Students without a strong math background will require significant additional time and effort to achieve the learning objectives and work through the course assignments. This course builds a foundation in the mathematics and statistics of risk management. Students are empowered to understand the output of quantitative analysts and to do their own analytics. Concepts are presented in Excel and students will have the opportunity to practice those concepts in Excel, R or Python. This course is a required prerequisite for registering for the following courses: Financial Risk Management, Insurance Risk Management, ERM Modeling.
In an era defined by unprecedented global challenges and opportunities, nonprofit advocacy serves as a powerful force for systemic reform and public innovation. This course immerses students in the intersection of theory and practice through an
advocacy practicum
approach—designed to equip future nonprofit leaders with the skills to influence policy, mobilize communities, and drive systemic change.
In the context of the ever evolving policy landscape of New York City and providing a global lens, this course offers an in-depth exploration of advocacy fundamentals within the nonprofit sector. Through real-world case studies, hands-on projects, and interactive fieldwork, students have the opportunity to examine how advocacy efforts in New York City—a hub of civic engagement—can expand broader policy frameworks and cross into international contexts.
Over the term, students will explore the theoretical foundations of advocacy, including social movement theory, policy influence, and public opinion formation. They will engage in stakeholder analysis, coalition-building, and the creation of advocacy strategies tailored to shifting political, economic, and social dynamics. Central to this course will be discussions on how traditional advocacy approaches are being redefined in response to growing inequalities and systemic challenges, emphasizing the need for adaptable, intersectional strategies to confront global disparities.
The framework emphasizes practical application: students will have the opportunity to develop and implement real advocacy plans, leveraging digital tools, media, and virtual organizing strategies to enhance their impact. Fieldwork, simulations, and collaborative projects will allow students to apply theoretical knowledge to tangible issues, empowering them to lead efforts that address pressing social challenges, whether locally in New York City or globally in areas such as international development and human rights.
Key topics include:
Crafting advocacy strategies that influence public policy in divided political environments;
Building and managing coalitions across stakeholders;
Engaging marginalized communities to ensure inclusive and equitable advocacy efforts;
Navigating the digital advocacy landscape to design impactful campaigns.
By the end of the course, students should be prepared to plan critically and act decisively in the fast-changing world of advocacy, with the tools, s
OVERVIEW: The IKNS Capstone represents the culmination of learning throughout the IKNS program in which students master business-critical concepts in data, analytics, people, networks, integration, and strategy. Working individually and in small teams, students design and deliver a project for a capstone sponsor seeking IKNS expertise to help solve a real-world problem within the sponsor’s organization. Using what they have learned from across the curriculum, students apply IKNS frameworks and use both qualitative and quantitative research to develop a written business report, oral presentation. and a final product for the sponsor including but not limited to a roadmap, strategic plan, white paper, or minimum viable product (MVP). The Capstone provides a final testing ground for students to apply their learning to real organizational needs and also become familiar with consultative approaches. During this course, students collaborate to complete an assignment specified by their Capstone project sponsor. At the conclusion of the Capstone, students provide a report and a strong integrated presentation to the sponsoring organization. Project activity begins at the end of August, with concrete individual and team assignments during the course culminating in a final report and oral presentation delivered in December.
LOGISTICS: Open to IKNS only. Pre-requisites: Students must complete 24 credits towards their degree prior to the start of the course.
Equips students with the ability to adopt the programming culture typically present in the ERM/risk areas of most financial organizations. By studying Python, SQL, R, git, and AWS, students gain exposure to different syntaxes. Students apply these skills by coding up market risk and credit risk models. Students also gain familiarity with working in the cloud.
A survey of market, credit, liquidity, and systemic risk. Includes case studies, risk quantification methods, and common mitigation techniques using portfolio management, hedging, and derivatives. Also addresses traditional risk management practices at banking institutions.
Ethical questions about museum activities are legion, yet they are usually only discussed when they become headlines in newspapers. At the same time, people working in museums make decisions with ethical and legal issues regularly and seldom give these judgments even little thought. In part, this is due to the fact that many of these decisions are based upon values that become second nature. This course will explore ethical issues that arise in all areas of a museum's operations from governance and management to collections acquisition, conservation, and deaccessioning. We will examine the issues that arise when the ownership of objects in a museum's are questioned; the ethical considerations involved in retention, restitution and repatriation; and what decolonization means for museums.
