Intercollege Graduate Minor in ICT4D
Primary Contact: Krishna Jayakar, Professor, Department of Telecommunications
About the Program
The inter-college graduate minor in ICT4D provides doctoral and master’s students with exposure to the multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological foundations of ICT4D and opportunities for scholarly engagement with communities of practice in the discipline. It will challenge students to simultaneously develop new concepts, theories, and methods for the study of ICT4D, and to apply this knowledge to socially relevant projects and programs.
The ICT4D Consortium will provide organizational support for the proposed graduate minor. The Consortium currently includes faculty from the Colleges of Agriculture, Business, Communications, and Information Sciences and Technology. Courses for the minor are drawn from these colleges, the College of Engineering and the School of International Affairs.
Students in any doctoral and master’s degree program at Penn State may enroll in the doctoral or master’s minor respectively with the consent of the student’s major advisor, the faculty coordinator of the ICT4D Consortium and the Graduate School.
The doctoral minor will require the completion of a minimum of 15 credits of integrated or articulated course work in information and communication technologies for development, related to but different from that of the student’s major, chosen from the list provided below, with a preponderance of courses at the 500 level. A minimum of 6 credits must be at the 500 level for the doctoral minor. At least 3 credits must be from information and communications technologies and at least 3 from development, as identified in the list of courses maintained by the Bellisario College of Communications. Official requests to add the minor to a doctoral candidate’s academic record must be submitted to Graduate Enrollment Services prior to establishment of the doctoral committee and prior to scheduling the comprehensive examination. At least one Graduate Faculty member from the minor field must serve on the candidate’s doctoral committee.
The master’s minor requires a minimum of 6 credits of integrated or articulated course work in information and communication technologies for development, related to but different from, that of the student’s major, chosen from the list below, with a preponderance of courses at the 500 level. A minimum of 3 credits must be at the 500 level for the master’s minor. At least 3 credits must be from information and communications technologies and at least 3 from development, as listed below.
A list of courses approved to count towards this minor will be maintained by the Bellisario College of Communications. Note: A competitive enrollment process might be instituted for any course or sequence of courses for which there is significant enrollment demand from the ICT4D minor, beyond the capacity of the offering College/School to fulfill.
Courses
Information and communication technologies courses:
- COMM 517 Psychological Aspects of Communication Technology (3)
- COMM 518 Media Effects (3)
- COMM 489 Advanced Telecommunications Topics (3)
- EDSGN 452 Projects in Humanitarian Engineering (2)
- EDSGN 453 Design for Developing Communities (1)
- IST 442 Information Technology in an International Context (3)
Development courses:
- AEE 520 Scientific Method in the Study of Agricultural and Extension Education (1-4)
- AYFCE 550 Program Development & Evaluation in Youth, Families, and Communities (3)
- COMM 505 International Communication Problems (3)
- COMM 506 Research Methods in Communication (3)
- COMM 584 International Telecommunications and Trade Policy (3)
- COMM 597 Health and Media
- ENGR 451 Social Entrepreneurship (3)
- INTAF 504 Political Economy of Development and Growth (3)
- INTAF 812 The Role of Intelligence in International Relations (3)
- INTAF 815 Dynamics of International Economic Order: Law, Politics, and Power (3)
- AEE 440 Communication Methods and Media (3)
- AEE 450 Program Design and Delivery (3)
- IB 460 International Business in Emerging Nations (3)
Faculty
ICT4D Consortium