Global Development (GDEV)

GDEV 1102 - Introduction to Global Development (3 Credits)  
This course introduces students to the history of the idea of Development and to key definitions, theories, measures and debates in the study and practice of Global Development. We draw upon a variety of disciplines to address some of the big questions of this field: What is Development? How do we measure Development? Why are some countries (and people) poorer than others? Who are the key actors in the field of Global Development and how have they changed over time? What are some promising Development interventions? How should we think about our own role in Development?In exploring these questions, we will draw upon a variety of perspectives and approaches, and will likely end up with a range of answers. The field of Development is rich with exciting ideas and contentious debates. To this end, we may find that we (respectfully) disagree on what Development is, whether we should even use the term, and on the best route for global change. However, this class is intended to provide you with the skills to be an active participant in debates about Global Development (including questions of poverty, inequality, and justice). Drawing both from the fields of Development Studies, which focuses on the theoretical explanations of social change, and Development practice, which seeks to promote positive social change through action, you will gain exposure to both conceptual frameworks and current practices.
Distribution Requirements: (D-AG, SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Define constructs including Development, poverty, inequality, inequity, and justice.
  • Analyze the role of colonialism in shaping power relationships between developing and developed countries and how these historical relationships shape the Development paradigm.
  • Identify a range of indicators used to measure Development (i.e., GDP, HDI, Happiness, etc.) and identify their assumptions and limitations.
  • Describe the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) project and targets.
  • Examine some current datasets on Development (i.e., World Development Indicators, etc.)
  • Compare the basic assumptions, arguments, and perspectives of Modernization Theory, Dependency Theory, World Systems Theory, and Neoliberalism.
  • Map the range of actors that participate in the Development project (the state, the market, civil society, etc.) and the different roles they have played over time.
  • Explain how a variety of fields have approached Development projects, and what factors they tend to emphasize (i.e., sociology, economics, political science, demography, natural/physical sciences).
  • Describe how Development projects are monitored and evaluated (i.e., how do we know what worked) and the possibility of unintended consequences.
  • Critically evaluate the ethics of Development interventions, at home and abroad, and who gets to set the agenda and participate in these activities.
  
GDEV 1105 - Global Development Cornerstone (1 Credit)  
The Global Development Cornerstone aims to create an intellectual community among Global Development students, and to assist with transitioning to, or from within, Cornell University. This course will offer opportunities for interaction and intellectual exploration with a cross-section of faculty, staff, and alumni in an effort to establish supportive and cooperative relationships. In addition, it will foster exploration into personal identity in the context of career exploration and introduce the breadth of activities and resources available to achieve a balance between academic, extracurricular, and interpersonal activities during their time in the major.
Enrollment Information: Primarily for: all new GDEV majors.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe what they can learn and experience in the Global Development Major.
  • Describe the range of careers that Global Development can prepare them for.
  • Construct a solid learning community with your academic peers.
  • Identify your leadership and collaboration skills.
  • Practice and apply your understanding of academic etiquette.
  • Locate special programs available to you, such as internships, service-learning opportunities, student research, and student organizations.
  • In appropriate situations, consider that some of the norms and practices one espouses and treats as "universal" might actually be culturally dependent.
  • Explain Ezra Cornell's goal to "Found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study" by learning about opportunities for future Cornell classes within and outside the major.
  • Communicate their portfolio of learning to others.
  
GDEV 1200 - FWS: Topics in Global Development (3 Credits)  
The department offers first-year writing seminars on a wide range of global development topics. Topics vary by section.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 1300 - Just Food: Exploring the Modern Food System (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with PLSCI 1300  
This course provides a comprehensive review of the modern food system from the green revolution to the industrialized model of today. It offers a critical perspective on existing paradigms and insights into alternative approaches for producing food security, environmental stewardship, and equity in an era of climate change. The course is taught by an interdisciplinary team of instructors who bring insights from both the biophysical and social sciences and will ask students to consider their food using a systems-thinking lens. This course is suitable for life sciences majors.
Distribution Requirements: (AFS-AG, BIO-AG, BSC-AG, CA-AG, SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe key concepts across disciplines and perspectives related to the food system, including relationships between food, human society (including politics and culture), and the non-human environment.
  • Describe some key historical and contemporary events, processes, and concepts that have shaped the current food system.
  • Apply systems thinking to describe current key debates, concepts, trade-offs, and challenges in the food system from multiple perspectives.
  • Communicate factual aspects of the impact of climate change on global food system.
  • Evaluate assumptions and values about food systems that underpin one's own thinking and that of others, connect personal values and beliefs to diet and nutritional choices.
  • Apply and synthesize scientific evidence in support of arguments that address food systems research questions.
  • Analyze and critically evaluate food systems research results and policies for evidence-based assessments and ethical decision-making.
  • Engage in respectful dialogue, collaborative teamwork, and problem-solving with those of differing viewpoints and backgrounds.
  
GDEV 2010 - Population and Social Change (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with SOC 2202  
Introduction to population studies. The primary focus is on the relationships between demographic processes (fertility, mortality, and immigration) and social and economic issues. Discussion covers special topics related to population growth and spatial distribution, including marriage and family formation, population aging, changing roles and statuses of women, labor force participation, immigrations, urban growth and urbanization, resource allocation, and the environment.
Forbidden Overlaps: GDEV 2010, PUBPOL 2030, SOC 2030, SOC 2202  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, SBA-AG), (SSC-AS)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY); (SAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Understand and examine the determinants and consequences of demographic change, and components therein in the US and internationally.
  • Examine the mutual interrelationships between population and society.
  • Understand alternative policy approaches associated with challenges and opportunities presented by changing population size and composition.
  • Utilize basic methodological approaches to population analysis.
  
GDEV 2065 - Environment and Development (3 Credits)  
This course examines the interface between development and environment issues in a global and international context. The ways we organize our economy, our culture, our social interactions, and the environment to meet our development needs have a profound impact on our ability to sustain ourselves, our society, and the planet. In this course, you will learn the theoretical and material linkages between environment and development issues and processes, and the multiple dimensions of sustainability and their synergies and tradeoffs. By taking a broad view of the development trajectory and the associated landscape transformation, you will explore various barriers and sustainability challenges, and critically examine the social, environmental, economic, and institutional dimensions of these challenges and proposed solutions.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Discuss, critique, and analyze the environmental, social, and economic aspects of sustainable development.
  • Describe the evolutionary trajectory of development and landscape transformation.
  • Evaluate distinct development outcomes for society, the environment, and economies from the household to global scale.
  • Identify the environment-development synergies and tradeoffs of real-world examples.
  • Practice basic research and system thinking skills and interpersonal communication skills through research proposal writing and peer mentoring.
  
GDEV 2100 - Introduction to Adult Learning (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 2200  
Do adults learn differently than do youth? This experiential and community-engaged course is for anyone interested in planning and facilitating adult, community and lifelong learning. As inquirers ourselves, we not only study principles, theories and methods, we also put into practice what we learn. One of the ways we do this is by incorporating adult learning approaches within the seminar's design and educational practice (andragogy, rather than pedagogy). Another way we apply what we study is by mentoring adult learners. Each student serves as a learning partner to a Cornell employee who is pursuing an educational aim. A journey of mutual learning is a satisfying and meaningful adventure. As employees' partners, we are co-learners and co-educators, recognizing that each person has knowledge and experience to bring to the quest.
Distribution Requirements: (D-AG, KCM-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explore the relationship of leadership and learning in formal, nonformal, and informal education in personal and larger contexts.
  • Develop deep consciousness of one's own core values for the purpose of mindfully engaging with diverse others in constructive and respectful ways.
  • Learn and apply foundational principles and processes of instructional design and demonstrate these in planning and facilitating lessons with an adult Learning Partner across differences in generation, nationality, language, class, and ethnicity.
  • Examine trends of educational inequity in this country and ramifications in the lives of adults of poor schooling as children.
  • Through historic and contemporary cases, unpack narratives of popular education in community development, public engagement, and social justice through formal, nonformal, and informal venues.
  • Recognize that being an educator involves not only understanding issues of power, inequity, and access, but also entails conscious ethical practice in everyday decision-making.
  
GDEV 2105 - Pre-Internship: Community-Engaged Learning Prep (0.5 Credits)  
In this course, students focus on preparing for their internship experience (and future development practice more generally) through the intentional discernment about the ways in which their internship contributes to the broader development arena; who is served through the work of their internship; what they seek to learn; how they will go about fulfilling these learning goals, including through the application of personal ethical principles and critical thinking skills, and the strategies they will employ to ensure for their own health and safety. Students will demonstrate understanding and application of key course takeaways through a personal video highlighting their internship plans and approach.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Map the institutional development ecosystem, identify the contributions of different types of development actors to community, social, or economic development, and explain the ways their work will contribute to the work of the organization (its mission).
  • Enumerate defining characteristics (e.g., demographics, geography, development opportunities and challenges, etc.) of the community/ies (broadly speaking) their development work will serve in the short and long-terms.
  • Articulate a personal philosophy of development, the values that underpin that philosophy, and how these might manifest or be enacted in development practice.
  • Analyze risks to the practitioner associated field-based development practice and methods to mitigate them.
  • Formulate a set of personal and professional learning goals they hope to achieve through career-related work experience, a plan for achieving said goals, and a framework for how these goals build on and advance their studies and experiences to date.
  • Synthesize the defining components of an upcoming career-related work experience, including what it will involve, how it contributes to the its field more generally, who will be served by their efforts, what they hope to gain from the experience, the ethical principles with which they will approach it, and the risks and risk management strategies for which they've prepared.
  
GDEV 2130 - Introduction to Social Science Research Methods (3 Credits)  
Introduction to social science research. The course reviews the general process through which social scientists derive credible answers to important questions about social change and social influences on individual behavior. It covers all steps in the research process, from the formulation of a research question to the final presentation of findings. The course is designed as a preparation for future work in social science research, but it is also intended for students who simply want to sharpen their capacity to evaluate the claims made by researchers. The course combines theory and application. A group research project is used to apply the concepts and ideas from the textbook and lectures.
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify, compare, and apply the basic concepts of research, such as variables, operationalization, units of analysis, sampling, reliability, validity, and design.
  • Compare the linkages between type of research questions (i.e. descriptive vs. causal) and the implications for design, analysis and inferences/interpretation.
  • Examine the ethical issues involved in research, and practice ethical research standards.
  • Identify and explain the difference between quantitative and qualitative research.
  • Integrate theory and previous research to create research questions and hypotheses and to identify and analyze the appropriate method and variables needed for research questions.
  • Analyze existing secondary data using SPSS and basic univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis.
  • Design a research project and poster that will (a) present your research question; (b) review background literature and theory related to your question; (c) present your own univariate, bivariate and multivariate findings and, (d) address possible limitations and further directions for your work.
  
GDEV 2155 - Exploring Strategies for Teaching and Learning (2 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 2155  
Learn to become an effective Learning Assistant (aka undergraduate teaching assistant) through hands-on experience with proven teaching methods and learning theories. You'll work on developing essential skills like facilitating peer learning, providing constructive feedback, and creating welcoming classroom environments where all students can thrive. Through interactive discussions and real-world practice, you'll build your confidence as an educational leader. You'll engage with insightful readings, observe experienced instructors, reflect on your growth, and complete practical projects that prepare you to support undergraduate learning across any discipline. Whether you're specifically interested in becoming a Learning Assistant or want to develop valuable teaching and leadership skills, this course will equip you with the tools you need to succeed.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Becoming a professional teacher who is developing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of reflective practice, collaborative action, and lifelong inquiry into teaching and learning.
  • Developing a personal philosophy of and a vision for delivering technical content through education pedagogy.
  • Develop understanding of how to integrate subject specific knowledge and pedagogy, nature of the discipline, and nature of learning in the college classroom.
  • Designing learning environments that promote engaged learning.
  • Developing skills in communication, management, and a variety of instructional and assessment strategies that contribute to meaningful instruction college classes.
  • Becoming competent in selecting and integrating appropriate technological tools into instruction.
  
GDEV 2201 - Society and Natural Resources (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with NTRES 2201, BSOC 2201  
The actions of people are crucial to environmental well-being. This course addresses the interrelationships between social phenomena and the natural (i.e., biophysical) environment. It is intended to (1) increase student awareness of these interconnections in their everyday lives; (2) introduce students to a variety of social science perspectives, including sociology, economics, psychology, and political science, that help us make sense of these connections; (3) identify the contributions of each of these perspectives to our understanding of environmental problems; and (4) discuss how natural resource management and environmental policy reflect these perspectives.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY); (AFAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify the theories and approaches that social scientists use and apply to environmental issues.
  • Articulate and explain the interconnections between social phenomena and the environment in everyday life, with a strong campus-community focus.
  • Apply methods and theories from the social sciences, including sociology, economics, psychology, and political science, that help us recognize and make sense of these connections.
  • Identify the contributions of each of these perspectives to our understanding of environmental problems.
  • Identify how natural resource management and environmental policy reflect these perspectives.
  
GDEV 2202 - Ethics of Technology and Development (3 Credits)  
This course examines the ethical dimensions of technology, global development, and social change. Moving beyond abstract moral theory, it explores how ethical principles apply to real-world dilemmas, such as AI governance, lithium mining for green growth, and the upgrading of informal urban settlements. Students will learn to identify and evaluate normative claims, analyze value conflicts, and develop ethical frameworks for decision-making. Key topics include global trade and labor rights, technological solutionism, economic metrics, just transitions, and reparations. Through structured debates, ethical assessment tools, and speculative design projects, students will engage critically with systemic challenges and competing values. By the end of the course, they will be equipped to assess ethical claims and navigate complex trade-offs.
Distribution Requirements: (ETH-AG, SBA-AG)  
GDEV 2210 - Designing and Facilitating Learning for Development (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 2210  
In Designing and Facilitating Learning for Development, we see commonalities across a variety of venues and settings where people meet together to learn, deliberate, and act. From professional development to social change and town hall to union hall, adult and community learning is everywhere. Yet, for many, the design and facilitation of meaningful learning experiences can be as mysterious as an unopened black box. How does one go about creating inclusive educational and participative experiences in our increasingly interconnected contexts? In this course we open the box and unpack the processes of crafting and conducting collaborative learning experiences. In developing our abilities as ethical leaders of learning and action we serve the growth of others even as we deepen our practice.Expected workload of approximately 3 hours per week during the FLD (field) portion of this course.
Distribution Requirements: (D-AG, KCM-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Compare and contrast three constructs of the concept of design.
  • Differentiate major components of a design process.
  • Identify decision points in a design process and categorize input needed to inform those decisions.
  • Analyze a learning or action challenge and make a case for a suitable design approach.
  • Demonstrate the co-generative relationship of design and facilitation.
  • Synthesize and apply the principles and processes practiced through producing and implementing learning designs as an educational mentor to a learning partner.
  
GDEV 2295 - Data Science with R (3 Credits)  
In this course, you will learn how to program in R and use this statistical software for effective data analysis and visualization. You will convert raw data into understanding and knowledge by using R for importing data, managing variables, executing basic functions, developing loops, creating linear models, and generating various kinds of graphs. This course is designed for those who have no experience in R or programming in general. It is a hands-on course to enable students to develop skills and solve statistical problems using R. It will help you to develop programming skills and introduce you to a new way of thinking and a new syntax of writing for data analysis, visualization, and communication.
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Implement the syntax of base R and ggplot2 package.
  • Import a variety of data formats into R.
  • Clean a dataset and make it ready for analysis.
  • Conduct basic summary statistics for a dataset.
  • Perform basic statistical analysis (e.g. linear regression).
  • Produce data visualizations using base R and more advanced packages.
  
GDEV 2300 - Food Systems and Sustainable Development (3 Credits)  
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of food systems in the context of sustainable development. The course investigates how we ended up with the current food system and the key components of food systems, the key drivers shaping food supply and demand, as well as health, environmental and equity outcomes. Examination of our current system is supplemented with studies on the future of food systems and sustainable transitions. The sustainability performance of food systems is examined in relation to land use, climate change, nutrient cycles, biodiversity and water use. The course provides an overview of work being done to improve sustainability through novel technology like alternative proteins, circularity, robots and AI from production to consumption.
Distribution Requirements: (AFS-AG, SBA-AG, SCH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and classify the components of food systems in different geographical contexts.
  • Explain how food systems have changed though recent times, including differentiating the main and secondary drivers of change and their impacts on key health, economic and environmental outcomes in high, and low and middle income countries.
  • Identify and assess the environmental impacts and social equity in food systems around the world and explain how to improve it.
  • Examine critical changes required for improving current diets towards healthy diets from sustainable food systems.
  • Synthesize different types of solutions for improving the sustainability of food systems for sustainable development.
  • Articulate key food systems policies available for improving the sustainability of different components of food systems, and the actors and roles they play.
  
GDEV 2305 - Planning for Change (3 Credits)  
This course will provide students with theoretical frameworks, practical tools, and methods of written expression needed to foster inclusive development practice. Beginning with perspectives on practitioner ethics, the course walks students through the life-cycle of a development interventions, from issue identification and project conceptualization, to planning and implementation, to monitoring and evaluation. Through analytic writing, students will use evidence to explore the dynamics of power which can lead to complex, and even contentious development outcomes. Several development practitioners will present case studies of their own work to provide lessons and examples upon which students will be able to draw.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Global Development majors.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG, WRT-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Connect theories of development to predicaments in real-life development practice.
  • Apply a range of professional skills and tools related to planning for and implementing development interventions.
  • Demonstrate effective evidence-based writing for both development professionals and for public/non-specialist audiences.
  • Facilitate participatory learning activities (PLA) in the context of development program planning and reporting.
  
GDEV 2410 - The Art of Teaching (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 2410  
This exploratory course is designed for students of all backgrounds and interests who have a desire to learn more about education and teaching. Teaching takes place in a variety of contexts from the family to the workplace, and this course endeavors to examine the elements of teaching that transcend the typical school-teaching environment. Designed to guide students in reflecting upon their experiences to help them better understand the decisions they make as teachers. Students have the opportunity to pursue their own interests through a teaching fieldwork assignment. Possible field experiences range from large group to tutorial situations, from preschool to adult education, from traditional school subject matters to recreational and occupational areas, and from school-based to nonformal situations. The course work and readings are designed to build on these experiences throughout the semester and provide concepts and skills to apply in the field.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment preference given to: sophomores, juniors and Education minors.  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Analyze teaching situations using appropriate conceptual frameworks.
  • Articulate and critically examine their beliefs and assumptions about teaching and schooling.
  • Reflect on the elements involved in being an effective teacher in formal and informal educational situations.
  • Discuss current educational issues as they relate to formal and informal educational settings.
  
GDEV 2450 - Development Economics: Global Perspectives (3 Credits)  
The objective of this course is to provide students with a set of theoretical and practical skills to answer questions by understanding the microeconomic foundations of poverty in lower-income countries, and thereby learning how to design, implement and evaluate policies and programs. The course will start with a brief overview of development. We will then review the microeconomic foundations of household-and firm-level decision-making in low-income countries, before turning to issues that constrain and support development: human capital (health and education); financial capital (financial services); physical capital (land, the environment and infrastructure); technological innovations; and institutions.
Distribution Requirements: (DLS-AG, SBA-AG)  
GDEV 2710 - US Education System: Courts, Data, Law and Politics (3-4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with AMST 2710, SOC 2710, EDUC 2710  
This course aims to explore and answer a single question about America's promise-of success if you work hard and do well in school: Why do we have such substantial and long-standing inequality in the U.S.? In answering this central question, we will investigate the goals, roles, and outcomes of formal educational institutions in American society and the legal and policy environment in which they operate. Specifically, we will review historical state and federal policy, trace the $700 million spent, and interrogate the sociological functions of public and private K12 schools, including the successes, failures, and enigmas of school organization and policy at the local, state, and national level.
Distribution Requirements: (D-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will recognize and assess the sociological function(s) of American Schools (e.g., socializer, sorter, trainer, and caretaker) as well as its role as a change agent, an equalizer, and reproducer of society's inequalities.
  • Students will critique education as a major public policy issue in American society.
  • Students will synthesize the legal framework and justification for local, state, and federal roles in public and private schooling.
  • Students will explore and interpret social and fiscal data to clarify policy assumptions and critiques.
  • Students will integrate and discuss their own schooling and what role they can play in the future of school improvement.
  
GDEV 2940 - Preparing for Food Systems and Agriculture Engaged Experiences (1 Credit)  
The Lund Fellows Program and Community Food Systems minor both offer students the opportunity for an engaged learning experience in agriculture and food systems. This course is designed to help students prepare for their engaged experiences with non-Cornell partner organizations. This seven-week course will maximize student engaged learning by utilizing the following learning topics: (1) understand the community and geographic area of your host organization; (2) develop personal and professional goals (3) explore critical reflection and how it can be applied to engaged experiences; (4) review relevant health and safety topics; (5) gain a deeper understating of agriculture and food systems through readings, other media and discussion. The course aims to build a sense of community through peer learning among the students who will be sharing similar summer experiences as well as ensure all internship and practicum logistics are completed.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: accepted and committed Lund Fellows for Regenerative Agriculture and/or students preparing to complete the Community Food Systems minor practicum.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain the demographics, culture, and mission of your host organization and its community.
  • Develop personal and professional goals as they relate to engaged learning in agriculture and community food systems.
  • Explore and apply the concept of critical reflection.
  • Review basic farm health and safety and troubleshooting difficult situation.
  • Summarize your understating of sustainable agriculture.
  • Discover the logistical aspects and requirements of the internship/practicum experience.
  • Demonstrate active listening skills.
  • Demonstrate the capability to work both independently and in cooperation with others.
  
GDEV 2941 - Reflection on Agriculture Engaged Experiences (1 Credit)  
The Lund Fellows Program and Community Food Systems minor both offer students the opportunity for an engaged learning experience in agriculture and food systems. This course is designed to help students critically reflect on their engaged experiences with non-Cornell partner organizations. This seven-week course will maximize student engaged learning and reflection by utilizing the following learning topics: (1) critical reflection; (2) in-person discussions (3) peer-review; (4) gratitude; (5)public presentations The course aims to build a sense of community through peer learning and reflection among students who shared similar summer experiences.
Prerequisites: GDEV 2940.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Lund Fellows Program students who completed their internship during the summer prior to the fall semester and/or a Community Food Systems Minor students who completed their practicum during the last nine months.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop an advanced understanding of agriculture and food systems and the complexities of working in the field.
  • Summarize an understanding of the host organization and community.
  • Articulate progress towards personal and professional goals.
  • Demonstrate gratitude to donors and mentors.
  • Design and discuss professional outputs or products to diverse audiences.
  
GDEV 3010 - Theories of Society and Development (3 Credits)  
This course explores the development of social theory from the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century to contemporary debates about the status and limits of sociological knowledge. It introduces the key texts of the most influential forerunners of modern sociological thought - Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel - in the context of the social and political transformations of their time. The course is organized into two parts. The first part explores the contrasting accounts of modernity developed by these classical social theorists, placing particular emphasis on aspects of their thought concerned with the nature and direction of society as a whole. The second part examines contemporary critical engagements with the classical heritage from a variety of vantage points: globalization, postmodernism, feminism, race and cultural difference, and notions of multiple or alternative modernities.
Prerequisites: development sociology or sociology course.  
Distribution Requirements: (KCM-AG, SBA-AG), (OCE-IL)  
Exploratory Studies: (EUAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Evaluate competing theoretical frameworks within sociology using reflective skills.
  • Explore complex issues in the relationship of theory and history and develop analytic skills.
  • Use writing skills developed through composing weekly outlines that require synthesis of key ideas in the assigned readings.
  • Use oral skills developed through class presentations and discussions.
  
GDEV 3020 - Political Ecologies of Health (3 Credits)  
This course investigates the relationships between political economy, the environment, and health to understand how disease and the desire for health transform social and ecological systems and how these systems impact human health. Using contemporary case studies from the United States and the Global South, we will critically analyze how class, race, and gender affect specific populations' health differently from others. We will move across scales from ecosystems and global development institutions to farms and cities to homes, offices, and bodies. We will also explore the roles capitalism, economic inequality, and environmental and social justice play in creating diverse health outcomes. Topics include infectious diseases; food, famine, and obesity; disasters and disease outbreaks; and environmental toxins including nuclear and chemical contamination.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Apply sociological, geographical, and critical development concepts to contemporary health issues.
  • Articulate how health and disease relate to political-economic development processes, governance institutions, environmental transformation, and social inequality.
  • Critically analyze how class, race, and gender play a role in creating diverse health outcomes.
  • Analyze causes of disease and health outcomes across multiple scales, from global and regional to local.
  • Develop speaking, discussion facilitation, and writing skills in a qualitative social science through investigation of the linkages between development, environment, and health/disease.
  
GDEV 3030 - FoodCycle: Systems Thinking Toward Circular Economy for Organic Resources (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with PLSCI 3030  
In seeking to understand issues and opportunities at the nexus of agriculture, sanitation, water, health and the natural and built environments, students will gain skills in systems thinking, participatory design and innovation towards systems change. Through individual and collective work, students will conduct general and specific systems analysis and construct systems models to identify opportunities to reduce carbon pollution, improve system health. Students will seek to learn from cases and literature from diverse national and international contexts. The Cornell campus will be considered a living laboratory for an inquiry into how organic resources flow through our facilities, and how waste flows might be utilized to produce energy, fertilizer, food, building materials and/or other valued products. Students will engage with local entities (facilities, organizations, farms and other enterprises) to gain specific information that will inform our analysis. Students will engage in hands-on work to learn about ways in which organic resources can be up-cycled.
Distribution Requirements: (AFS-AG, SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe concepts and skills related to systems thinking, analysis and intervention, including ability to understand and design pathways to change in diverse contexts.
  • Explain systems related to organic resource management, such as those involved in food, agriculture, sanitation, the built environment, and health-related surveillance.
  • Analyze and conceptualize context-related similarities and differences that influence problems, opportunities and pathways to change.
  • Design a waste-to-value chain (e.g., porta-potties/toilets ; loo-litter from corn cobs [similar in purpose and format to kitty litter]; making building materials from agricultural wastes).
  • Create up-cycling activities, including design, invention, production and utilization.
  
GDEV 3060 - Farmworkers: Contemporary Issues and Their Implications (1 Credit)  
The course examines issues related to primarily unauthorized immigrant workers, in particular immigrant farmworkers and their perceptions on their role in agriculture, their socio-economic interactions, labor concerns, opportunities for advancement in agriculture, and concerns stemming from the context in which they live. Students will examine sociological issues (immigration detentions, farmworker access to health, education and other services, labor concerns, on-farm chemical safety issues, and integration into new home communities, pests), with particular emphasis on developing educational materials for farmworkers. Students will analyze data collected through interviews and focus groups, and examine participatory research methodologies.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Conceptualize and discuss the challenges that farmworkers confront in their everyday lives, and how they overcome obstacles to their well-being.
  • Construct a framework to understand contemporary issues within the farmworker community drawing from: farmworkers' perspectives articulated through CFP interviews or focus groups; student observations based on interactions with farmworkers (through summer internships experiences, tutoring farmworkers in English as a Second Language, and/or participation in CFP on-farm activities); and the literature on sociological research on farmworker concerns.
  • Design and field test educational resources for farmworkers (optional).
  • Synthesize what they learned through the CFP summer internship program through the development and dissemination of academic posters/ publications, guidebooks, videos, fact sheets or other relevant publications.
  • Utilize improved communication skills, state their opinion, question their assumptions and tolerate differing opinions, through participating as members of working teams that develop extension materials targeted for farmworkers and their employers.
  
GDEV 3085 - Circular Economy Seminar (2 Credits)  
This seminar, open to students across the university, introduces circular economy principles and frameworks through a series of faculty and practitioner-led talks and activities. It features discussions about specific initiatives to keep materials - from organics to plastics, construction materials, textiles and more - in use. It also features sessions on efforts to bring about, manage, and govern circular economies, from the re-design of materials to efforts to help people repair and re-use the things they own. We will examine a city at the forefront of circularity initiatives, and prospects for a future in which products are engineered with living materials.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify key principles of the circular economy.
  • Analyze the application of those principles in a blog post.
  • Describe efforts to propel, manage, and govern circularity and regenerate nature.
  • Connect with faculty on campus interested in circularity and working on related research.
  
GDEV 3091 - Global Health Case Studies from Weill Cornell Medicine (1 Credit)  
Crosslisted with NS 3090  
Weill Cornell Medicine faculty from several clinical departments including the department of medicine, department of surgery, department of anesthesiology, department of pediatrics, department of psychiatry, department of radiation oncology, department of public health, and department of emergency medicine, share their experiences in global health and international work. These global health experts will present their experiences abroad in a seminar style course.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate, senior, junior, or sophomore students.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to: Describe discrete, short-term interventions in global health including medical mission style surgery and anesthesia services and emergency responses to humanitarian and natural disasters, such as the COVID-19, Ebola, or Zika outbreaks, the Haitian Earthquake, and the Syrian Refugee Crisis.
  • Students will be able to: Describe the sustainable nature of existing global health initiatives such as Physicians for Human Rights work, cervical cancer screening, and long-term research collaborations in low- and middle-income countries through an understanding of the biosocial factors that impact health like poverty and economics, gender violence, and access to natural resources.
  • Students will be able to: Compare and contrast the differences between traditional medical mission style work abroad and a biosocial approach to global health.
  
GDEV 3100 - Foundations in Leadership: Skills for Personal and Professional Effectiveness (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with LEAD 3100  
This course frames leadership as a particular way of approaching life, one that is essential to both personal fulfillment and career effectiveness. The course begins with the inner work of a leader's personal development and then explores how leaders work through others to enhance their influence.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment preference given to: Leadership minor students.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, $75. Materials fee.  
Distribution Requirements: (KCM-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop a critical understanding of contemporary leadership theories, styles, approaches and roles.
  • Examine and clarify personal inspirations, values, and purposes in careers and life.
  • Learn to align those inner motivations with personal actions, decisions, and communications in order to become more authentic, effective, and influential.
  • Build skills for communicating effectively, especially in difficult conversations such as delivering feedback, resolving conflict, and influencing others.
  • Practice skills for building effective teams and leading group planning, decision making and problem solving processes.
  • Create a personal learning plan and leadership portfolio for supporting personal development.
  • Establish a habit of reflection to promote continuous learning and effective leadership.
  
GDEV 3105 - Post-Internship: Reflection on Engaged Experiences (1 Credit)  
Crosslisted with ALS 3105  
The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) offers students opportunities for experiential and engaged learning through internships with organizations in communities and organizations locally, domestically, and internationally. While personal and professional growth happens during the internship itself, engaged learning theory suggests that intentional, scaffolded opportunities for reflection on those experiences is what enables transformative student learning and invites students to make connections between their individual actions and larger systems of global change. To that end, in this course students complete weekly reflection and skill building activities to intentionally discern what they have learned and continue building on that learning going forward. Students will summarize key course takeaways in a professional poster to be presented during the annual CALS Engaged and Experiential Learning Symposium.
Prerequisites: IARD and GDEV majors: GDEV 2105 and pre-departure portfolio, or GDEV 3104; CALS Global Fellows: ALS 2300.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Global Development majors who have completed their GDEV internship within the previous year, and students in the CALS Global Fellows program who completed a Global Fellows internship during the summer immediately preceding this course.  
Distribution Requirements: (EEE-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Articulate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they've developed or refined as a result of their internship.
  • Formulate a plan for building on their experience to further their personal and professional development during the remainder of their time at Cornell, as well as in other academic or non-academic contexts.
  • Critically review and share constructive feedback on a peer's work, as well as evaluate the value of feedback received from peers relative to guiding their own revisions.
  • Create an informative and visually appealing poster which effectively communicates engaged learning or research outcomes and related implications.
  • Design and deliver an elevator speech in which they effectively and succinctly convey key points they want their target audience to understand about their poster topic.
  
GDEV 3110 - Educational Psychology (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 3110, COMM 3110, HD 3110  
Educational psychology is the application of psychological principles and concepts to cases of teaching and learning. We study behavioral, cognitive, embodied, and social-cultural perspectives on learning and thinking, and we use them in planning and reflecting on weekly fieldwork outside the classroom. In the process, we become more mindful and skilled learners ourselves and better facilitators of others' learning. *Both the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 courses will focus on educational psychology as it relates to PreK-Adult learners; however, Fall fieldwork experiences will be with learners across the PreK-Adult spectrum; Spring fieldwork experiences will be with adult learners ONLY.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomores, juniors, and seniors.  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, KCM-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Be able to analyze and improve instructional materials and methods in terms of their ... Appropriateness for a given learning goal Demands on memory Demands on attention Demands on their ability to process the language of instruction Assumptions about the level of intellectual abstraction that learners are capable of Potential to activate learner motivation
  • Be more efficient and effective at reading, summarizing, and asking critical questions about peer-reviewed original research in educational psychology
  • Be more comfortable and skilled at facilitating learning for another person (through questioning, listening, and observing learners at work)
  
GDEV 3111 - Social Studies of Medicine (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with STS 3111, SOC 3130, BSOC 3111  
This course provides an introduction to the ways in which medical practice, the medical profession, and medical technology are embedded in society and culture. We will ask how medicine is connected to various sociocultural factors such as gender, social class, race, and administrative cultures. We will examine the rise of medical sociology as a discipline, the professionalization of medicine, and processes of medicalization and demedicalization. We will look at alternative medical practices and how they differ from and converge with the dominant medical paradigm. We will focus on the rise of medical technology in clinical practice with a special emphases on reproductive technologies. We will focus on the body as a site for medical knowledge, including the medicalization of sex differences, the effect of culture on nutrition, and eating disorders such as obesity and anorexia nervosa. We will also read various classic and contemporary texts that speak to the illness experience and the culture of surgeons, hospitals, and patients, and we will discuss various case studies in the social construction of physical and mental illness.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: seniors, juniors, and sophomores.  
Distribution Requirements: (D-AG, SBA-AG), (SCT-IL), (SSC-AS)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019  
GDEV 3140 - Mapping Our Worlds: Cartography and Analysis in GIS (4 Credits)  
How things are related in space matters for many things-where different groups live and work, who faces health hazards, how people experience the places they live in, and more. Maps are powerful tools because they help us recognize things we might not otherwise see-and because they present pictures of the world that people act upon to pursue goals. In this class we learn how to conduct spatial analyses and make maps, shouldering the responsibility entailed by the power maps can confer. In-class lectures and activities will provide conceptual and technical foundations for spatial analysis and cartography. Lab sessions and assignments will give a practical introduction to using GIS software to map and analyze spatial patterns.
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG, KCM-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2018  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain conceptual issues and choices involved in making maps and understanding phenomena that take place across space.
  • Use GIS software to implement data management and spatial analysis operations.
  • Use GIS software to create informative maps and justify your choices in displaying information on those maps.
  • Gather data, conduct an analysis, and present findings regarding a spatial phenomenon.
  
GDEV 3142 - Reflecting on the Intersections of Education and Prison Systems (2-4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 3142, GOVT 3242  
The school-to-prison track refers to policies and practices that facilitate the transfer of students out of the school system and into the prison system (including juvenile detention, county jail, immigration detention centers, or adult prison). This course takes a critical analytical look at the intersections of the prisons and schooling, emphasizing pedagogy, history and policy.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Compare education policy and correctional policy to the real world of education during and after prison.
  • Analyze their prison classroom experience in the context of the broader criminal justice system.
  • Articulate different philosophies of education/pedagogy as well as different philosophies of prison/corrections.
  
GDEV 3150 - Climate Change and Global Development: Living in the Anthropocene (3 Credits)  
This course investigates social, political, and economic life in the age of the Anthropocene: the current geological era in which humans have irrevocably altered the earth's biophysical systems. We analyze what political-economic dynamics have led to this, how climate change is known and predicted scientifically, and the impacts it has on politics, economies, environments, and societies across scales. Drawing on case studies from around the world, we investigate topics including climate change impacts on land, oceans, animals, and forests; climate migrants and political instability; (un)natural disasters such as fires, floods, and hurricanes; and sea level rise and cities. We also investigate existing and potential political and economic responses to climate change ranging from international governance agreements and green markets to local climate justice movements.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, SCH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Critically analyze the uneven consequences of climate change on politics, environments, economies, and societies around the world.
  • Connect localized impacts of climate change in particular places to global ecological and political-economic processes.
  • Trace the causes of anthropogenic climate change and how knowledge about climate change has developed.
  • Write and speak convincingly on sociological, geographical, and critical development concepts and how they relate to contemporary climate change.
  
GDEV 3170 - Land Systems and Sustainability (3 Credits)  
This course delves into the critical role of land systems in addressing global sustainability crises. Recognizing the profound impact of land use on specific areas such as deforestation, urban sprawl, and agricultural practices, it is grounded in the concept of transformative change - defined as a comprehensive, system-wide reorganization of land systems. This reorganization includes shifts in paradigms, goals, and values related to land use. Students will examine case studies on issues such as land degradation and biodiversity loss to explore the multi-dimensional nature of land systems changes, emphasizing the need for actions that integrate local and global objectives. Through multiple writing exercises and discussions, we will re-imagine land use strategies to better organize our communities, institutions, and societies for sustainable outcomes amidst future uncertainties.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Define transformative change in the context of land systems and articulate its significance in addressing socioeconomic and environmental challenges.
  • Analyze the multi-dimensional aspects of transformative land systems change, recognizing the necessity for shifts in perspectives, practices, and structures at various scales.
  • Analyze the global objectives of key sustainability frameworks and explain their specific implications for land systems transformation.
  • Engage with the concepts of equity and justice as foundational to envisioning and implementing transformative land systems change.
  
GDEV 3230 - Gender and Development (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with FGSS 3230  
The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 5 states that countries should Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. In this course, we unpack the different and often competing definitions of 'empowerment' and 'gender equality' deployed in development, and consider the historical lineages of feminisms and development theory that led to women and girls as an important constituency. We examine the programs and policies associated with these lineages and consider how women's and girls' intersectional experiences of gender, shape the outcomes of the programs and policies designed to improve their lives. This course blends practice and theory, encouraging students to evaluate the material effects of diverse approaches to reducing gender inequality through case studies, writing, and readings in gender and development.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, D-AG, ETH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2017, Fall 2016  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe at least three distinct historical movements in gender and development and the various feminist theories these movements are connected to e.g. liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, and intersectional feminisms (e.g. Third World Feminism, Black Feminism, and other decolonial feminisms).
  • Summarize current approaches and major debates in reducing gender inequality across sectors including: economic empowerment, education, health, and agriculture.
  • Connect case studies of gender and development practice to the SDG 5 policy framework.
  • Assess case studies of gender and development practice evaluating the strengths and weakness success of these models for promoting gender equality.
  • Synthesize theoretical and empirical evidence into convincing and cohesive written analytical arguments.
  
GDEV 3240 - Environmental Sociology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with STS 3241, SOC 3240  
Humans have fraught relationships with the animals, plants, land, water-even geological processes-around us. In this course, we will examine how people make and respond to environmental change and how groups of people form, express, struggle over, and work out environmental concerns. We will probe how environmental injustices, demographic change, economic activity, government action, social movements, and varied ways of thinking shape human-environmental relationships. Through our conversations, we will explore possibilities for durable ways of living together in our social and material world. Our goal in this course is to give you knowledge, analytical tools, and expressive skills that help you feel confident to address environmental concerns as a social scientist and a citizen.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY); (EUAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain different perspectives about how people create and address environmental concerns.
  • Discuss key debates in the sociology of environmental change, communicating the theoretical claims and empirical evidence one can use to test those claims.
  • Use sociological concepts and tools to analyze the emergence, dynamics, and outcomes of environmental controversies.
  • Express your knowledge and reasoning in engaging written communication.
  
GDEV 3280 - Fundamentals of Population Health (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with PUBPOL 3280  
Population health focuses on the health and well-being of entire populations. Populations may be geographically defined, such as neighborhoods or counties; may be based on groups of individuals who share common characteristics such as age, race-ethnicity, disease status, or socioeconomic status; or may be specific patient groups attributed to accountable healthcare organizations using a variety of methods. With roots in epidemiology, public health, and demography, key tools of population health include health measurement, risk stratification, chronic care management, identifying upstream social determinants of health, cross-sector collaboration to improve prevention and wellness, and increasing health equity. Given the shifting health care environment - from fee-for-service to value-based care - students who are able to apply tools to measure analyze, evaluate, and improve the health of populations (and achieve the Triple Aim) will be well-positioned for jobs in health care, health policy, public health, and medicine (among others) as the field continues to evolve.
Prerequisites: Recommended prerequisite: at least one of the following GDEV 2200, HD 1150, HD 1170, HD 2180, PUBPOL 2030, PUBPOL 2100, PUBPOL 2208, PUBPOL 2300, PUBPOL 2350, PSYCH 1101, SOC 1101.  
Forbidden Overlaps: GDEV 3280, PUBPOL 3280, PUBPOL 5280  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomores, juniors, or seniors.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG), (SBA-HE)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Apply a population health and health equity perspective to problem solving.
  • Calculate and use for decision-making, key population health metrics and methods.
  • Leverage publicly available social, place, demographic, and health data to analyze the health of a local community.
  • Analyze claims data to identify high cost patients and build tailored care teams to support patient needs.
  • Recommend population health management practices (i.e., risk stratification, care coordination, complex care management, patient engagement, cross-sector collaboration), population health delivery models (e.g., medical homes, telehealth), and payment models (e.g., capitation; Medicaid waivers), to achieve the Triple Aim.
  • Consider different perspectives and demonstrate multicultural competence and inclusive communication while working in diverse groups or sharing in Discussion posts.
  • Explain how structural racism contributes to observed health disparities and apply a health equity framework to class projects and discussions.
  
GDEV 3290 - Comparative Politics of Latin America (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with GOVT 3293, LATA 3290  
This course is designed as an introduction to political, economic, and social issues in 20th century Latin America. Topics are organized chronologically, beginning with the crisis of agro-export economies and oligarchic rule in the 1930s, the onset of state-led development and mass politics in the 1930s and 40s, the military takeovers and revolutionary struggles of the 1960s and 70s, patterns of democratization and market liberalization in the 1980s and 90s, and the recent experience with populist and leftist governments in much of the region. Among the main issues covered are populism and corporatism, dependency theory and import-substitution industrialization, different patterns of authoritarian rule, social movements and revolution, democratic breakdowns and transitions, the debt crisis and market reforms, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Throughout the semester, we will draw on examples from the entire region, but focus on paradigmatic national cases. Knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese is not required.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, SBA-AG), (GLC-AS, SSC-AS)  
Exploratory Studies: (LAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2020, Fall 2016  
GDEV 3300 - Impact Evaluation for Development (3 Credits)  
The course will cover impact evaluation theory and empirical methods for measuring the impact of development programs (including randomization, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, and propensity score matching). The curriculum will combine theory and practice. The primary objectives of the course are to provide participants with the skills to understand the value and practice of impact evaluation within development economics, design and implement impact evaluations and act as critical consumers of impact evaluations. Open to students who have taken statistics.
Distribution Requirements: (DLS-AG, SBA-AG)  
GDEV 3311 - Environmental Governance (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with NTRES 3311, BSOC 3311, STS 3311  
Environmental governance is defined as the assemblage of institutions that regulate society-nature interactions and shape environmental outcomes across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Institutions, broadly defined, are mechanisms of social coordination including laws (formal) and social norms (informal) that guide the behavior of individuals. Participants in the course will explore the roles of governments, markets, and collective action in environmental management and mismanagement. We will emphasize interactions among leading environmental policy strategies: public regulation, market-based incentives, and community-based resource management. The course is focused around a set of analytic perspectives. These theoretical frameworks allow us to synthesize empirical observations and material changes in ways that inform our understanding of contemporary evolution of environmental policy and management.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG, SCH-AG), (SSC-AS)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain familiarity with the concepts, theories, and applications of institutional analysis applied to environment.
  • Students will develop critical awareness of the strengths and weakness of states, markets, and collective structures as resources for social regulation.
  • Students will develop an historical appreciation of environmental policy in order to reflect critically on contemporary status and trends.
  • Students will develop an interdisciplinary understanding of environmental policy through exploration of economic, sociological, and political scientific perspectives.
  • Students will be exposed to a broad range of environmental problems and policy and management responses. Coverage includes national and international cases, and analyses at multiple scales.
  • Students will develop capacity to conduct institutional analysis including the specification of a research question, policy research, synthesis, and communication.
  • Students will build generic competencies including reading of scientific and popular texts, writing, oral communication, group work, and critical analysis.
  
GDEV 3350 - Youth Organizations and Leadership Development (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 3350  
Participants learn how to facilitate both youth and adult volunteer leadership development. They examine factors affecting membership, purposes, design, operation, and administration of youth organizations.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate application of experiential learning models in education.
  • Explain how youth organizations relate to secondary education and career exploration.
  • Demonstrate knowledge and skills necessary for managing a 4-H/FFA chapter.
  • Explain how the 4-H/FFA functions on the local, state, and national levels.
  • Apply youth leadership theory to development of targeted youth organizations.
  • Engage in the issues surrounding youth development in education & society.
  
GDEV 3390 - Modeling People and the Environment (3 Credits)  
This course will provide an introduction to the process of building and using models of environmental systems using a systems dynamics (stock & flow) modeling platform called STELLA. Key concepts include causal modeling and the representation of systems as a set of processes, basic numerical methods, model development in STELLA, and analytical approaches to make inferences from model results. No prior coding experience is necessary, but students should expect to make significant use of algebra and basic statistics.
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. Six-month student user license for STELLA ($59) or perpetual student license ($129).  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop a specific research question and specify an appropriate conceptual model to inform it.
  • Develop an operational model using the systems dynamics platform Stella.
  • Design and implement computational experiments in systems dynamics models.
  • Communicate the assumptions underlying a model to a lay audience.
  
GDEV 3400 - Agriculture, Food, Sustainability and Social Justice (3 Credits)  
How is our food produced: where, by whom and under what conditions? What are the major trends and drivers of the agriculture and food system? How has our agriculture and food system changed over time? What are some of the environmental, social, nutritional and health implications of our food system? In this course we will use a sociological perspective to examine the social, political, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture and food. We will consider the historical background to our food and agricultural system, and will look at different agriculture and food issues in the Global North and South. We will also examine examples of alternative agriculture and food approaches and concepts, such as food sovereignty, agroecology, food justice, fair trade and community-supported agriculture, all of which attempt to support more sustainable, socially equitable agriculture and food systems. Engaged, critical learning is encouraged, including regular field trips for hands-on learning, guest speakers and films as well as discussions and lecture-based classes.
Distribution Requirements: (AFS-AG, D-AG, KCM-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Discuss food and agriculture systems and how these are changing.
  • Identify and understand the extent and importance of the social aspects of such systems and to interpret and evaluate food system information from a sociological perspective.
  • Discuss food and agriculture system issues, including (a) what the issues are, (b) how opposing sides define the debates on these issues, what their respective definitions presuppose, and how they assess situations under contest, (c) what categories of people tend to be on opposing sides, and (d) what are the shorter- and longer-term social and environmental implications of these positions.
  • Discuss food system topics rationally using sociological concepts and insights, especially when engaging people with whom you disagree.
  • Get information about agriculture, food systems and modern society from personal observation and from print, electronic, and other sources.
  • Work with others to (a) define practical, sociologically-informed questions, (b) research those questions, and (c) draw rational conclusions from the information gathered.
  
GDEV 3410 - Refugee Pathways: From Conflict to Resettlement (3 Credits)  
In collaboration with refugee resettlement centers in New York State, this community-engaged course will explore: the global systems of inequality that produce forced migration; the politics of who gets to be a refugee; the uncertain pathways from conflict to internal displacement and/or non-permanent settlement; the comparative racialization of refugees in the United States; the process by which refugees are resettled in Upstate New York; the challenges and opportunities of community integration in three Upstate NY cities; and the role of local schools and universities in promoting refugee justice and community building. Students will work on collaborative projects with refugee-supporting organizations in Upstate NY and will be required to attend at least one course-organized site visit to a partner organization in Buffalo, Syracuse or Utica.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe some of the major theoretical and practical conundrums and debates in the field of refugee studies.
  • Evaluate and critically respond to arguments made by leading migration scholars.
  • Explain the main actors, processes, and governance structures that dictate forced migration, non-permanent settlements and refugee resettlement in a variety of contexts.
  • Compose high-quality work products that are relevant to the practice of refugee resettlement in Upstate New York.
  
GDEV 3500 - Development in Action: Fall Faculty-Led Study Trip Preparation (0.5 Credits)  
This 7-week fall course prepares students for a faculty-led winter study trip within the Global Development department. Students will spend class sessions gaining familiarity with a particular global development challenge (i.e., hunger & sustainable food production, inequality across the life course, environmental challenges & solutions, etc.) through readings, lectures, and in-class discussions. Upon completion of the fall course, students then enroll in 2.5 practicum hours of winter session credits, where they travel to meet with actors on the ground who are navigating and developing solutions to these challenges.
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. Fees for associated winter trip will vary by class section.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-ITL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the state of a set of development challenges in a specified context.
  • Map the range of actors and institutions working to address this challenge.
  
GDEV 3501 - Development in Action: Winter Faculty-Led Study Trips (2.5 Credits)  
Each section of this course is a different faculty-led winter study trip that follows a 0.5 credit Fall course where students gain familiarity with a particular global development challenge (i.e., hunger & sustainable food production, inequality across the life course, environmental challenges & solutions, etc.) through readings, lectures, and in-class discussions. Then, in this winter session course, students travel to meet with actors on the ground who are navigating and developing solutions to these challenges.
Prerequisites: GDEV 3500/GDEV 5500.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. TBA.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Winter 2025, Winter 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the impact of various global and/or local development-related policies, strategies, and interventions in selected countries.
  • Demonstrate cultural sensitivity and understanding by engaging respectfully with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
  • Demonstrate adaptability and resilience in unfamiliar and changing environments, recognizing these as essential skills in the field of global development.
  
GDEV 3502 - Dev in Action: Spring Break Faculty-Led Study Trip (3 Credits)  
This course is the shell course for the spring courses that includes a faculty-led Spring Break practicum within the Global Development department. In these courses, students spend 10 class sessions gaining familiarity with a particular global development challenge (i.e., hunger & sustainable food production, inequality across the life course, environmental challenges & solutions, etc.) and a particular geographic context through readings, lectures, and in-class discussions. The course continues during an intensive Spring-break field study trip, and concludes with post-fieldwork analysis, reflection, and follow-up during the last 5 weeks of the semester.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment preference given to: Global Development majors.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. Course fee varies based on trip/location. Each section has a program fee that covers travel, lodging, and meals, and Global Development students may be eligible for needs-based financial support from the GDEV department (see individual section notes for more details). The tuition costs are all included in the Spring term.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the state of a set of development challenges in a specified context.
  • Map the range of actors and institutions working to address this challenge.
  • Evaluate the impact of various global and/or local development related policies, strategies, and interventions in selected countries.
  • Demonstrate cultural sensitivity and understanding by engaging respectfully with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
  • Demonstrate adaptability and resilience in unfamiliar and changing environments, recognizing these as essential skills in the field of global development.
  
GDEV 3510 - Engaged Learning through Extension, Outreach, and Instruction (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 3510  
Course is designed to explore strategies and instruction across three aspects of adult education: the Cooperative Extension Service as a structured delivery vehicle, outreach in more informal and non-traditional formats, and college instruction as a formal structure to deliver technical expertise. The intent is to develop a program to meet our target audience, then implement a plan that successfully meets the needs and expectations of instructor and participants alike.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become aware of differences and similarities across the audience profiles and develop targeted approaches to each.
  • Students will gain understanding of the history and future development of extension programming and how it impacts instructional methods and opportunities.
  • Students will develop a personal philosophy and vision for presenting technical information in a professional, yet approachable format that stimulates questions and further inquiry.
  • Students will gain competency in selecting and integrating appropriate technological tools for instruction across a variety of audiences.
  • Students will develop techniques to establish programming that differentiates presentations for a workshop, outreach program, and classroom presentation.
  • Students will understand assessment strategies to verify learning objectives have been met and ascertain participant attitudes toward topics.
  
GDEV 3547 - WIM: America, Business and International Political Economy (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with GOVT 3547, ILRGL 3547, AEM 3547  
Do you want to learn the discussion-based case method as taught at the Harvard Business School? Do you want to learn how to write a long research paper? Do you not want to take a final examination? If you answer these questions affirmatively, this course may be for you. We are told often that American primacy is in decline and that other powers are rising. What does this mean when we examine the experience of Government and Business in different countries around the world? Is the international political economy a hydraulic system in which some units rise and others fall? Are the dynamics of the international political economy all pointing in one direction? Or are they marked by cross-currents? This course seeks answers to these questions by teaching the basics of macro-economics, examining a range of powerful states (among others China, India, Russia and Japan) and persisting issues (financial globalization and foreign investment; oil and OPEC; trade and aid) as they play themselves out in different countries (such as Malaysia, Korea; Saudi Arabia, Nigeria; Mexico, Brazil, Uganda, Indonesia).
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, SBA-AG), (GLC-AS, SSC-AS), (ICE-IL)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2015  
GDEV 3630 - China-Africa Encounters (3 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2023  
GDEV 3680 - Environmental Decision Making (3 Credits)  
This course is an introduction to the science underlying decision making with an emphasis on environmental decisions. The course will introduce the basics of judgment and decision-making theory and demonstrate how and why people often make 'bad' decisions. Students will learn how policy makers are able to influence people's environmental behavior. Working in teams, student will try to influence environmental behavior around campus or town, developing an experiment and executing it. In the process students will learn how to write up an academic study that provides rationale, theoretical justification, and presents the results of their experiment.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Use the lens of behavioral science to understand environmental problems and the implications for sustainability.
  • Articulate the core drivers of environmental decision-making and barriers to pro-environmental behavior.
  • Develop a behavioral experiment to test interventions for increasing sustainable behavior in coordination with a community partner.
  • Assess the behavioral outcomes of various environmental policy interventions.
  • Write a clear academic manuscript contextualizing and analyzing the results of an experimental study.
  
GDEV 3700 - Comparative Social Inequalities (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with SOC 3710  
This course offers a sociological understanding of social inequality and the social construction of difference. Designed from the perspective of comparative historical analysis, we will examine the ways in which class, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, and sexuality differences work across place and time within a shared set of global dynamics. The course will pay special attention to how difference is constructed, institutionalized, and experienced. Thus, the course will not only address inequality based on economic and labor relations, but also emphasize complicated notions of difference and identity to offer an analysis that links inequality to power and forms of rule.
Prerequisites: introductory social science course.  
Distribution Requirements: (D-AG, SBA-AG), (OCE-IL)  
Exploratory Studies: (AFAREA, LAAREA, SAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain systems of social inequality from different sociological perspectives.
  • Assess different assumptions about the determinants of inequality.
  • Apply an understanding of inequality and difference to everyday current events.
  
GDEV 3740 - Qualitative Research Methods (3 Credits)  
This class provides students with an introduction to qualitative research methods. While we will center our attention on questions, problems, and issues related to the field of global development, the class will also be relevant for students from other fields. In class lectures, discussions, and assignments, we will learn about, draw from, and interweave frameworks and tools from a wide variety of fields. In doing so we will explore the challenges and benefits of both multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Questions of ethics, responsibility, and relationality will be taken up throughout the class, including our obligation to reject extractive colonial methods and ways of knowing. On this theme, we will explore theorists and practitioners of publicly engaged, participatory, feminist, indigenous, emancipatory, and action-oriented research.
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Formulate and produce a robust qualitative research design and proposal.
  • Justify the choice of methods in qualitative research projects.
  • Devise and defend choice of qualitative data collection and analysis strategies.
  • Produce research findings in written and oral formats.
  • Determine appropriate ethical principles in creating research designs.
  • Model in research projects an attitude of openness, humility and respect in interactions with others, including those who hold different perspectives and worldviews, or who differ along lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic class or political or religious affiliation.
  
GDEV 3900 - Circular Systems (3 Credits)  
This transdisciplinary project-based course features small teams advancing technology and policy for the circular economy using the Cornell Campus as a living lab. Students are first grounded in concepts of circular economy, industrial ecology and systems engineering. Using this knowledge, students will be developing simulation models as part of the course using system dynamics modeling. All modeling and simulation are taught from the ground up, and students do not need to have a strong computational background before taking this course.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe, explain and discuss the central principles of the circular economy. Apply these concepts in real-world applications.
  • Use a system model to evaluate social and environmental impact and to develop ideas and strategies for making change. Students will design plans for increasing circularity on campus, identifying barriers and thresholds for a more sustainable campus systems.
  • Demonstrate their ability to apply the results of life cycle assessment and material flow analysis in different domain applications.
  • Build networks and coalitions for change. By connecting with experts in their fields of interest. Students will gain advisors and mentors to guide them as they develop their projects, building a collective network to advance circular economy at Cornell (CE@CU).
  • Produce ethical modeling deliverables that evaluate marginalization of stakeholder groups in the lifecycle of technology.
  • Demonstrate their ability to foster diversity through inclusive teambuilding and engagement.
  
GDEV 4011 - Methods in Ag Sci Education: Welding and Metal (1 Credit)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 4010  
Students complete learning and skills development in GMAW and Mig welding and identification/handling of metals. Skills developed can lead toward instructional opportunities in agricultural sciences as well. This course is taught at Tompkins, Seneca, Tioga (TST) BOCES in Ithaca, NY.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop proficiency and knowledge of technical aspects of metal fabrication and welding procedures.
  • Explain and practice industry approved safety procedures both as a demonstrator and as the safety items relate to welding and fabrication of metal.
  • Describe how learning the new metal skills will translate into sharing those same skills with others as an instructor or facilitator.
  
GDEV 4045 - Data and Development (3 Credits)  
Development is inherently a multidisciplinary and applied field, one that requires academics, practitioners, and policymakers to consider and consult a wide range of information, data, perspectives, and questions. But how do policymakers use data to make informed decisions? How do practitioners use data to inform program development and practice? What sources and types of data do they use? What is the role of data in grant writing, assessment and evaluation, and in communicating policy issues to the public? What questions can (and can't) data help answer? Students in this class will learn about the role of data in community development practice, programming, and policy, and connections to asset- and needs-based assessments and frameworks.
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and compare multiple sources of data for use with applied audiences and partners.
  • Integrate data-analytic work with knowledge of development, including how communities function and interact between individuals and state and national and global enablers and constraints.
  • Analyze multiple data sources and understand their particular strengths and weaknesses.
  • Distinguish verifiable facts from value claims; distinguish findings and claims based on rigorous methods from political arguments; summarize, analyze, and interpret research findings to help impact various policy issues.
  • Understand the political and empirical realities of public service through direct collaboration with local and state-level partners.
  • Demonstrate clear and persuasive writing skills for an applied audience of partners.
  
GDEV 4050 - Invention and IP Management (3 Credits)  
The course lays out the process of managing inventions, including evaluation and conversion into IP and tangible biological property assets; includes Inventiveness Analysis, development of a “Property Control Position” (IP and bioproperty), market applications, and Value Proposition Analysis. Intellectual property strategy development, and alternatives for commercialization and implementation pathways also covered. Emphasis is on practical aspects of IP protection (patents, trade secrets, copyrights, plant breeder’s rights, and tangible personal bioproperty for new product development and venture creation. Technology transfer and international aspects described. The course is particularly relevant to students interested in the intersection of innovative technology management, IP and contract law, and business development. The use of invention and the Property Control Position for economic and global development are reviewed.
Distribution Requirements: (OPHLS-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Factor intellectual assets and their impact through technology transfer, value intellectual assets and understand the process of their transfer and gain exposure to the global trends in technology transfer including the negotiation and transaction execution process.
  
GDEV 4075 - Program Evaluation for Community-Based Organizations (3 Credits)  
This course serves as an introduction to the principles and practice of collaborative program evaluation for community-based organizations. This is an applied research methods course in which students will learn how to develop frameworks and tools that help small and mid-sized organizations answer the question: Is our program working? and/or how can our program be improved? This course is part conceptual and part applied, teaching students critical thinking for evaluation and practical skills in M&E planning and evaluation design. During the semester students will work with a local community development organization in a consultancy project to design and present an evaluation plan for use in a real practice setting. ALL students will produce a rigorous non-experimental evaluation design for a local practice-partner organization or 'client.'
Prerequisites: GDEV 2130/GDEV 5130 or permission of instructor.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe different epistemological approaches to evaluation practice, and the practical applications of these approaches for organizational problem-solving.
  • Distinguish between evaluation types, and identify the practical and methodological difference between experimental versus nonexperimental approaches to evaluation and when each are appropriate.
  • Assess the strengths, limitations and rigor, of diverse non-experimental evaluation designs.
  • Design a rigorous non-experimental evaluation and associated tools including: surveys, interview guides, sampling strategies, results frameworks, and theories of change.
  • Develop professional communication and relationship management skills and tools for managing professional relationships.
  
GDEV 4080 - Demographic Techniques (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with PUBPOL 4080  
This course explores social change through demographic methods, addressing how public policies aim to impact societal outcomes-such as reducing crime rates, lowering poverty levels, or increasing voter turnout-rather than focusing on individual behavior. While quantitative social science often emphasizes understanding individual actions, this course provides methods that bridge the gap between individual patterns and broader societal trends. Building on foundational techniques from introductory social statistics courses-such as univariate, bivariate, and multivariate regression-the course covers life tables, Lexis diagrams, and decomposition methods. These demographic methods focus on population-level dynamics and the changing composition of national populations, making the course essential for social scientists and policy analysts interested in examining the trends, causes, and consequences of aggregate social change.
Prerequisites: PUBPOL 2030.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: undergraduate students.  
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-UG)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate how to build a life table using various methods and understand the connections between life tables and survival analysis.
  • Think creatively about how to use these methods and existing data to make a novel research contribution.
  • Write clearly about what the results from life tables can tell us about demographic processes.
  
