation analysis, impact analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and utilization-focused evaluation. These techniques are discussed in the context of building "learning organizations" that enable the organization and its managers to know whether they are succeeding. Usually offered every year. |
HS 248b Financial Management
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Prerequisite: HS 250a.
Develops students as educated consumers of financial information. Covers financial management problems encountered by today's human service professionals in a real-world perspective based on sound financial and accounting theory. Includes topics such as financial statement analysis, budget development and control, managing growth, cash flow management, and management controls. Usually offered every year. |
HS 249f Social Justice, Management, and Policy
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Allows students the opportunity to explore the management implications of "Knowledge Advancing Social Justice." Examines historical and contemporary thinkers, justice issues, and management activities. Students grapple with the daily management dilemmas faced by managers and change agents both inside and outside organizations. Usually offered every summer. |
HS 250a Financial Reporting and Analysis
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Develops a fundamental understanding of financial accounting and reporting issues as they apply to nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Students will learn about the importance of fiscal responsibility and integrity in the efficient utilization of an organization's resources relative to organizational goals. Accounting practices that are unique to nonprofit organizations will be introduced, discussed, and differentiated from those practices employed by for-profit entities. Emphasis will be placed on interpreting financial statements to understand how accounting information, in a variety of settings, can be utilized by decision makers. Usually offered every year |
HS 258f Strategic Planning and Project Management
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Introduces concepts, techniques, and skills related to the management of projects within the context of international development. The course would review strategies, concepts and debates on participatory project management with an examination of consensus and controversies associated with these concepts and how they relate to contemporary development agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Project Management will introduce and promote a well-informed understanding of contemporary frameworks for participatory project management and community development. This will include project management tools employed by international development institutions and organizations. The course will provide conceptual and practical training as well as the application of key project management techniques and frameworks. These may including Stakeholder Engagement; Social Analysis; Project Management Plans/Matrix; Project Readiness and Status; Scope of Project, Budgeting and Investment Feasibility; Mission, Vision and Goal Setting; Policy Relevance; Project Leadership; Time and Motion Analysis; Gantt Charts; Project Reporting; Stakeholder Feedback Analysis/Sheets; Project Management Reporting; Efficiency, Equity and Effectiveness; Performance Management; Monitoring Frameworks; and End of Project Reports. Usually offered every year. |
HS 260b Practicing Social Justice Philanthropy: Purpose, Practice and Problems
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Juxtaposes a theoretical framework for understanding the economic, political, and social role of philanthropy in American society with the practical experience of real-dollar grantmaking. Through course readings and an opportunity to develop a grantmaking process that will grant real money, students will be exposed to the complexity of the philanthropic process and the challenges associated with allocating scarce resources. The course also provides opportunities to explore organizational behavior, group dynamics and individual leadership skills. Students will learn how to negotiate, reach consensus, and execute the plan they design and through readings will gain perspective on process, grantmaking, and evaluation techniques. The process will be documented by the students for use in case studies, teaching materials, and workshops. Usually offered every year. |
HS 260f Development, Aid, and Coexistence
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Meets for one-half semester and yields half-course credit.