Provides the opportunity to learn how business units operate at an investment bank. Several industry practitioners each spend one to two sessions providing a hands-on experience that recreates the operations and decision-making of front, middle, and back offices work at a bank. Students typically learn the common activities, the data inputs, the analytics, and the applications of the insights.
Quantitative Risk Management continues building your quantitative foundation in order to work with more advanced models and use mathematical and statistical intuition for building those models. At the end of this course, you will be able to use analytics algorithms for risk management; use factor models to assess the quality of investment portfolios and trader positions; hedge equity, option, and fixed-income portfolios using derivatives; estimate volatility with options models and GARCH models; and model ESG and Climate risk.
The course is highly structured and organized by topic into semester long learning threads. Each week, readings and assignments will take another step forward along these threads: regression models, classification models, time series analysis, options and volatility modeling, fixed income modeling, factor models and portfolio management, tail risk modeling. These concepts will be demonstrated in python and students are expected to be able to understand and run python code.
This course examines questions such as: What does the telling and reading of narratives do for the ill or disabled individual? How can clinicians effectively elicit, interpret, and act upon such narratives? Who owns a story, and what is the role of co-authorship, power and witnessing in story-telling and story-listening? Whose voice do we hear? What are the roles of power and hierarchy in story-telling and listening? What is the impact of familial, cultural, social, institutional, political contexts on the individual story? And finally, how can personal stories be translated to political advocacy and action? Texts assigned weekly will be broadly interdisciplinary – drawing from memoir, poetry, essays, fiction, feature and documentary films, narrative theory, and disability studies, exploring the relationship between disability/illness experience and narrative. This elective course is open to all students in the Narrative Medicine CPA program. Students should be prepared to engage with each other and with the instructor and to offer their questions, comments, insights, and analysis.
This is an essential, practically applied element of narrative medicine study and it is exemplary as a way to illustrate the impact of narrative study in shaping experience, opening awareness, and highlighting the need for change and new stories. A narrative medicine course focused on disability and illness narratives is an important aspect of narrative medicine study. Exploring narratives presented in a variety of formats by using narrative medicine methods can encourage deeper perspective-taking and promote activism for underrepresented voices.
Disability and Illness Narratives: Storytelling For Awareness and Activism
is an elective course in the Narrative Medicine CPA program. In addition, this course is open to cross-registrants in other programs who demonstrate some understanding of narrative medicine and/or participate in the online asynchronous narrative medicine orientation course before the semester begins. Narrative Medicine CPA students are required to have completed, or be simultaneously enrolled in the course,
Narrative Medicine Methods: Close Reading and Writing
, course number K5120, and have completed the required program online asynchronous orientation course. CPA courses are all 10 weeks/modules long, and they are online and asynchronous, which means there are no meeting times. Each module represents one week of the course. All modules begin on a Tuesday and end on Monday of th
Review of types of insurance risk, such as pricing risk, underwriting risk, reserving risk, etc. Includes case studies, risk quantification methods (e.g., market-consistent economic capital models, dynamic financial analysis (DFA) models, catastrophe models, etc.), and common mitigation techniques, such as asset-liability management (ALM), reinsurance, etc. Also addresses traditional risk management at insurance companies and ERM actuarial standards of practice (ASOPs).
Credit Risk Management requires business acumen, the monitoring of internal and external data, disciplined execution, and organizational intelligence. A solid understanding of this enables a credit risk manager to help organizations achieve their objectives. Through readings, case studies, and modeling projects, students learn how risk managers decide on credit risk management strategy applied throughout the client lifecycle.
Capstone projects afford a group of students the opportunity to undertake complex, real-world, client-based projects for nonprofit organizations, supervised by a Nonprofit Management program faculty member. Through the semester-long capstone project, students will experience the process of organizational assimilation and integration as they tackle a discrete management project of long or short-term benefit to the client organization. The larger theoretical issues that affect nonprofit managers and their relationships with other stakeholders, both internal and external, will also be discussed within the context of this project-based course.
This upcoming fall, we are going to kick off the “Practitioners Seminar” course, where successful practitioners from various industry fields (tech, finance, insurance, pharmaceutical, etc..) will have a chance to meet our students and present the projects they work on, technologies they utilize to achieve their goals, solutions they came up with etc. In addition, guest speakers will share their career development path (what kind of obstacles they faced, what pitfalls to avoid, and in general give advice on career development in their fields). We will finish up the meeting with a Q&A session with students.
The course aims to teach MA in Statistics students how to manage their careers and develop professionally. Topics include resume and cover-letter writing, negotiation, mentoring, interviewing skills and communication across global teams. Top professionals from across the globe speak to students and help improve leadership skills.
This course is intended to provide a mechanism to MA students in Statistics who undertake on-campus project work or research. The course may be signed up with a faculty member from the Department of Statistics for academic credit. Students seeking to enroll in the course should identify an on-campus project and a congenial faculty member whose research is appealing to them, and who are able to serve as their mentor. Students should then submit an application to enroll in this course, which will be reviewed and approved by the Faculty Director of the MA in Statistics program.
Prerequisites: GR5203; GR5204 &GR5205 and at least 4 approved electives This course is an elective course for students in the M.A. in Statistics program that counts towards the degree requirements. To receive a grade and academic credits for this course, students are expected to engage in approved off-campus internships that can be counted as an elective. Statistical Fieldwork should provide students an opportunity to apply their statistical skills and gain practical knowledge on how statistics can be applied to solve real-world challenges.
While this course is designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of clinical ethics and the basic terminology and framework of ethical analysis in biomedical ethics, it offers a more sociological perspective, putting the contemporary clinical issues into a broader context. We will look briefly at the development of clinical ethics and its impact on hospital care and doctor-patient relationships, on the prevailing autonomy norm and its critique. The course then focuses on issues encountered in clinical practice such as informed consent, patient capacity, decision-making, end of life, advance directives, medical futility, pediatrics ethics, maternal-fetal conflicts, organ transplantation, cultural competence and diversity of beliefs and others. The course will examine the role of the clinical ethics consultant (CEC) and assignments will mimic the work that CECs may perform in the hospital setting.
Over the span of the semester, students become familiar with the ethical questions surrounding major topics in the clinic with a practical case-based approach toward ethics dilemmas and ethics consultation. During the semester, students in New York attend a meeting of the adult or pediatric ethics committees of New York Presbyterian and Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital or another area hospital, as well as ethics lectures given at the medical center.
Students are expected to complete five case write-ups using a template that will be given by the instructor. Students will be using these cases to refine and hone their ethical analysis skills and to show their knowledge of law, policy and ethical principles and how they might apply to each situation.
Practical Production 1 teaches students best practices regarding film production and technology in the integrated first year of the MFA Film Program through lectures, discussions, pre-production meetings, multi-hour shoots on set and an end-of-the-semester screening. This class is required for all first-year students. Throughout the Fall, students will work in small production groups to prep and shoot a short script in the Prentis studio. Each week one group will organize a pre-production meeting and then produce a four-hour shoot. The professor will be in attendance and two de-briefing sessions will occur throughout the production to reiterate best film production practices. Additional assignments will include the creation of various pre-production, production and wrap paperwork and tech deliverables. Additional mandatory production and risk management workshops will be given. The last class will be a screening of all group films and prep/discussion for the 3-5 exercise shot over Winter Break. Required for all first-year students.
Prerequisites: familiarity with Brownian motion, Itô's formula, stochastic differential equations, and Black-Scholes option pricing. Prerequisites: Familiarity with Brownian motion, Itô's formula, stochastic differential equations, and Black-Scholes option pricing. Nonlinear Option Pricing is a major and popular theme of research today in quantitative finance, covering a wide variety of topics such as American option pricing, uncertain volatility, uncertain mortality, different rates for borrowing and lending, calibration of models to market smiles, credit valuation adjustment (CVA), transaction costs, illiquid markets, super-replication under delta and gamma constraints, etc. The objective of this course is twofold: (1) introduce some nonlinear aspects of quantitative finance, and (2) present and compare various numerical methods for solving high-dimensional nonlinear problems arising in option pricing.
This course provides the tools to measure and manage market risk in the context of large financial institutions. The volume and complexity of the data itself, at large institutions, makes it a challenge to generate actionable information. We will take on this challenge to master the path from data to decisions.
We cover the essential inputs to the engines of financial risk management: VaR, Expected Exposure, Potential Exposure, Expected Shortfall, backtesting, and stress testing as they apply to asset management and trading. We explore the strengths and weaknesses of these different metrics and the tradeoffs between them. We also cover how regulatory frameworks impact both the details and the strategy of building these engines. Lastly, we cover counterparty-credit methodologies, mainly as they apply to Trading Book risk.
Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable. Note: Due to significant overlap, students may receive credit for only one of the following three courses: PHIL UN3411, UN3415, GR5415.
The field of credit risk management is undergoing a quiet revolution as subjective and manually-intensive methods give way to digitization, algorithmic management, and decision-making. This course provides a practical overview and hands-on experience with different methods, and it also provides a view of future technologies and discussions of potential future directions. Participants in this course should be well-positioned to take entry-level analytic positions and help drive strategic decisions.
The first half of the course explores analytics used today for credit risk management. You will learn to create rating and scoring models and a macro scenario-based stress testing model. In the second half of the course, we explore more advanced tools used by the more prominent organizations and fintech firms, including neural net and XGBoost decision tree models.
Required Prerequisite: Math GR5010 Intro to the Math of Finance (or equivalent). Recommended Prerequisite: Stat GR5264 Stochastic Processes – Applications I (or equivalent).
The objective of this course is to introduce students, from a practitioner’s perspective with formal derivations, to the advanced modeling, pricing and risk management techniques of vanilla and exotic options that are traded on derivatives desks, which goes beyond the classical option pricing courses focusing solely on the theory. It also presents the opportunity to design, implement and backtest vol trading strategies. The course is divided in four parts: Advanced Volatility Modeling; Vanilla and Exotic Options: Structuring, Pricing and Hedging; FX/Rates Components: Discounting, Forward Projection, Quanto and Compo Options; Designing and Backtesting Vol Trading Strategies in Python.
TBA
TBA
The development of a new drug is a long and expensive process, involving thousands of discrete processes and decisions. Most of these processes reflect some level of ethical diligence and may even be governed by local law. There are a range of formal mechanisms in place in the complex drug development industry (e.g., regulatory requirements, Institutional Review Boards, internal bioethics committees, legislative requirements) to ensure that ethical issues are considered and that best ethical practices are applied throughout the process. And yet, ethical challenges and considerations persist and evolve. This online 3-credit course will examine some of the major components and drivers of the drug development process from an array of perspectives and analyze the ethical issues surrounding these constituent steps, stages, and components. The course is an elective in the Master of Science Bioethics program and is open, space permitting, to cross-registrants from other fields and/or Columbia University programs. The course is designed for anyone with an interest in the ethics of pharmaceutical product development and the research required to enable it. Registrants should have a foundational understanding of clinical research and development.
Indicators of companies running into hard times typically include revenue volatility, loss of key personnel, reputational damage, and increased litigation. However, company failures are frequently marked by insufficient liquidity, or the lack of cash to meet obligations. Liquidity risk is the unexpected change in a company’s cash resources or demands on such resources that results in the untimely sale of assets, and/or an inability to meet contractual demands and/or default. In extreme cases, the lack of sufficient cash creates severe losses and results in company bankruptcy.
An institution’s cash resources and obligations can and must be managed. Indeed, the field of liquidity risk management is an established part of treasury departments at sizable institutions. The regularity of cash flows and the turbulence of business and markets must be assessed and quantified. This course provides students the tools and techniques to manage all types of liquidity challenges including the need to sell assets unexpectedly in the market, or work through ‘‘run‐on-the‐bank’’ situations for financial services companies.
This course teaches cutting-edge tools and methods that drive investment decisions at quantitative trading firms, and, more generally, firms applying machine learning to big data. The course will combine presentations of theory, immediately followed by in-class Python programming examples using real financial data. The course will develop a general approach to building models of economic and financial processes, with a focus on statistical learning techniques that scale to large data sets. Among the topics covered are lasso, elastic net, cross validation, Bayesian models, the EM algorithm, Support Vector Machines, kernel methods, Gaussian processes, Hidden Markov Models, and neural networks. The final project will lead the students to build a trading strategy based on the techniques learned throughout the course.
Using Blockchain, decisions can be made without relying on a single centralized authority, allowing for greater transparency and trust between participants. By using smart contracts and distributed ledgers, users can easily create, modify, and manage agreements between stakeholders, ensuring that all parties have access to the same information and can make informed decisions. As a result, Blockchain technology reduces the risks associated with decision-making, and improves efficiency and accuracy. This course first examines the risks and rewards of implementing Blockchain at large organizations engaging in decentralized decision-making processes. The course then explores the Blockchain as a tool for risk management.
This course will explore the influence of institutional policies on the ethical practices of clinicians, researchers, and healthcare administrators. We will examine the ways in which rules and practices related to operational and financial performance shape the ability of practitioners, advocates for patients/research participants, and the public to advance organizational goals. We will evaluate internal and external sources of institutional direction and values. The exercise of authority by different stakeholders produces a cumulative impact on organizational ethics and compliance. At the end of the course students will have a working knowledge of the various institutional influences that impact the sometimes-conflicting obligations of compliance with financial regulations and clinical performance improvement.
This survey course examines a range of sustainable and impact investing fixed income and equity products
before transitioning to the asset owner perspective on sustainable and impact investing. Each class session
includes elements of financial analysis, financial structure, social or environmental impact, and policy and
regulatory context. Brief guest lectures, podcasts, and three experiential exercises bring these topics to life.
At the end of the course, each student will be able to (i) construct a diversified portfolio of impact
investments based on the range of products tackled in class, (ii) integrate ESG into debt and equity valuation,
(iii) develop an impact investing product that an asset manager or investment bank could launch, (iv) develop
an impact investing strategy for an asset owner, and (v) lead either side of the investor-corporate dialogue on
sustainability. The lectures are designed to prepare students for both the impact investing product
development exercise and the impact investing asset owner strategy exercise, and these two exercises are
designed to prepare students for impact investing leadership over the course of their careers.
As an early innovator in social finance, dating back 24 years, the instructor provides students with a practical
toolkit, honed by making mainstream financial institutions and products more beneficial to a broader range
of stakeholders and making specialist impact investment firms more relevant to and integrated with
mainstream markets.
This course provides an overview of the way sustainability (environmental, social and governance) factors are analyzed in private markets. It focuses on preparing students to implement their understanding of the financial and societal risks and opportunities within the investment making process. In private markets, limited partners (pension funds, endowments, high net-worth individuals) have pushed the sustainability imperative and social consciousness of private equity funds and asset managers by seeking greater clarity around how their money is invested in both a responsible and financially meaningful way. Alongside this trend, an evolving regulatory environment globally has propelled the need to systemize evaluation frameworks for stakeholders within investment functions and advisors who support them.Unlike public markets, sustainability information is harder to glean in private markets and requires a skilled extraction and evaluation process. During this course, we examine a traditional ESG due diligence process embedded within the wider investment lifecycle (sourcing, diligence, hold and exit) through the lens of changing geographic regulatory landscape in financial investing and the market leading frameworks that quantify ESG factors for evaluation. The course culminates with a deal due diligence process that mimics an investment committee (IC) comprised of private equity leaders that understand the commercial and purpose-driven viability of an investment.
Data analytics have become an essential component of business intelligence and informed decision making. Sophisticated statistical and algorithmic methodologies, generally known as data science, are now of predominant interest and focus. Yet, the underlying cloud computing platform is fundamental to the enablement of data management and analytics.
This course introduces students to cloud computing concepts and practices ranging from infrastructure and administration to services and applications. The course is primarily focused on the development of practical skills in utilizing cloud services to build distributed and scalable analytics applications. Students will have hands-on exposure to VMs (Virtual Machines), databases, storage, microservices, and AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) services through Google Cloud Platform, et al. Cost and performance characteristics of alternative approaches will also be studied. Topics include: overview of cloud computing, cloud systems, parallel processing in the cloud, distributed storage systems, virtualization, security in the cloud, and multicore operating systems. Throughout, students will study state-of-the-art solutions for cloud computing developed by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM.
The course modules provide a blend of lecture and reading materials along with class exercises and programming assignments. While extensive programming experience is not required, students taking the course are expected to possess basic Python 3 programming skills.
The desired outcome of the course is the student’s ability to put conceptual knowledge to practical use. Whether you are taking this course for future academic research, for work in industry, or for an innovative startup idea, this course should help you master the fundamentals of cloud computing.
In recent years, many crucial issues have arisen concerning research ethics. Scientists in biomedicine, social science and other areas, as well as policy makers face rapidly evolving challenges. In recent years, violations of research ethics have attracted attention from the public, the media, the government, and the scientific community, which have all responded in varying ways. Issues arise in deciding how best to protect human subjects, obtain informed consent, protect privacy and confidentiality, finance research without biasing results, and avoid “misbehavior” among scientists. Questions arise concerning the professional responsibilities and rights of scientists, the rights of study participants, and the appropriate role of the state in these matters.
The course meets online once a week for an hour and a half, with extensive interaction between students and the professor both during class and on post-class discussion forums. It can fulfill the requirements for Responsible Conduct of Research that the NIH and other funders currently mandate for training programs that they support.
This course is offered for early year Biology PhD students only and meets the first 8 weeks of the semester.
In
recent years, many crucial issues have arisen concerning research ethics. Scientists in biomedicine, social science and other areas, as well as policy makers face rapidly evolving challenges. In recent years, violations of research ethics have attracted attention from the public, the media, the government, and the scientific community, which have all responded in varying ways. Issues arise in deciding how best to protect human subjects, obtain informed consent, protect privacy and confidentiality, finance research without biasing results, and avoid “misbehavior” among scientists. Questions arise concerning the professional responsibilities and rights of scientists, the rights of study participants, and the appropriate role of the state in these matters.
The course meets in person and online for 2 hours, with extensive interaction between students and the professor both during class and on post-class discussion forums. It can fulfill the requirements for Responsible Conduct of Research that the NIH and other funders currently mandate for training programs that they support.
This course is offered for Biology PhD students only and meets the last 5 weeks of the semester.
In
recent years, many crucial issues have arisen concerning research ethics. Scientists in biomedicine, social science and other areas, as well as policy makers face rapidly evolving challenges. In recent years, violations of research ethics have attracted attention from the public, the media, the government, and the scientific community, which have all responded in varying ways. Issues arise in deciding how best to protect human subjects, obtain informed consent, protect privacy and confidentiality, finance research without biasing results, and avoid “misbehavior” among scientists. Questions arise concerning the professional responsibilities and rights of scientists, the rights of study participants, and the appropriate role of the state in these matters.
The course meets in person or online for 2 hours, with extensive interaction between students and the professor both during class and on post-class discussion forums. It can fulfill the requirements for Responsible Conduct of Research that the NIH and other funders currently mandate for training programs that they support.
This course introduces students to how healthcare policy is created and implemented in the United States and abroad, while also raising critical ethical issues surrounding healthcare policy for the US, and other industrialized as well as poorer nations. Through lectures, discussions, and readings from the current literature, we will explore the political processes and concerns which produce our current policy; examine the major issues being debated surrounding the creation and delivery of healthcare, including ethical issues; explore the process by which we induce biomedical progress and development; explore barriers to sound healthcare production and delivery in various countries, and examine the recent reforms wrought through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). In addition, we will spend a few units looking, in detail, at the unusual challenges posed in delivering healthcare to the poor and the elderly.
In today’s digital age, with the collection and usage of personal information growing at an exponential rate, the study of privacy risk management is crucial. As organizations grapple with the dual challenge of monetizing technological innovation without running afoul of regulatory and legal restrictions, the ERM professional who understands how to identify, assess, and manage privacy risk is in high demand. In this course, students will develop an understanding of the legal frameworks governing data usage, the ethical issues associated with the use of personal information, and how to develop robust privacy frameworks and controls in order to manage privacy risk.
This class is designed to give students exercises and guided experiences in producing and marketing publishable opinion essays. In the last two decades, newspapers, magazines and websites have opened up their pages to reader contributions. This development provides an unprecedented opportunity for students and faculty to connect with the general public about policy issues—and also to their personal passions. Op-eds provide a relatively new pathway to communication and advocacy. This course aims to teach journalistic writing so that our students can gain a larger forum on matters like climate mitigation, conservation biology, green roofs, urban farming, ecologic waste disposal, environmental justice, and pandemic prevention.
TBD
Throughout history, societies have discovered resources, designed and developed them into textiles,
tools and structures, and bartered and exchanged these goods based on their respective values.
Economies emerged, driven by each society’s needs and limited by the resources and technology
available to them. Over the last two centuries, global development accelerated due in large part to the
overextraction and use of finite resources, whether for energy or materials, and supported by vast
technological advancements. However, this economic model did not account for the long-term impacts of
the disposal or depletion of these finite resources and instead, carried on unreservedly in a “take-make’-
waste” manner, otherwise known as a linear economy. Despite a more profound understanding of our
planet’s available resources, the environmental impact of disposal and depletion, and the technological
advancements of the last several decades, the economic heritage of the last two centuries persists today;
which begs the question: what alternatives are there to a linear economy?
The premise of this course is that through systems-thinking, interdisciplinary solutions for an alternative
economic future are available to us. By looking at resources’ potential, we can shape alternative methods
of procurement, design, application, and create new market demands that aim to keep materials,
products and components in rotation at their highest utility and value. This elective course will delve into
both the theory of a circular economy - which would be a state of complete systemic regeneration and
restoration as well as an optimized use of resources and zero waste - and the practical applications
required in order to achieve this economic model. Achieving perfect circularity represents potentially
transformative systemic change and requires a fundamental re-think of many of our current economic
structures, systems and processes.
This is a full-semester elective course which is designed to create awareness among sustainability
leaders that those structures, systems and processes which exist today are not those which will carry us
(as rapidly as we need) into a more sustaining future. The class will be comprised of a series of lectures,
supported by readings and case-studies on business models, design thinking and materi
Market research is the way that companies identify, understand and develop the target market for their products. It is an important component of business strategy, and it draws on the research and analytics skills you have learned thus far in the program. Often market research consists of generating your own data, through quantitative and qualitative methodologies, in pursuit of the market research question.
This course is an elective that will expand on quantitative and qualitative methodologies that have been introduced previously, provide an introduction to other methodologies that are more specific to market research, and provide hands-on practice in defining a market research plan from start to finish. Students will also learn about particular types of market research studies and when and how they should be deployed. Students will generate and test their own research instruments. Through the use of case studies and simulations, students will learn how market research fits into an overarching marketing plan for a company.
This course is designed for students who have completed the Research Design and Strategy and Analytics core courses, and who are exploring how research fits into product marketing. You will leave this class understanding the essential aspects of market research, when and how they should be deployed, and the role you could play in small and large companies directing and executing on market research opportunities.
