Drawing on the co-instructors' experience at MERL Tech Initiative and Dalberg Design, this course challenges the notion that technology alone can solve complex development problems and that a human-centered ecosystem approach is critical. While innovations like mobile money and AI are often hailed as silver bullets, history shows that their impact depends on context, users, and systems. Drawing on lessons from decades of “tech for good” — from community radio to drones — we encourage students to question technological determinism and instead focus on the lived realities and needs of users.
To do so, the course adopts a human-centered design (HCD) and systems-thinking approach. We start the course with UX principles and how they are applied in digital development, and follow this with weekly case studies in class, e.g., designing a digital ID for refugee camps, AI chatbots for low-income women entrepreneurs, participatory digital campaigns, capacity building in communities, community health worker tablets/iPads and so on.
Students will learn how to design relevant solutions by understanding users — such as refugees, entrepreneurs, or health workers — within their social, cultural, and institutional contexts. Emphasizing empathy, participation, and sustainability, the course moves from abstract theory to practical, user-driven design methods, supported by tools and case studies from Savita’s experience in digital development with clients including Mastercard Foundation, Gates Foundation and many others, and Claudia’s experience at Dalberg Design. Assessment is through a combination of participation in class, case study design and a group project.
Discrimination is the differential treatment of people based on identity or perceived identity (race, gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ status, age, religion, disability, immigration status, etc.). Such behavior violates some legal, social, and moral norms and has a negative impact on those discriminated against.
For these and other reasons, it is important to be able to formally identify discrimination from data. But how do we know that A’s treatment of B is because of B’s identity as opposed to some other characteristic of B or A that we may not even have a variable for?
In this class, we will explore economists’ methodologies for answering this question. We will survey the economic literature on discrimination against a variety of types of people in a variety of markets and across countries. Students are encouraged to explore discrimination in contexts not covered in the reading in their final projects.
This course seeks to help students learn
how
to think, not
what
to think – we pursue fuller thinking by drawing on the broadest range of evidence from right and left, Arab, Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim, and others. No questions are banned: all perspectives are open to challenge. What tools are required to engage, understand and be involved with improving the Israeli-Palestinian issue by acquiring greater intelligence, nuance, and awareness of the claims and sensitivities of both sides? Too often, American and European policymakers bring our own biases and blind-spots to the negotiating table, and do not understand the beliefs of local nations. Which leads to the question: How do policy practitioners help participants in the conflict move forward, while taking seriously the claims and cultures of the people involved? This course respects and meets the people involved in the conflict in their words, narratives, and deeds. The longest war in the Middle East is not only about that region: American university campuses, political parties, and different communities are being torn apart by slogans of “Zionism is racism”, “white colonial settlements”, “apartheid”, “globalize the Intifada”, and “Islam is terrorism”. Why does this conflict matter so much? How do we approach it with intellectual honesty, empathy, openness, facts and mutual respect?
This course analyzes the impact of domestic and regional conflicts in the Middle East on global security. Key concepts include: regime change, revolution, civil war, conflict management, security sector reform, arms transfers, nuclear proliferation, counterterrorism, and international criminal justice. These conceptual tools are used for comparative analysis of three sub-regional conflict zones: Saudi Arabia / Iran / Iraq, Egypt / Syria / Lebanon, and Palestine / Jordan / Israel. Each of these regions has galvanized substantial global engagement.
Gender equality, and women’s and girls’ empowerment, are now widely accepted as development goals in their own right, and essential to inclusive and sustainable development. But despite progress in many areas, gender gaps and discrimination persist. How did gender equality move from the periphery to the center of development discourse, and what difference has this made? Is gender equality a human right, an essential aspect of human development, or “smart economics”? What are the implications of a gender equality agenda for men and boys, and for broader understandings of gender identities and sexualities? What policies, strategies and practices have been effective – or ineffective – in narrowing gender gaps and improving outcomes for both women and men in particular development settings? And what are possible responses to the "gender backlash" that has emerged in some countries and institutions?
In this course, we approach gender, politics and development in terms of theory, policy and practice. We explore multiple constructions of gender in development discourse; the intersection of gender with race, ethnicity, caste, class, sexual orientation, disability and other social categories, and with dominant economic and political trends; and the ways in which gender norms inform the different approaches of governments, development agencies, civil society organizations, and the private sector. We apply a critical gender lens to a wide range of development sectors and issue areas, including economic development, political participation, education and health, environment and climate change, and conflict and displacement. We also consider current debates and approaches related to gender mainstreaming and gender metrics in development practice. Students engage with the course material through class discussion, exercises and case studies, and the development of a gender-related project proposal. Guest speakers share practical strategies for advancing gender equality in the current environment.
Instructor permission required. Join the waitlist in Vergil to request registration.
The class compares a variety of proposals that have been advanced to promote constitutional world order. We begin with traditional conceptions of the balance of power among independent “Westphalian” states and then explore arrangements designed to produce alternative forms of constituted international and world order. These include liberal and authoritarian internationalism, collective security through the League Covenant and the United Nations Charter, John Rawls’s
Law of Peoples
and various other contemporary models of international law, global governance networks and global democratization.
In addition to assessing the particular merits and limitations of these visions of world order, we will examine the underlying principles of international politics, ethics and constitutional design that characterize these efforts to establish rules for the globe.
This course examines the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the present, analyzing the political, strategic, and economic drivers of Beijing’s engagement with the world. Topics include China’s relations with the United States, Russia, Asia, and the Global South; key historical turning points such as the Cold War, reform era, and post-Tiananmen period; and contemporary challenges including cross-Strait relations, great power competition, and global governance. Emphasis is placed on the causes and consequences of China’s external behavior and how domestic politics, nationalism, and leadership shape policy. Graduate students participate in additional precepts and complete analytic memos designed to build policy-relevant skills.
This course is the second half of the year-long International Fellows Program (IFP) seminar examining the United States’ evolving role in global affairs. Building on themes from the fall, the spring semester focuses on the challenges confronting a new U.S. presidential administration and the strategic decisions that will shape American leadership in a contested international environment. Through a combination of seminar discussions, case studies, guest speakers, and two regional crisis simulations, students will examine U.S. policy responses to geopolitical competition, regional instability, and transnational threats. Enrollment is limited to students in the International Fellows Program (IFP).
Independent Study with Faculty Advisor must be registered for every semester after first academic year
Independent Study with Faculty Advisor must be registered for every semester after first academic year
This is a course is oriented to graduate students who are thinking about issues in teaching in the near and distant future and want to explore forms of pedagogy. The course will ask what it means to teach “as a feminist” and will explore how to create a classroom receptive to feminist and queer methodologies and theories regardless of course theme/content. Topics include: participatory pedagogy, the role of political engagement, the gender dynamics of the classroom, modes of critical thought and disagreement. Discussions will be oriented around student interest. The course will meet 4-5 times per SEMESTER (dates TBD) and the final assignment is to develop and workshop a syllabus for a new gender/sexuality course in your field. Because this course is required for graduate students choosing to fulfill Option 2 for the Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies at IRWGS, priority will be given to graduate students completing the certificate.
Prerequisites: the departments permission.
An in-depth, seminar-style course on the management of ticketing with a focus on practical strategies to maximize grosses efficiently while providing a seamless audience experience. The course includes a semester-long group project intended to demonstrate the various decisions that theater managers must make to ensure the financial stability of their productions and institutions.
Open only to Ph.D. candidates in the Department of Pharmacology. A detailed analysis of classical studies in pharmacology and related fields and the research which has led to our current understanding of the mode of drug action. Students are required to present material for oral presentation and written report.
This 15-week course during the second term of the DPT curriculum is the first in a series of four clinical education seminars designed to prepare students for their full-time clinical education experiences.
This course includes an overview of the clinical education program, policies and procedures, and the site selection process. Students participate in training sessions required for the clinic including HIPPA and Blood-borne Pathogens training. Students are introduced to the practice sites available for Clinical Education I and participate in the placement process.
Students may take these courses provided they have completed relevant work available in the regular course program. Tutorials are offered in social gerontology, children and family services, health services, substance abuse, AIDS, family policy, and comparative social policy, among others. Social work practice and social science tutorials are offered when required by students in attendance.
This 14-week course during the Spring Term in the second year of the DPT curriculum is the third in a series of four clinical education seminars designed to prepare students for their full-time clinical education experiences.
This course offers an opportunity to reflect on the challenges and highlights of the First Clinical Education experience. Facilitated discussions address topics such as initiative, communication and problem solving in clinical scenarios. Expectations for the Clinical Education II experience are discussed and students set individualized goals and fulfill clinical site prerequisites. Students are introduced to the practice sites available for the Terminal Clinical Education experience(s) and prepare for the Terminal Experience placement process.
This is a Law School course. For more detailed course information, please go to the Law School Curriculum Guide at: http://www.law.columbia.edu/courses/search
This course explores the use of financial information for internal planning, analysis, and decision-making. The main objective of the course is to equip you with the knowledge to understand, evaluate, and act upon the many financial and non-financial reports used in managing modern firms.
Managing any modern firm requires information about the firm’s products, processes, assets, and customers. This information is a key input into a wide range of decisions: analyzing profitability of various products, managing product-line portfolios, setting prices, measuring and managing profitability of customers, making operational and strategic decisions, evaluating investments, guiding improvement efforts, and so on.
The focus of this course is on modern internal-reporting systems. We will discover that many firms do not provide their managers with useful information; we will see numerous examples of value destruction and bankruptcies caused by this. We will also investigate some modern ideas in how an organization’s internal information system should be designed to enhance value creation; and we will see how world-class firms take advantage of their competitors’ internal-reporting mistakes.
To attain the right level of understanding, we will briefly explore the mechanics of the many techniques used to prepare internal reports. But the emphasis in this course is very much on interpretation, evaluation, and decision-making.
We will examine the following key topics:
Designing managerial information systems to support an organization’s strategy.
Determining which financial and non-financial metrics are necessary for success in various competitive environments.
Evaluating profitability of products, services, assets, and customers.
The capabilities and the limitations of various reporting systems in guiding value-maximization, cost-control, and improvement efforts.
The limitations of traditional cost-estimation systems.
Activity-based costing and activity-based management.
Estimating and managing the costs of capacity resources.
Relevant costs and relevant revenues in business decisions.
The information necessary to evaluate long-term business decisions.
The incentives created by various performance-evaluation techniques.
Financial reporting provides a window into the operational and financial workings of a company. However, translating this information into actionable insights is anything but straightforward. It requires an understanding of: Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the quality of financial information, and the adjustments and analyses used to assess profitability, risk, growth, and value.
The course starts with a short review of financial reporting and then focuses on various modules of fundamental analysis, including earnings quality analysis, performance evaluation, risk assessment, forecasting, and valuation. The remaining class meetings (approximately 14 out of 24) are devoted to a deeper dive into the reporting and analysis of key transactions (e.g., business combinations, leasing) and financial statement line items (e.g., revenue, income taxes).
To allow for dynamic progress, the class schedule is flexible:
Topic Approximate # of class meetings
1. Review of financial reporting 2
2. Financial statement analysis 4
3. Forecasting and valuation 4
4. Revenue and related items 2
5. Operating capacity 3
6. Estimated items 3.5
7. Financial instruments 2
8. Investments in businesses 2.5
9. Equity and related items 1
Total 24
While the course covers the theoretical underpinning of the various analyses, it focuses on implementation and practical uses. We will study many actual financial disclosures and cases of accounting abuses, and we will conduct fundamental-based valuation and other financial analyses, including using Excel tools that will be provided to the students. Studying financial disclosures will help you better understand the underlying assumptions and accounting choices the firm made in arriving at its accounting numbers. This information can be used to make earnings quality adjustments to the accounting numbers to make them more consistent across time or more comparable across companies. Studying cases of accounting abuses will help you improve your ability to “read between the lines” and develop a set of red flags to look for in analyzing financial statements. The class also incorporates insights from practitioner and academic research.
The primary objective of the course is to acquire a deep understanding of accounting information and how to intelligently use it in making investment, credit, and similar resource allocation decisions. Such knowledge is required of investors, consultants, analysts, banke
The dissertation colloquium is a non-credit course open to MESAAS doctoral students who have completed the M.Phil. degree. It provides a forum in which the entire community of dissertation writers meets, bridging the departments different fields and regions of research. It complements workshops outside the department focused on one area or theme. Through an encounter with the diversity of research underway in MESAAS, participants learn to engage with work anchored in different regions and disciplines and discover or develop what is common in the departments post-disciplinary methods of inquiry. Since the community is relatively small, it is expected that all post-M.Phil. students in residence will join the colloquium. Post M.Phil. students from other departments may request permission to join the colloquium, but places for non-MESAAS students will be limited. The colloquium convenes every semester, meeting once every two weeks. Each meeting is devoted to the discussion of one or two pre-circulated pieces of work (a draft prospectus or dissertation chapter). Every participant contributes at least one piece of work each year.