Increases the knowledge and skills of students undertaking development and aid work in conflict situations. Explores how such work can address development needs, as well as the need to increase intercommunal equity, understanding, and cooperation. Usually offered every year. |
HS 262f Culture, Power and Development: Advanced Ethics
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Students engage with constructs of cultural superiority, debate about modernization, and learn about what motivates individual and cultural change. Students are introduced to alternative theoretical approaches to culture and development and learn how to apply those theories to different historical contexts as well as contemporary situations. Usually offered every year. |
HS 272a Responsible Leadership
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Examines whether leadership is good news or bad news. It is about leading, but it might also be about misleading. It is more than just good intentions, charisma, a personal gift, or features of a person; it is about impact, serving justice, positive values and the community; it must be done right. When it is exercised properly, the good must ensue for most of all, while empowering the voiceless, the weak, the least privileged, the most at risk, the disenfranchised. That is why this course is not interested merely in a leadership that is just another word for power at any cost, just an instrument for any cause. All together, the class will be spotting responsible leadership, where the solutions of women and men of power respond to the problems of the people, to whom they are accountable for. Usually offered every year. |
HS 278f Monitoring and Evaluation
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Introduces students to the field of evaluation, including their purpose, design, methodologies for data collection and analysis, and utilization. The course also explores the organizational environment in which evaluations are carried out, frequent challenges and pitfalls in conducting evaluation, and some tricks of the trade drawing on written materials and experiences of the instructor and enrolled students as well. Usually offered every year. |
HS 279a Planning and Implementation
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Focuses on concepts and methods of planning and implementation to promote sustainable development. The project cycle and project development are used to give students experience in problem-solving, logic, and organizational skills applicable to all planning, implementation, and monitoring functions. Attention is given to the context in which the project cycle takes place, identifying local problems and applying holistic solutions. Usually offered every year. |
HS 283f Gender and Development
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Examines politics and policies of international development from a gender-sensitive perspective. Concepts of "development" and 'gender' are framed within historical and political contexts. Students examine how development affects women and men differently according to class, ethnicity, geography, age, and seniority. Ways in which gender asymmetries have been addressed in development and approaches to mainstreaming gender are explored. Usually offered every year. |
HS 299f NGOs: Strategic Planning
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Introduces concepts, techniques, and skills related to organizational strategy; and strategic action, management, and planning for civil society and non-governmental development organizations Concepts considered include elements of strategic planning; assessing environmental factors; clarifying organizational values, vision, mission, and goals; and developing programs and services to achieve organizational goals. Usually offered every year. |
HS 321f Social Justice and Philanthropy: Effective Grantmaking Tools and Strategies
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Provides students a strong grounding in the history, evolution, roles, contributions, and complexities associated with philanthropy in the United States. As the course progresses, it focuses increasingly upon social justice philanthropy, which, though it has no official definition, directs dollars in order to make society and its social institutions fairer, more inclusive and equitable. Social justice philanthropy typically aspires to attack complex problems at their roots so as to prevent the symptoms usually treated by more traditional charities and foundations. It also is typically participatory in that it seeks to include community members in decisions about how to allocate grant dollars. Students will engage in active discussion and in-class learning activities centered around timely readings and cases that illuminate contemporary questions related to philanthropy’s appropriate role, its inherent power and that critique its effectiveness in alleviating social problems and advancing social justice. Usually offered every year. |
HS 328f Essential Elements of Humanitarian Response
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Develop skills aimed at providing principled humanitarian assistance to civilians suffering from the effect of violent conflicts. To do so, we will explore the content of humanitarian principles and the common standards agreed upon by a large number of humanitarian organizations for the provision of water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion, food security and nutrition, shelter, settlement, non-food items and education. The provision of principled humanitarian assistance along these standards ensure that civilians basic human rights are respected and re-enforce the accountability of humanitarian organizations. Usually offered every year. |
HS 341a Public Finance and Budgeting
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Utilizes facts and analytical tools to effectively make decisions about public finance and budgeting as a policymaker, policy advocate, policy analyst, scholar, reporter, and/ or citizen. Upon completion of this course, students will have a broad knowledge of why and how governments shape the economy; the extent of their intervention; and how and why government funds are currently allocated among competing uses. Usually offered every year. |
HS 453b Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Graduate
Credit-Bearing |
Focuses on leadership and managing organizations. Uses cases on a variety of organizations to expose students to problems and to improve their effectiveness in analyzing, diagnosing, and leading people in organizations. Students learn organizational concepts, analytic frameworks, and models, and practice their leadership skills in class. Uses case discussions, simulations, role-playing, mini-lecturing, and experimental exercises. Provides an opportunity to develop leadership skills through group work and reflection. Offered as part of the Heller Executive MBA for Physicians. |
