“Silicon Sweatshops,” an investigative series for GlobalPost co-authored by Jonathan Adams (MIA ’03), won a Best in Business Journalism award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. The report exposed working conditions at factories in China that build components for American companies. The series was co-reported by Kathleen McLaughlin. Adams reports on Taiwan for GlobalPost, and has covered China and Taiwan since 2002. Read the full story “Silicon Sweatshops” here.
Author Archive for Matt Clemons – Page 52
Admitted applicants who have paid the deposit and confirmed enrollment for this fall will soon receive information on a summer math tutorial. The first year at SIPA is filled with required quantitative courses. Economics, quantitative analysis, and financial management are the building blocks of effective policy making.
The purpose of the summer math tutorial is to give students a jump start on the first year curriculum. The summer math tutorial will also help prepare students for a math quiz that will be administered during orientation to help make class placement decisions. Many of our admitted applicants have not sat in a classroom in years and the tutorial is meant to knock some of the mental rust off. Also of note is that to qualify for second year fellowship consideration, students must have a GPA of 3.2 at the conclusion of the first semester.
While the summer math tutorial is highly recommended for all admitted MIA and MPA students, it is not a requirement. It will be administered online, so no matter where you are in the world, as long as you have an internet connection you will be able to participate.
So if you have been admitted and paid a deposit, hang tight for a little while longer and information on the summer tutorial will be sent to you via email soon. We will also be posting some of the syllabi used in our core courses this past year to give you an idea of what you might expect from the core curriculum.
Spring is always an exciting time at SIPA with second year students preparing to graduate and first year students preparing to complete internships and work shops in the summer months. SIPA does not offer summer classes so that students can complete long term professional development opportunities anywhere in the world. The following is a message from the Dean regarding the Annual Global Leadership Awards Dinner that took place last week. I was lucky to get a seat and it was a great night.
_________________
I am pleased to announce that the honorees at SIPA’s Annual Global Leadership Awards Dinner on April 29 will be Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International and CNN International talk show host; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Foreign Minister and Finance Minister of Nigeria and currently Managing Director at the World Bank; and Partners In Health, the nonprofit organization founded by Paul Farmer that pioneered the delivery of comprehensive health services to the poor, first in Haiti and then across the globe.
As Managing Director of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has oversight responsibility for the World Bank’s operational portfolio in Africa, South Asia and Europe and Central Asia. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala spearheaded several World Bank initiatives to assist low income countries during the food and subsequently the financial crisis. She is presently chairing the 16th replenishment of over $40 billion for the International Development Association, the grant and soft credit arm of the World Bank. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala previously served as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and as Finance Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has received numerous awards, including Time magazine’s European Hero of the Year Award for her work on economic reform in Nigeria. In 2006, she was named by Forbes magazine as one of 100 most powerful women in the world. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala was educated at Harvard University and has a Ph.D. in regional economics and development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Since October 2000, Fareed Zakaria has overseen all of Newsweek’s editions abroad. His cover stories and columns — on subjects from globalization and emerging markets to the Middle East and America’s role in the world — reach more than 25 million readers each week. Prior to joining Newsweek, Dr. Zakaria served an eight-year term as Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs, a widely-circulated journal of international politics and economics. In 2008, he began hosting Fareed Zakaria GPS, a weekly foreign affairs program that airs worldwide on CNN International. Dr. Zakaria’s in-depth interviews with heads of state as well as intellectuals, business leaders, politicians and journalists have been broadcast in more than 200 million homes in over 210 countries. Born in India, Dr. Zakaria received a B.A. from Yale College and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has received honorary degrees from numerous universities including Brown, the University of Miami, and Oberlin College.
Partners In Health is a Boston-based non-profit health care organization dedicated to providing a “preferential option for the poor.” Partners In Health was founded in 1987 after two of its founders, Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl, had previously set up a community-based health project in Cange, Haiti. The clinic was the first of several successful projects intended to address the health care needs of residents in the poorest area in Haiti. Since its founding, Partners In Health has expanded to eight other sites in Haiti and nine additional countries.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, kicked off a year-long series of “Conversations with the Country” at Columbia’s World Leaders Forum on April 18. In his address, he emphasized both the proper strategic role of military power in U.S. foreign policy and the importance of investing in the nation’s military veterans through higher education, career opportunities and support services.
To view videos related to this event, please click here.
Much of my work life revolves around email. Email is a great way to communicate, but is also fraught with complications at times. One such complication is the dreaded “CC” or carbon copy. This is when you send the same email to more than one address (sometimes three, four, five, etc.).
I will not argue that there is a time and place for “CC,” but I will say that in our office processing it often leads to complications, miscommunication, delays, and duplicate work. Thus we recommend that you only send an email to one address if you have a question. Rest assured that we coordinate to try to answer as quickly as possible, but often times the “CC” turns into the classic case of “Who’s on First?” If you are not familiar with the skit, you can find a video of it at the end of this entry.
Why is the “CC” a problem? Well if you email me and two other addresses, I might assume that someone else will answer, and they may assume the same thing, and thus no one will answer.
Or, I might have to email everyone who was “CC’d” in order to find out who is going to answer thus giving your original email a multiplier effect. So if you send the same email to three people, those three people may then reply to everyone else that was copied and before you know it the number of emails has doubled, tripled, quadrupled, etc.
Sometimes I return to my email box with six messages all created by the original “CC” and then I have to wade through them all to make sense of them. It causes tons of questions to float through my mind and I have to invest time to dig through them. Did anyone answer? Who answered? Was is the right answer? Do I need to do anything? Did I miss anything? Did the applicant get what they needed?
Sometimes after a flurry like this I will have to pick up the phone to call someone because the email chain is out of control. The person I might need to talk to is in a meeting and then I have to leave them a voice mail or someone has to take a message a place a sticky note on an already crowded desk. So now the “CC” has led to a voice mail and a Post It Note and the spiral continues to grow out of control.
I hope you understand where I am going with this. My job and the job of my staff is to get you an answer as quickly as possible. I know you might think that this is best accomplished with a “CC” but it is actually not.
If you simply email one person or address, the person answering that either will or will not know the answer, and if they do not know the answer they will forwarded it to the person who does – simple as that. No out of control email chain that leads to delays and time spent researching. You want an answer quickly and we want to provide an answer quickly so we ask that you choose one email address to help us out.
Now enjoy the video =)
"The most global public policy school, where an international community of students and faculty address world challenges."
—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs
