Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Innovation Initiative Offers Economics Incubator Course

The Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development and Evaluation, known as gui2de, will offer a one-credit economics incubator course that will allow students to research and design innovative solutions in developmental economics starting in the spring semester.

Students in the course will meet once a week to design projects that focus on governance, health, education and technology in developing countries. These projects will later be tested and evaluated in the field.

“The incubator course is an opportunity for students to learn about all of these different stages from initiative to evaluation,” gui2de Co-Director James Habyarimana said. “It’s also hopefully going to be about innovation. We want students to be thinking about what the problems are and mobilizing all the energy and creativity to tackle these problems.”

For the past two years, students have conducted empirical field-based research and created innovative programs and policies in developing countries through the gui2de program. Participants have travelled to developing regions in countries such as Kenya, Brazil and Rwanda. Habyarimana said that students will be able to travel to the regions of research in the summer through the new economics class.

“The goal is that we’ll have this course in the spring and in the summer, we’ll take a few students to the field and test some of the ideas that they generate,” Habyarimana said.

The course is open to upperclassmen and graduate students. According to gui2de Co-Director Billy Jack, the program welcomes students from different academic backgrounds.

“We don’t want to restrict entry based on what students have done here. We want a mix of people,” Jack said. “The idea is that innovation happens when different ideas come together. Who knows? That’s one of the big questions of economics actually — where this growth comes from.”

In previous years, projects developed by gui2de have included designing mobile applications that provide market price information for farmers in India, developing a mobile money platform to facilitate saving for education and creating a campaign for road safety intervention in Kenya.

The incubator course has received around 30 applications from pre-registration. The co-directors estimate that they will accept 10 or 12 students. Future opportunities for applications during the add/drop period are being considered.

Jack said that he would like to increase opportunities for the program in the future, but noted that any expansion would require additional grants.

“On the longer term, we’d be happy to have more [students]. In the longer term, we might find a way to combine it with the summer activity for it to be a full three-credit course,” Jack said. “Of course, it costs money to bring students to the middle of nowhere, keep them alive then bring them back.”

Last spring, Jack and Habyarimana conducted a trial run of the incubator course but failed to receive funding.

“It wasn’t a full course. I just reached out to about 10 PhD students, asked if they wanted to come over for pizza once a week,” Jack said. “We weren’t able to put together the funding for that group. They all applied to funding sources, and unfortunately did not get them.”

Whitney Odden (GRD ’14) became a program coordinator at gui2de after serving as a graduate assistant for the program. She noted that the program provided her with plenty of opportunities.

“Getting to interact with your professor in such a close-knit way is really important,” Odden said. “Being able to develop those kinds of relationships in this kind of institution, with this caliber of professors, and spending time hands-on working on problems with them is a really neat experience.”

Odden said that she learned various practical skills through the program.

“Part of the reason why I went back to school is that I didn’t really have any practical skills from a liberal arts education,” Odden said. “I didn’t know how to program anything. To get exposure to stuff like that is incredibly important. It doesn’t require you to commit to a full year or to focus on one thing. You’ll get a taste of a bit of everything, see what you like and know what you want to pursue from there.”

Leave a Comment
More to Discover

Comments (0)

All The Hoya Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *