Identifying Your Sustainable Development Problem/Issue for your Master’s Paper

1. Identifying Your Sustainable Development Problem/Issuefor your Master’s Paper Friday, January 24, 2014

2. Friday, January 24 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Glynn Amphitheater, Classroom G4: Identifying Your Sustainable Development Problem or Issue ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday, January 31 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Classroom G4: ISSO Session – Second Year Immigration Authorization Workshop All international students considering practicums or employment in the US or with a US institution (paid or unpaid) require authorization from the Immigration Service and must attend this workshop (other students need not attend). - Required for all students Friday, February 28 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Glynn Amphitheater, Classroom G4: Using the Library for Research Friday, March 7– 12:15pm-1:45pm – Glynn Amphitheater, Classroom G4: Research to Read, Write, and Cite Friday, March 14 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Glynn Amphitheater, Classroom G4: The Literature Review Friday, March 28 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Glynn Amphitheater, Classroom G4: The Case Study Method Required for Practicum and Specialization students doing practicum. Friday, April 4 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Classroom G4: Negotiating your Terms of Reference and Writing a Master’s Proposal Friday, April 11 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Classroom G4: The Practicum and Master’s Paper Required for Advanced Study and all Specialization students Friday, April 11 – 12:15pm-1:45pm – Classroom G3 Writing a Master’s Proposal and the Second Year: Required of all first year students; schedule to follow Capstone Week: May 7-10 May 9 – Glynn Amphitheater, Classroom G4 What I wish I’d known before I started my Practicum

3. Identifying Your Sustainable Development Problem or Issue Overview of the second year • Practicum in the field with a recognized development organization or advanced study at the Heller School • All students (practicum and advanced study) will select and analyze development problem or issue that is important to the broader field of sustainable international development

4. Development Problem/Issue • Your interest in exploring a particular development problem or issue will help you: • Narrow your search for a practicum • Choose classes • Select possible academic advisors • Focus of your Master’s Paper and your panel at Capstone • You cannot do independent research • Your analysis must speak to a issue relevant to sustainable international development

5. Practicum students • Practicum students • Analysis will be rooted in the work of your practicum organization • Your practicum experience, along with your review of literature, will provide evidence for exploring the development problem in your paper • The paper is not part of your practicum duties and must be written outside of work

6. Practicum students, cont’d • You will be working for the organization doing what they need • Your day-to-day work may not precisely match the focus of your paper, but will provide a platform for general observation and learning. • Example: A student is asked by their hosting organization to research and write policy papers on solar power in Bangladesh. Those papers are not suitable for your Master’s Paper, but could be cited literature within it as you individually explore “Institutional barriers to adoption of small-scale solar power in Dhaka”

7. Advanced Study Students • Advanced study students • Development topic and case study must be suitable for exploration within an academic environment • Your second-year classes and literature review are the primary methods • An abstract, theoretical or research issue, without practical application, is not suitable.

8. Planning and Implementation The following steps will help you begin: • Think back to Planning and Implementation • How did you define the problem for your problem statements and team projects?

9. New Experiences • Often you chose a problem you were familiar with from your professional and life experience • Now your experience includes your first year at SID!

10. Tools • Conducted research to understand better the causes and effects of the problem • What tools did you use?

11. Tools • Literature Review • Problem Tree

12. Tools • Research to understand key stakeholders? • What tools did you use?

13. Tools • Stakeholder Analysis • Interest/Influence Matrix

14. Tools • Just as a planning team re-uses these tools as a project progresses, you will continue to revisit and redefine your development problem as you gather more evidence and understand better the causes and effects

15. Beginning • Start reading: All students must do substantial reading to learn about your problem or issue • Later this spring you will develop a second-year proposal

16. Gather information • For now, begin by gathering the information about your problem that would be needed to produce a solid background section • (analogous to a Problem Statement or the Background from your P&I Project proposal)

17. Developing your Development Problem What do you want to focus on for the next year?

18. What if you don’t know? • What are your interests? • Where do you want to be? • What kind of organization do you want to work with? • What does your host organization want you to work on? • What does your ToR say?

19. Start broadly • Gender mainstreaming • Participatory evaluation • Environmental issues • Poverty • Kenya • Small island states

20. How to start your reading? • Participatory evaluation • Evaluation • Participatory methods • Organizations which use it • Debates about the methods

21. If you are focusing on a location • History • Geography • Ethnicity • Gender relations • Organizations that work there • Etc.

22. Begin to narrow your topic • Gender mainstreaming • Guatemala • Environment al organization • Invisibilization • Evaluation • Case study of the evaluation of the invisibilization of gender mainstreaming in Guatemalan environmental organization

23. Food Security and Participation • Food security programs in Mali often fail because they do not have the participation of local farmers. This paper will analyze the effectiveness of making food security participatory from a programmatic stand point. I will examine the impact of local farmers’ participation on the effectiveness of the design and implementation of food security interventions using the food security project being implemented by LD (my host organization) as a case study.

24. Agriculture and Environment • The use of agro-chemicals and deforestation of protected lands by coffee and cacao can be minimized with new technologies. However farmers are hesitant to use them even though they increase production while at the same time mitigating negative externalities on the environment. This paper explores potential strategies to incorporate sustainable natural resource management tools into locally acceptable production methods to convince the producers to use this new technology.

25. Human Rights Based Approach • Efforts have been made to mainstream a human rights-based approach within the United Nations system at a policy level but it is unclear if these efforts have been successful. This paper identifies the indicators with which the progress and impact of this UN-level human rights-based mainstreaming approach within the UN system can be measured.

26. Microfinance and OVCs • Traditional microfinance, like most development activities, is largely an adult affair with little or no direct focus on the activities of children. In the context of a growing number of OVC and child-headed households in Rwanda, and using the backdrop of child-rights, this paper explores how can microfinance, as a poverty alleviation tool, can integrate children who have adult responsibilities

27. Selecting an academic advisor • A second-year academic advisor will work with you on your Master’s Paper • The advisor does not help you find a practicum or identify your advanced study topic • You will also list your choices for your faculty adviser. This form is due on February 14. • You will submit the names of three faculty members with whom you would like to work. You can choose any faculty from the Heller School, including adjuncts, or from other departments at Brandeis. • Think about the professor’s areas of expertise, teaching, focus of practice and research, if s/he is a good fit with your development issue or the location of your case study, etc. • The SID Program will then match you with an advisor (the matching process is confidential). Every attempt will be made to give you an advisor of your choices; this generally works out but cannot be guaranteed. However, we will work hard to give you the best possible advisor based on your interests and the professor’s expertise.