Turnout Strong for New Poverty Course

A group of over 200 students will meet for the first time today in a unique new class aimed at analyzing the issues of global poverty and inequality.

The two-unit global poverty course, which is crosslisted as International and Area Studies 140 and City Planning 290, is sponsored by the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies.

The center, which is aimed at finding and implementing sustainable and effective methods to fight poverty, was established in April with a $15 million gift from UC regent and Berkeley alumnus Richard Blum.

The eight-week class will be taught by Ananya Roy, the associate dean of academic affairs for international and area studies and an assistant professor of city and regional planning.

Students will have the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of current and past efforts to alleviate global poverty, including governmental and nongovernmental policies, Roy said.

"The idea of the class is to introduce the students to trends in global poverty," said Roy, who was a recipient of the 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award. "There is a great imagination of ending global poverty. The class looks at this optimism ... and the history of the institutions that give out aid, and civil societies like NGO's that do interesting work at the grassroots level."

The class is a model of the center's mission to involve students and faculty of multiple disciplines in both research and field work to find an effective method to fight poverty.

"(Blum) wanted to enable a university to develop this capacity to fight poverty in a new way with a new curriculum, new service-learning opportunities on the ground, and a set of applied poverty-fighting projects," said professor Richard Lyons, executive associate dean of the Haas School of Business and faculty director for the Blum center.

Enrollment for Roy's class is currently capped at 200 and is open to both graduate students and undergraduates.

But the waitlist remains long and, due to overwhelming demand, the class has been relocated to a larger room.

"I have spent the last year as a GSI for Professor Roy and have found that she attracts hard-working and thought-provoking students and am looking forward to joining them as a fellow student on what promises to be an important intellectual endeavor," said Carmen Rojas, a graduate student in city and regional planning.

The course will bring together faculty guest speakers from a number of different departments, including economics, public health, engineering, sociology, computer science and environmental science and policy management.

The global poverty course will not be offered again in the spring, but the Blum Center is hoping to sponsor a lecture series with speakers discussing topics relevant to global poverty, Roy said.

Directors of the center said they hope to eventually develop a curriculum for a certificate, minor, or major in global poverty, based on both existing classes and new courses.

Tags: