Course Work
The Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering requires five courses (two core courses plus three electives). The course requirements are in addition to, but may overlap with, the Ph.D. course requirements of your home department. There are no formal pre-requisites to apply for the DE in DevEng, however a certain level of experience with quantitative analysis is necessary to succeed in the core course (roughly equivalent to Stats 121). All course work for the DE should be taken for a letter grade.
The two core courses are:
This course MUST be taken before qualifying exams.
Link to Syllabus sample is here
DevEng C200 is co-taught each fall term by one technologist and one social scientist. Students in the DevEng DE must complete this course before their qualifying exams. Professors from the pool of faculty in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering rotate as course instructors. The course is offered for three units credit as DevEng C200, Mech Eng C200 or MBA 290T. Master’s students will be permitted to take the core course as space permits and with permission of the instructors. DevEng C200 is organized around analysis and application of case studies by multidisciplinary student teams according to three thematic modules:
- Understanding the Problem, Context, and Needs (Weeks 1-5) explores, via human-centered design processes, the integration of quantitative and qualitative needs assessment techniques in the process of prototype design
- Prototyping Solutions (Weeks 6-8) explores methods of low and medium fidelity prototyping with attention to hypothesis testing and data evaluation in an iterative continuum.
- Taking It to the Field (Weeks 8-13) extends this iterative process with examination of pilot tests in the lab and field, technologies for monitoring and testing, business modeling, impact evaluation, and scaling.
This course provides DevEng students with a context and community within which their research projects can be refined and developed. The seminar focuses on work-in-progress presentations by students, post doctoral scholars, and faculty within the DIL ecosystem. The research seminar can be taken before or after the qualifying examination, and students can take it more than once. (Spring 2019 speaker schedule here)
In addition to these two core courses, students must take three electives from at least two of the three thematic modules within the DevEng program. The three modules are: Project Design, Evaluation Techniques and Methods for Measuring Social Impact, and Technology Development. Of the three electives, only one can be from the student’s home department. Students are encouraged to take one elective prior to the qualifying examination, but this is not required.
This module includes topics such as human-centered design, participant feedback, project management, needs and usability testing.
- Civil & Environmental Engineering 209: Design for Sustainable Communities
- Development Engineering 215: Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millenium
- Development Practice 225: Innovation, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship
- Development Practice 232: Foundations of Public Health
- Energy and Resources 273: Social Science Research Methods
- Energy and Resources 298: Energy and Environmental Justice
- Environmental Science Policy and Management 226 Interdisciplinary Food and Agriculture Studies
- Environmental Science Policy and Management 230 Sociology of Agriculture
- Environmental Science Policy and Management 261: Sustainability and Society
- Environmental Science Policy and Management C282 Health Implications of Climate Change
- Information 213: User Interface Design and Development
- Information 214: Needs and Usability Assessment
- Information 272: Qualitative Research Methods for Information Systems and Management
- Information C283: Information and Communications Technologies for Development
- Information 287: Information and Communications Technologies for Social Enterprise
- Mechanical Engineering 290H: Green Product Development – Design for Sustainability
- Mechanical Engineering 290P: New Product Development – Design Theory and Methods
- Public Health 200k: Environmental Health Sciences Breadth Course
- Public Health 214: Eat.Think.Design
- Haas MBA 215.1: Business Strategies for Emerging Markets
This module includes classes spanning topics such as large data analytics, statistical analysis for impact assessment, and design of field experiments. It also includes coursework on sustainability and scaling of projects, and on the broader impact on people and communities.
- Development Practice 222: Economics of Sustainable Resource Development
- Development Practice 228: Strategic Planning and Project Management
- Development Engineering 290: Special Topics in Development, topics vary
- Economics 219B: Applications of Psychology and Economics
- Economics 240A/B: Econometrics
- Economics 274: Global Poverty and Impact Evaluation
- Economics 270A/B: Microeconomics of Development
- Economics 271: Seminar in Development Economics
- Energy and Resources 275: Water and Development
- Energy and Resources 276: Climate Change Economics
- Environmental Science Policy and Management 260: Governance of Global Production
- Haas MBA 292: Social Sector Solutions
- Information 272: Qualitative Research Methods for Information Systems and Management
- MBA 296: Applied Impact Evaluation – How to Learn What Works to Lower Global Poverty
- Public Health 235: Impact Evaluation for Health Professionals
- Public Health 252C: Intervention Trial Design
- Public Policy 249: Statistics for Program Evaluation
- Public Policy/ Agricultural and Resource Economics 253: International Economic Development Policy
This modules spans work on prototyping and technology R&D, as well as the use of novel technologies to evaluate interventions.
- Bioengineering 168L: Practical Light Microscopy
- Civil & Environmental Engineering 290: Advanced Special Topics – Control Market and Privacy Tools for Participatory Sensing
- Civil & Environmental Engineering 210: Control of Water-Related Pathogens
- Civil & Environmental Engineering 211A: Environmental Physical-Chemical Processes
- Civil & Environmental Engineering 271: Sensors and Signal Interpretation
- Computer Science 289A: Introduction to Machine Learning
- Computer Science 294-1 Behavioral Data Mining
- Economics 291/Engineering 298B: Behavior Measurement and Change
- Energy and Resources C200: Energy and Society
- Energy and Resources 221: Energy, Climate, and Development
- Energy and Resources / Public Policy C271: Energy and Development
- ESPM 217: Political Economy of Climate Change
- ESPM C234: Green Chemistry, an Interdisciplinary Approach to Sustainability
- ESPM 261: Sustainability and Society
- Information 271B: Quantitative Research Methods for Information Systems and Management
- Information 283: Information and Communication Technologies and Development
- Information 290: Data-Intensive International Development
- ME 258: Convection and Phase Change Thermophysics
Qualifying Exams
All students must apply and be accepted to the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering at least one semester before their qualifying examination. DevEng C200 must also be taken prior to qualifying exam. At least one faculty member of the Graduate Group in Development Engineering must participate in the qualifying examination committee, and will evaluate the exam from relevant perspectives. Satisfactory performance on the qualifying examination for the Ph.D. will be judged according to the established rules in the student’s home department.
For the application for qualifying examination, please note you will need a signature from both the home department head graduate advisor and DevEng head graduate advisor. Please receive the home department signature first. Either Prof. Alice Agogino or Shelley Okimoto (CEE) may serve as Head Graduate Advisor for this purpose in DevEng.
Note: If you are a student interested in development engineering research but none of your faculty advisors / committee members are in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering, consider encouraging one of them to apply for membership in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering. They should contact Chair Alice Agogino.
Final Report for Designated Emphasis
When all course work and designated emphasis requirements have been completed, this final report must be submitted to the Graduate Student Affairs Officer in 750 Davis Hall for verification of completion of the designated emphasis at the latest one month prior to your filing the dissertation. You can download the final report here.
Dissertation
The dissertation must contain themes relevant to the field of Development Engineering (e.g. technology for economic and social development). The student’s Dissertation Committee must include at least one member of the Graduate Group in Development Engineering who can evaluate the dissertation from relevant perspectives.
Note: If you are a student interested in development engineering research but none of your faculty committee members are in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering, consider encouraging one of them to apply for membership in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering. They should contact Chair Alice Agogino.
