The Big Ideas @ Berkeley initiative and the Berkeley student government (ASUC) have teamed up with a variety of research centers and institutes on the campus to organize Bears Breaking Boundaries, a series of parallel white paper competitions meant to encourage student teams to propose the next generation of research, education, and service activities on the UC Berkeley campus.
Joyojeet Pal, Mahad Ibrahim, and Melissa Ho's proposal for an Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) Certificate Program was selected as one of the 4 winning Curricular Innovation papers who will each receive $4000. This proposal describes a graduate certificate program focused on preparing students, through a combination of classes and fieldwork, to successfully integrate ICTs into the development agenda. Mahad, Joyojeet, and Melissa are now working with Dean AnnaLee Saxenian at the School of Information to implement this program for graduate students at UC Berkeley.