The Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering requires five courses (two core courses plus three electives). The course requirements are in addition to, but may overlap with, the Ph.D. course requirements of your home department. There are no formal pre-requisites to apply for the DE in Dev Eng, however a certain level of experience with quantitative analysis is necessary to succeed in the core course (roughly equivalent to Stats 121). All course work for the DE should be taken for a letter grade.
The two core courses are:
This course MUST be taken before qualifying exams.
Link to Syllabus sample is here
Dev Eng C200 is co-taught each fall term by one technologist and one social scientist. Students in the Dev Eng DE must complete this course before their qualifying exams. Professors from the pool of faculty in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering rotate as course instructors. The course is offered for three units credit as Dev Eng C200, Mech Eng C200 or MBA 290T. Master’s students will be permitted to take the core course as space permits and with permission of the instructors. Dev Eng C200 is organized around analysis and application of case studies by multidisciplinary student teams according to three thematic modules:
This course provides Dev Eng students with a context and community within which their research projects can be refined and developed. The seminar focuses on work-in-progress presentations by students, post doctoral scholars, and faculty within the DIL ecosystem. The research seminar can be taken before or after the qualifying examination, and students can take it more than once. (Spring 2019 speaker schedule here)
In addition to these two core courses, students must take three electives from at least two of the three thematic modules within the Dev Eng program. The three modules are: Project Design, Evaluation Techniques and Methods for Measuring Social Impact, and Technology Development. Of the three electives, only one can be from the student’s home department. Students are encouraged to take one elective prior to the qualifying examination, but this is not required.
** denotes classes that may be of particular interest for students in InFEWS
This module includes topics such as human-centered design, participant feedback, project management, needs and usability testing.
This module includes classes spanning topics such as large data analytics, statistical analysis for impact assessment, and design of field experiments. It also includes coursework on sustainability and scaling of projects, and on the broader impact on people and communities.
This modules spans work on prototyping and technology R&D, as well as the use of novel technologies to evaluate interventions.
All students must apply and be accepted to the Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering at least one semester before their qualifying examination. DevEng C200 must also be taken prior to qualifying exam. At least one faculty member of the Graduate Group in Development Engineering must participate in the qualifying examination committee, and will evaluate the exam from relevant perspectives. Satisfactory performance on the qualifying examination for the Ph.D. will be judged according to the established rules in the student’s home department.
For the application for qualifying examination, please note you will need a signature from both the home department head graduate advisor and DevEng head graduate advisor. Please receive the home department signature first. Either Prof. Alice Agogino or Shelley Okimoto (CEE) may serve as Head Graduate Advisor for this purpose in DevEng.
Note: If you are a student interested in development engineering research but none of your faculty advisors / committee members are in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering, consider encouraging one of them to apply for membership in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering. They should contact Chair Alice Agogino.
When all course work and designated emphasis requirements have been completed, this final report must be submitted to the Graduate Student Affairs Officer in 750 Davis Hall for verification of completion of the designated emphasis at the latest one month prior to your filing the dissertation. You can download the final report here.
The dissertation must contain themes relevant to the field of Development Engineering (e.g. technology for economic and social development). The student’s Dissertation Committee must include at least one member of the Graduate Group in Development Engineering who can evaluate the dissertation from relevant perspectives.
Note: If you are a student interested in development engineering research but none of your faculty committee members are in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering, consider encouraging one of them to apply for membership in the Graduate Group in Development Engineering. They should contact Chair Alice Agogino.
The Graduate Division maintains a policy that, if a student enrolls in a designated emphasis, no adjustments will be made to the Normative Time of the student’s major Ph.D. program. However, there is flexibility in the Dev Eng sequence requirements to allow for differing requirements in participating departments. The core introductory course, Design, Evaluate and Scale Development Technologies, must be taken prior to the qualifying examination, but the required research seminar can be taken before or after the qualifying examination. It is also expected that at least one of the electives, but not all, will be taken prior to the qualifying examination.
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