Students conduct research related to biotechnology under the sponsorship of a mentor within the University. The student and the mentor determine the nature and extent of this independent study. In some laboratories, the student may be assigned to work with a postdoctoral fellow, graduate student or a senior member of the laboratory, who is in turn supervised by the mentor. The mentor is responsible for mentoring and evaluating the students progress and performance. Credits received from this course may be used to fulfill the laboratory requirement for the degree. Instructor permission required. Web site: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/g4500-g4503/index.html
Students conduct research related to biotechnology under the sponsorship of a mentor within the University. The student and the mentor determine the nature and extent of this independent study. In some laboratories, the student may be assigned to work with a postdoctoral fellow, graduate student or a senior member of the laboratory, who is in turn supervised by the mentor. The mentor is responsible for mentoring and evaluating the students progress and performance. Credits received from this course may be used to fulfill the laboratory requirement for the degree. Instructor permission required. Web site: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/g4500-g4503/index.html
This team-taught course introduces methods for studying medieval manuscripts through weekly hands-on instruction and assignments. Students will become acquainted with the collections of medieval manuscripts at Columbia, and will learn from the scholars at Columbia who specialize in the material study of manuscripts as artifacts as well as in types of manuscripts as defined by their textual contents. The course provides a foundation for advanced work and satisfies the material text requirement of the MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Intro to Moving Image: Video, Film & Art is an introductory class on the production and editing of digital video. Designed as an intensive hands-on production/post-production workshop, the apprehension of technical and aesthetic skills in shooting, sound and editing will be emphasized. Assignments are developed to allow students to deepen their familiarity with the language of the moving image medium. Over the course of the term, the class will explore the language and syntax of the moving image, including fiction, documentary and experimental approaches. Importance will be placed on the decision making behind the production of a work; why it was conceived of, shot, and edited in a certain way. Class time will be divided between technical workshops, viewing and discussing films and videos by independent producers/artists and discussing and critiquing students projects. Readings will be assigned on technical, aesthetic and theoretical issues. Only one section offered per semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
Students conduct research related to biotechnology under the sponsorship of a mentor outside the University within the New York City Metropolitan Area unless otherwise approved by the Program. The student and the mentor determine the nature and extent of this independent study. In some laboratories, the student may be assigned to work with a postdoctoral fellow, graduate student or a senior member of the laboratory, who is in turn supervised by the mentor. The mentor is responsible for mentoring and evaluating the students progress and performance. Credits received from this course may be used to fulfill the laboratory requirement for the degree. Instructor permission required. Web site: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/g4500-g4503/index.html
Students conduct research related to biotechnology under the sponsorship of a mentor outside the University within the New York City Metropolitan Area unless otherwise approved by the Program. The student and the mentor determine the nature and extent of this independent study. In some laboratories, the student may be assigned to work with a postdoctoral fellow, graduate student or a senior member of the laboratory, who is in turn supervised by the mentor. The mentor is responsible for mentoring and evaluating the students progress and performance. Credits received from this course may be used to fulfill the laboratory requirement for the degree. Instructor permission required. Web site: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/g4500-g4503/index.html
Unlike any other medium, animation provides unmatched suspicion of disbelief. Moreover, one can exercise one's imagination in digital space beyond material and physical limitations. Combining the two provides the permissive space to manifest our wildest reveries: utopias, dystopias, thought experiments, psi-fic scenarios, or dollhouses for amphibians.
In this course, students will receive a general survey on a range of methods in animation production. From the most traditional hand-drawn animation and cel animation to digital animation employing Photoshop, After Effects, and Blender (3D animation). Although this class can be technically involved; software mastery the end goal of the course is using these techniques to produce animations as a means of expression. These are only tools to help students form and realize their creative visions. Designed for both the digitally inclined and those who hate computers, students can try and then choose the method most agreeable to their temperament and ideas. They can also combine and mix different methods, maximizing creative freedom.
The course will introduce projects from animation history (early experimental animation, Disney, Soviet experimental animation, etc.) and contemporary art examples (Pierre Huyghe, Ian Chang, Wong Ping. etc.). However, the aim is to go beyond the Western art canon and expose students to other facets of culture. We will also study examples from popular culture (music videos) and Japanese anime (Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon, Masaaki Yuasa, etc.). One of the most essential responsibilities the students will take on is expanding our collective references by bringing in and presenting works that genuinely inspire and interest them.
Animation is an exceptionally permissive medium; it facilitates all of your prior skills and interests. Whether it is drawing, painting, music, poetry, fiction, or using a yoyo, there is a way for it to exist in animation. Students will be asked to keep a sketchbook for the duration of the semester. It will serve a landing pad for ideas and an anchor point to manage the project. The course will cover the entire production process, from idea development, concept design, character design, writing, storyboarding, foley, voice, music, editing, and final publication. Much of the class time will be dedicated to working, punctured by presentations, technical workshops, and critiques. At the end of the semester, students will have completed three shorts (30 seconds-2 minutes) and one fully developed pr