This course will provide students with hands-on experience analyzing financial statements. Students will learn about the general tools, theoretical concepts, and practical valuation issues of financial analysis. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable using firms' financial statements (along with other information) to assess firm performance and make reasonable valuation estimates.
Course content and organization In the first half of the course, we will develop a valuation framework that integrates a firm’s strategy, its financial performance, and the credibility of its accounting. The framework consists of the following steps:
1. Understand the firm’s strategy. We will assess the firm’s value proposition and identify its key value drivers and risks.
2. Accounting Analysis. We will assess earnings quality and evaluate whether the firm's accounting policies capture the underlying business reality. If not, we will adjust the accounting to eliminate GAAP issues and management biases.
3. Financial Analysis. We will evaluate current performance with accounting data and financial ratios.
4. Prospective Analysis: Forecasting. We will assess whether current firm performance is sustainable, and we will forecast future performance. In our forecasts, we will consider growth, profitability, and future competitive advantage.
5. Prospective Analysis: Valuation. We will convert our forecasts of future earnings and book values into an estimate of the firm’s current value.
In the second half of the course, we will apply the above framework to a variety of business valuation contexts, including IPOs, mergers, and equity-investment analyses.
Prerequisite: instructors permission. Participation in medical informatics educational activities under the direction of a faculty adviser.
Open only to Ph.D. candidates in the pharmacological sciences training program. Students are assigned to selected research laboratories to learn current fundamental laboratory techniques.
The course focuses on the U.S. labor market but will also draw research from other settings. The readings are organized by topic and highlight the extent and urgency of the issue and along the lines of gender, race/ethnicity, nativity, and class. Topics include the patterns and trends of inequality among highly-educated workers, and underlying demand and supply-side mechanisms that explain the observed patterns. Attention will be paid to student pathways through higher education to the labor market, including the school-to-work transition process. The course will also cover topics of intergenerational and intragenerational mobility processes among highly-educated workers.
This graduate seminar focuses on the material and political orders from 1500-1800 in South Asia. We pair primary, historical texts (in translation) with recent monographs which demonstrate the intersections between narrative and polity within material and epistemic realms. Our guiding interests will be in understanding the intimate relationship between power, agency and materiality within specific political spaces. Eschewing the center/periphery models, we take globally connective approach incorporating Western Asian, North American and Northern European histories. Some key ideas for the seminar include, “oceanic” perspective of the Indian and Atlantic oceans, role of “agents” (travelers, merchants, bureaucrats etc.), theories of colonization and decolonization, gender and sexuality.
This graduate course will focus on health service systems.Students will study the theories, competencies, and concepts of management and leadership. Furthermore students will examine the leadership role related to quality and safety in complex health service delivery systems, the management theories and concepts such as interprofessional communication, teamwork, delegation and supervision.The core role competencies for the nurse leader fraThis graduate course prepares students to manage and lead healthcare delivery in complex, dynamic systems. Students will integrate leadership theories, management principles, and evidence-based strategies to optimize care delivery and organizational quality, and to transform healthcare outcomes. Emphasis is placed on developing competencies in strategic decision-making, systems thinking, and innovation to address challenges in healthcare leadership, including resource management, interprofessional collaboration, technology integration, and population health management. me the course activities.
At a time when courses on clothing draw exceptionally large audiences in the humanities field, and when art museums depend increasingly for audiences and revenue on exhibitions of clothing, accompanying those exhibitions with increasingly ambitious catalogues, it has become pertinent for graduate students in a range of art history sub-fields, as well as in adjacent disciplines such as history, design, or anthropology, to become familiar with the newest options for the study of clothing. Among the 10 most visited exhibitions in the 150-year history of the Met, for instance, 5 have been devoted entirely or in part to clothing. The trend toward the incorporation of clothing in temporary exhibitions nominally devoted to painting, or to a period subject, as well as the installation of clothing in permanent galleries, will also be discussed. This seminar reads recent books or museum catalogues, chosen to offer a representative range of approaches, time periods and issues of rank, gender, race, geography, and politics.
Broadly speaking, the goal of this class is to provide students with both the theoretical and practical knowledge to understand the current challenges in accounting for firms’ ESG goals. In this rapidly evolving field, the course will be structured in four modules:
- Module #1 reviews the need for sustainability accounting and provide an overview of the providers of ESG metrics and the limits of current
aggregated ESG data.
- Module #2 present various market-based mechanisms to create ESG standards
- Module #3 discusses regulatory initiatives to create ESG information for listed firms
- Module #4 departs from non-financial disclosure and discuss the limits of current accounting standards and introduce new developments to
incorporate ESG characteristics into traditional financial statements.
While ESG encompasses a vast body of topics, this class will draw examples and discuss about a diverse set of issues ESG, including carbon emissions, employees pay, employees labor-safety, and the role of consumers’ NGO, based on short examples or cases spanning different firms in different industries (e.g., wholesale, aviation) and different countries (e.g., USA, France, Japan).
This half-term course is composed of a mix of lectures, cases and online or in-person interventions by high profile industry guest speakers. The lectures are motivated by (1) rigorous recent academic studies drawing from the accounting literature, but also borrowing from adjacent fields including economics, finance, law and strategy and (2) practitioners notes and examples.
Who should take this course?
Students should take this course if they are interested in ESG in general and/or if they expect to use disclosure of non-financial information in their career. This is particularly relevant for students who want to pursue careers in finance (e.g., investment banking) where firms’ ESG footprint is becoming a scrutinized factor in M&A or investment decisions in general, as well as students going to careers in consulting where corporate decisions will more and more be benchmark against their ESG implications.
Please note that this course does not require students to have pre-existing knowledge about ESG.
The purpose of this course is to provide you with an overview of M&A strategies and an introduction to the structuring and accounting for deals. We will also learn how to model M&A transactions. This is an advanced and technical course. If reviewing arcane accounting and tax rules does not bring you joy, you are forewarned! You will see plenty of both in the course. During the course, we will focus on several themes:
1. Deal strategy
2. Deal valuations
3. Deal structuring – impact of tax and accounting rules
4. Common metrics used to evaluate deals and limitations of those metrics
5. Accounting and modeling of deals
This course is recommended for those who intend to work in the financial services area – it will be helpful for those looking for a career in banking, corporate advisory services, treasury or corporate/financial strategy.
Advising on M&A transactions requires a strong background in accounting and tax. This course will get into the minutiae of various accounting and tax aspects of M&A. I will expect you to be willing to do the deep dive, where required. It is expected that you
have already taken courses in financial accounting and corporate finance and are interested in accounting and tax. If you do not have a prior background in accounting and tax, you are strongly advised to check with the instructor before enrolling in this
course.
This is not a course in excel, excel tools/techniques or about excel add‐ins provided by data providers. There are many services provided by data providers and Wall Street Prep companies for those. This course will focus on the accounting, finance and
economics of evaluating deals and building models. Also, we assume that you are already proficient in Excel, since we will use a lot of Excel models in the course.
The purpose of this course is to provide you with an overview of LBO strategies and to introduce you to restructuring and the bankruptcy process. During the course, you will learn how to build a basic financial model and adapt it for LBO transactions. This is an advanced and technical course. If reviewing arcane accounting and legal rules does not bring you joy, you are forewarned! You will see plenty of both in the course. During the course, we will learn to:
1. Build a basic integrated financial models (IS, BS and CFS)
2. Adapt the financial model to study the effect of LBO transactions
3. Study the impact of different deal structures, accounting choices, operating assumptions and financing decisions on firm value, liquidity, profitability, returns and other financial metrics.
4. Learn about alternative exit and restructuring strategies.
5. Understand the bankruptcy process – debt restructuring and fresh start models.
A close analysis of Cicero’s
Brutus
in its many contexts: as a response to Caesar’s dictatorship; as an account of oratory and rhetorical practices in Rome; and as the earliest surviving account of Roman literary history.
Financial statements are meant to enable the reader to evaluate the performance of an enterprise, analyze its cash flows, and assess its financial position. Recently, widely publicized cases of misleading statements, which were nevertheless attested as to their fairness by outside auditors, resulted in improper revenue recognition, overstatement of income, and misrepresentation of financial position. There is a growing awareness of the importance of honest reporting as the foundation for investors' confidence in the integrity and proper functioning of the financial markets.