Archive for Academics – Page 17

Learn why SIPA appeared on the NASDAQ Tower in Times Square this week

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Friday, September 16th, 2016 
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NASDAQ EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION GRANT SUPPORTS SIPA INITIATIVES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PUBLIC POLICY

Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) will enhance its position as a hub for the study of entrepreneurship, innovation, digital technology, and public policy thanks to a multi-year grant from the Nasdaq Educational Foundation.

SIPA will draw on the foundation’s support to engage scholars, entrepreneurs, and leaders from the public and private sectors to advance understanding of the conditions and means to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship.

The series of initiatives funded by the grant will emphasize entrepreneurship and innovation stemming from both information and communications technology (ICT) and digital technology, along with their intersection with public policy globally. Programming will begin this fall and last for three years through spring 2019.

The grant will support a variety of programs and initiatives. Most significantly, SIPA will:

  • Create a global ideas forum including a University-wide seminar on entrepreneurship.
    • In partnership with Columbia Entrepreneurship, SIPA will examine the conditions that give rise to entrepreneurship and the special relationship worldwide among entrepreneurship, digital technologies, and data.
    • SIPA and Columbia Entrepreneurship will host a series of public seminars and events each year and commission papers from faculty and U.S. and international experts to anchor discussion.
  • Foster thought leadership through global fellows in residence.
    • SIPA will recruit short term visiting global entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and innovators in residence to bring the latest lessons from the field.
    • SIPA will also recruit a postgraduate fellow in residence to pursue policy research and provide organizational support for the entrepreneurship program.
  • Promote innovative approaches for educating the next generation of entrepreneurs through experiential learning and case study-based teaching, including
    • a new course designed to prepare students to launch a new enterprise, including social enterprise
    • enhancement of the existing Dean’s Public Policy Challenge Grant to include mentorship by global entrepreneurs and innovators in residence
    • commissioning of case studies to help students explore contemporary issues in entrepreneurship, digital technology, and public policy.

“SIPA occupies an increasingly  interesting place at the intersection of digital technology, innovation, and public policy,” said Dean Merit E. Janow of SIPA. “By adding this invaluable support from the Nasdaq Educational Foundation to the extensive resources of Columbia University, we will enhance the School’s ability to collaborate with scholars across the University and other experts to produce important new research, thought leadership, and curricular innovation on the study of entrepreneurship and the policy that supports it.”

“As a global provider of capital markets services, it is our responsibility to educate future leaders,” said Joan Conley, senior vice president and corporate secretary at Nasdaq and managing director of the Nasdaq Educational Foundation. “We are proud to support Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs as they continue to grow and enhance their programs across public policy, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.”

As it develops and pursues activities with the grant’s support, SIPA will engage other units at Columbia University and work in consultation with distinguished colleagues including Professor Eli Noam and Richard Witten. Noam is the Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility at Columbia Business School and the director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. Witten is a special advisor to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and director of Columbia Entrepreneurship, a Presidential initiative and umbrella group that supports entrepreneurship University-wide.

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Capstone Workshop: Promoting Supply Chain Sustainability For The Rio Olympic Games

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Friday, August 26th, 2016 
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August 5, 2016, marked the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. This is the first time that a country in South America has ever hosted the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In an effort to learn from the experiences of previous host cities, the Rio Olympics Committee has given strategic focus to the potential social, economic and environmental impact of the Olympics through the creation of the Sustainability, Accessibility and Legacy Team (SAL). During the spring 2016 semester, SAL worked with a team of students, Abir Joshi, Ariel Williams, Jennifer Arias, Jayant Narayan, Mitsushiro Hirai, Supharin Chatthaworn, Shiza Pasha, under the guidance of Professor Kevin Kelly in a SIPA Capstone workshop to assist with analyzing and benchmarking their sustainability efforts.

SAL has a unique opportunity to promote sustainability for the Olympic Games with visible impacts across the pillars of People, Planet and Prosperity. Over the course of the 2016 Olympics, SAL has identified 230 projects to create actionable items and results for promoting supply chain sustainability, as well as unique projects in education and sustainable tourism. These projects and experiences have helped create transferable assets, such as databases, manuals and frameworks, that can be adapted and utilized by entities across the public and private domains far beyond the Olympics.

The SIPA Capstone team worked with SAL to analyze the effectiveness of incorporating sustainability into the Olympic Games, which includes evaluating SAL’s supply chain procurement process, educational programs and tourism initiatives, and then provided recommendations on the strategic transfer plan to disseminate SAL’s sustainability practices for future use by key stakeholders. The Capstone project and work of the Sustainability, Accessibility and Legacy Team will have far reaching benefits not only within Brazil regarding sustainable supply chain practices but also, through the experience of analyzing supply chains from the sustainability lens, presents an exemplary benchmark for global sustainable practices for future dissemination.

Pictured: Rio Olympics Committee headquarters Capstone team meeting with Sabrina Porcher, the Manager of Sustainability and colleagues from the Education Legacy team.
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Elisabeth Lindenmayer Is New Director of IO/UN Specialization

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Tuesday, August 23rd, 2016 
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Professor, a former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, has special expertise in peacekeeping

Professor Elisabeth Lindenmayer, a former assistant secretary general of the United Nations with special expertise in peacekeeping, has been named as the director of SIPA’s specialization in International Organizations and UN Studies (IO/UN). Lindenmayer, who was the founding director of the track in UN Studies within IO/UN, was selected following a national search to replace Dirk Salomons, who retired as the IO/UN director at the end of 2015.

Lindenmayer, who also holds the position of lecturer in international and public affairs, joined SIPA in 2009 as an adjunct professor. She has taught classes on subjects including the UN Security Council and peacekeeping and peace building in Africa and advised multiple Capstone teams. In 2010 Lindenmayer won the Teacher of the Year award at SIPA and in 2012 led a team of students to North Korea in the first such trip sponsored by a U.S. university.

Lindenmayer told SIPA News that she plans to survey IO/UN students in order to help plan the direction of the specialization in the months ahead.

“Students choose the specialization for different reasons,” she said. “I need to understand where the interest comes from so we can better fulfill their expectations.”

It is a promising time to study international organizations, Lindenmayer explained, because the United Nations, World Bank, and other multilateral institutions are moving toward closer integration to deal with interconnected global challenges. The major international organizations need to break their silos, she added, and move from fragmentation to synergy  and partnership.

To implement international programs like the Sustainable Development Goals and COP21 protocols on climate change, and to address challenges like the refugee crisis of recent years, will require multiple organizations to work together, she observed—otherwise we will fail the people we are mandated to help.

“It’s not so easy to have a structure that reflects the world we live in today, but the international system simply has to evolve,” Lindenmayer said. “I want the IO/UN specialization to be part of that story and evolution.”

Read about SIPA’s specialization in International Organizations and UN Studies

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Where Seeples study on campus

Posted by Kaitlyn Wells 
· Thursday, August 11th, 2016 
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If you’ve ever been to SIPA’s International Affairs Building (IAB), you may have been surprised to find a winding staircase leading into a graduate student’s literary dream world, known as the Lehman Social Sciences Library.

Lehman Library holds a contemporary collection of more than 330,000 volumes and approximately 1,700 current periodical titles. It includes materials acquired by Columbia libraries since 1974 in political science, sociology, social and cultural anthropology, political geography, journalism, environmental science, as well as a rich collection of materials on post-World-War-II international relations. Lehman Library also houses the following collections:

  • Digital Social Science Center (DSSC) (East Reading Room)
    The DSSC provides a wide range of information and technology assistance for students and faculty. DSSC brings together people, equipment, and information resources, including a Data Service.
  • U.S. Government Documents (housed off-site)
    The Columbia University Libraries currently receives approximately 50 percent of the items available through the United States Federal Depository Library Program. Print materials are processed for off-site storage, but most titles are available online via CLIO.
  • New York State Documents
    Lehman Library was a depository for New York State documents from 1983 to 1996. The documents are on microfiche in the Lehman Reference Room, and not cataloged on CLIO. For more information see the New York State Subject Guide.
  • Map Collection
    (213 International Affairs Building)
    The Map Room holds a general map collection covering a wide range of subjects, including geography, geology, economics, and international affairs. The collection houses more than 185,000 maps.

Our incoming students can take their look at Orientation Week in August when they get their Student ID cards. For any questions about the library, contact the department directly at [email protected].

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5 Brexit questions with Economist Jan Svejnar

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Monday, July 25th, 2016 
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From Columbia News, June 24, 2016:

The fallout from Brexit, the British exit from the European Union, was nearly immediate. Every global market sank. British Prime Minister David Cameron resigned. A large U.S. investment bank announced it would move 2,000 jobs out of London to either Dublin or Frankfurt, the credit agency Standard & Poor’s said that the Britain would lose its AAA rating while Moody’s lowered its rating to negative from stable.

More shoes are still to drop, according to Jan Svejnar, the James T. Shotwell Professor of Global Political Economy at the School of International and Public Affairs. While he knew the vote would be close, he believed that Britons would ultimately stay. He was surprised the leave vote was as strong as it was, 52 percent to 48 percent.

The repercussions will be significant. “I think we are seeing the unraveling of Great Britain,” he said. Scotland, which two years ago voted no on an independence referendum, will probably opt for a new one. Northern Ireland could do the same. “We may be going from Great Britain to small England.”

Here, Svejnar answers five questions about what will happen now that Britain is withdrawing from the EU.

Q. What happens next?

A. We are already seeing the first impacts, the gyrations in the stock markets and foreign exchange markets. I think that may continue for a while. Next will come a first round of tough political decisions. German chancellor Angela Merkel will be getting together with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and French president Francois Hollande to prepare a statement and stake out their approach to the British decision.

Q. What kind of approach might that be?

A. They have to negotiate a separation, which won’t be easy. If it is done too fast and too vigorously, it could alienate other EU nations, who may insist the rest of the 25 members should have been consulted rather than having a particular solution designed by the leaders of only those three countries shoved down their throats. There are free trade policies and immigration pacts and a swath of EU regulations that must be unraveled or replaced. The EU won’t want to make it easy for Britain to leave, they don’t want this to set a precedent for other countries.

Q. What kind of economic fallout do you foresee?

A. There are two years to negotiate the exit, unless markets destabilize to such an extent that they can’t afford to take that long. All the agreements between the EU and Britain must be renegotiated. There may be a substantial relocation of capital from Britain. London could lose its status as a global hub of finance, and I’ve already heard that some banks are looking to move their headquarters.

Q. How does this affect the rest of Europe, or the world?

A. Britain is now the second largest economy in the EU, and the most outward oriented. There is a chance that Europe itself gets destabilized, because now other governments may ask for exceptions and exemptions from EU regulations. If that happens, Europe may not look to be as friendly a place to invest in, and investors may look to other parts of the world. Also, other nations will be cautious about raising interest rates, to make sure there is no economic contagion.

Q. Is there any chance that this can be reversed?

A. In principle, yes. It takes a vote of Parliament for the decision to become final. Parliament could conceivably go against the referendum, but the vote was 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. It would be hard for it to say this was just a joke. Given that David Cameron has already resigned, I don’t see that this can be stopped.

[Photo by Bruce Gilbert]
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"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

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