GDEV 4120 - Urban Public Management (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with CRP 4120  
Local governments across the world face challenges of infrastructure and service delivery in the context of fiscal constraints. Innovations often involve devolution and privatization. Scholarly research debates whether these market approaches promote efficiency, regional equity, local economic growth and citizen voice. Students will review the theoretical bases for these claims and the empirical evidence from around the world. Students will write theory papers as well as engage in group work on practical policy questions facing cities.
Prerequisites: ECON 1110 or equivalent.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2018  
GDEV 4140 - Global Cropping Systems and Sustainable Development (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with PLSCI 4140  
With accelerating demands for food, feed, and fiber along with increasing recognition of the importance of agricultural systems to ecosystem services and rural livelihoods, the requirements of agricultural systems are simultaneously intensifying and diversifying. This course introduces foundational concepts that explain the distribution, productivity, and ecological impacts of the world's major cropping systems from an interdisciplinary perspective, including soils, climate and water, markets, policies, and institutions. Through systems thinking and process-based agronomy, an emphasis is placed on assessing solutions for resolving core challenges to the sustainable development goals in the context of global change. Students gain insights into sustainable intensification technologies as well as the social process that support innovation. Evidence synthesis through a geographically-anchored case study and active participation in class discussions are required.
Prerequisites: at least one of the following courses or their equivalents: PLSCI 1900, PLSCI 2110, PLSCI 2600, PLSCI 3210 or PLSCI 3150.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: UG students.  
Distribution Requirements: (AFS-AG, D-AG, SCH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL, CU-SBY); (LAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the biophysical and socioeconomic factors that interact to define and differentiate global cropping systems.
  • Articulate major drivers of change and how they are influencing, and will likely continue to influence, the structure and function of global cropping systems.
  • Diagnose core challenges to improving food security, profitability, and ecosystem service outcomes as they differ across major cropping systems from an integrative sustainable development perspective.
  • Translate principles to practice by critically reviewing sustainability challenges in selected cropping systems and developing insights into intervention priority setting that will drive more effective agricultural development programming.
  • Collaborate and communicate with a peer group to frame problems and potential solutions in a common logical model that is supported by evidence and systems thinking.
  
GDEV 4190 - Quantitative Research Methods (4 Credits)  
In this course, students will harness statistical analysis to tackle real-world questions. It is designed for undergrads and grads with introductory statistical knowledge. The curriculum covers techniques such as correlation, ANOVA, and regression but emphasizes the derivation of meaning for applied audiences using cross-sectional, nested, and time-series data. The hands-on experience extends to data cleaning, analysis of missing data, variable transformation, and other data management tasks facilitated by statistical software. Initially, students work on provided data. Later, they collaborate in teams finding data to complete a significant project suitable for publication. This practical approach equips students with the skills to analyze and interpret complex data, contributing to informed decision-making in social sciences.
Prerequisites: statistics course or permission of instructor.  
Distribution Requirements: (MQL-AG, OPHLS-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe how and why statistics are used in social policy research.
  • Illustrate the relationships between research questions, theory, data, and methods including: Select and carry out methods based on research questions, theory and available data.
  • Evaluate and describe the strengths and weaknesses of chosen methods.
  • Find multiple sources of data and manage selected data including data cleaning, manipulation, and merging multiple datasets
  • Employ a full range of statistical techniques including: Univariate and descriptive statistics including distribution, spread, and skewness; Bivariate analysis including t-tests, scatterplots, crosstabs, and correlations; Multivariate analysis including ANOVA, OLS regression, and logistic regression with exposure to introductory spatial analyses, data visualization, time series regression, and multilevel regression.
  • Employ issues of reliability, precision, and competently discuss difference between causation and correlation.
  
GDEV 4200 - Adult Language Learners and Marginalization: Applied Teaching Methods for Empowerment (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 4200  
When educators teach English to speakers of other languages, what assumptions do they often bring, about learners' goals, abilities, and backgrounds, and about the language-learning process? Which versions of English are often valued more highly in TESOL programs and materials? How can we create opportunities for English-language learning, while also recognizing the knowledge that learners already hold? Through reflections on readings, simulations, and weekly fieldwork, students will deepen their understanding of what it means to teach English to non-native speakers. Students will analyze and apply TESOL methodologies and receive feedback on their lesson planning and delivery in order to strengthen their teaching practice. Participants will learn from each other's situated experiences and increase their awareness of issues involved in global migrations and language learning.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, D-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Outline recognized TESOL frameworks and methods, and their critiques, with their historical contexts.
  • Develop and implement original lesson plans and unit plans that effectively address a specific English Language Learner's needs in multiple areas, including speaking, reading, writing, listening, grammar, pronunciation and/or specific content areas.
  • Recognize barriers faced by adult English Language Learners in the U.S. and at Cornell, and propose institutional actions in response.
  • Demonstrate knowledge and awareness of the cultural practices, values, and beliefs of diverse groups of individuals.
  • Demonstrate understanding of systemic oppression at multiple levels.
  • Assess one's own cultural perspective and the potential for associated biases.
  
GDEV 4223 - Community Learning Ecosystems: Place, SDGs & Hope (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 4223, LEAD 4223  
Running shoes are not required, yet we are in training for a marathon. In this course we're enhancing our knowledgebase, toolbox, and collective leadership as we take up a contest unprecedented in human history - inclusive and just sustainability. Part race against the clock, part design challenge and part performance test, Team Humanity needs all of us to be informed, prepared, and in the game. Having teammates to train with nudges us to keep going as we learn with and from partners, communities and action leaders in this grand challenge. We examine five major concepts and explore their mutual generativity as we look for leverage points of system change: just sustainability; lifelong learning; place; learning ecosystems and social competencies for collective leadership and learning.
Distribution Requirements: (KCM-AG, SCH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • By the end of this course, students will be able to: Demonstrate the capacity to analyze, evaluate, and posit relationships among key concepts central to the course: 1) Lifelong Learning; 2) Place & Placemaking; 3) Sustainability & Climate Action; 4) Community as Ecosystem of Learning; Learning Cities/Learning Localities; and 5) Collaborative, Social Learning for Sustainability.
  • Explicate properties of Learning Places, Learning Communities, and Learning Societies, and to differentiate among them.
  • Apply knowledge of effective methods of designing and facilitating nonformal educational programming.
  • Ascertain and analyze a variety of policy actors, practitioners, educators, networks, and action arenas relevant to lifelong learning and sustainability.
  • Investigate and critically assess initiatives that integrate lifelong learning, placemaking, sustainability and climate action.
  • Distinguish different claims and conceptualizations of hope-including actionable, radical, critical, and pragmatic hope-and climate optimism, distinguishing between wishful thinking and cautious climate optimism.
  
GDEV 4295 - Data Science Workshop with R (3 Credits)  
This course introduces students to the applied aspects of R programming, a powerful tool for data analysis and statistical modeling widely utilized across various scientific and research disciplines. R's comprehensive environment supports everything from data manipulation to complex statistical analyses and graphics, making it an ideal choice for data-driven research. Students will engage in a hands-on exploration of data import and management, mastering basic and advanced R functions, and utilizing loops for repetitive tasks. They will also learn to create compelling visualizations using R's graphing tools, which are crucial for interpreting and presenting data effectively.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Manage and Manipulate Data: Efficiently import and manage datasets, and manipulate variables using R to prepare data for analysis.
  • Utilize R Functions: Apply R's basic functions for computing summary statistics and performing essential data operations, enhancing their ability to handle complex datasets.
  • Create Visualizations: Employ various plotting and graphing tools, including advanced R packages, to create meaningful visual representations of data, aiding in both analysis and storytelling.
  • Optimize R Scripts: Develop and utilize functions and loops to improve the efficiency of R scripts, enabling more sophisticated data analysis tasks.
  • Conduct Statistical Analysis: Perform fundamental statistical analysis, applying linear models and other statistical tools to interpret data insights critically.
  • Present Data Effectively: Learn to present data in an elegant and informative manner, crucial for communicating findings to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  
GDEV 4443 - Global Climate Change Science and Policy (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EAS 4443, ENVS 4443  
This Engaged Cornell course will introduce students to climate change science and policy, with a focus on how science factors into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and how negotiations take place at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP). The course will enable Cornell students to participate in global, engaged learning at the most significant annual meeting of the U.N. on climate change; and make a vital contribution to their academic studies and decisions about future work in international environmental affairs. Students will critically analyze contemporary climate change science and global environmental policy-making; develop and address pertinent research questions; engage with experts in the field and help them with policy-relevant research; and develop experience with communications and social media. The course will involve lectures, discussions, readings, and group projects. Teams of students will work with partner organizations representing developing countries, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations to help them prepare for the COP. This innovative, cross-disciplinary course will provide a career-changing opportunity to students to engage in the global policy-making process to address a difficult environmental problem.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG), (GLC-AS)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-ITL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will develop substantive knowledge to: describe the basics of climate change science and the technical, scientific, economic and political challenges and opportunities that solving climate change represents; understand the diverse perspectives from a cultural, political, scientific and economic view of the problem and solutions of climate change to develop intercultural competence; explain the global climate change negotiations process, and articulate different viewpoints and north/south perspectives on the politically charged topics associated with climate change; evaluate future developments in light of the complex political and ethical issues behind climate negotiations.
  • Students will gain skills to: improve personal reflection; develop partnerships; work on projects.
  • Students will also develop technical skills to: communicate about climate change to/with different audiences; develop intercultural competence by working with diverse peers and partners; develop professional skills working and communicating with international partners.
  
GDEV 4450 - Toward a Sustainable Global Food System: Food Policy for Developing Countries (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with AEM 4450, NS 4450  
Comprehensive presentation and discussion of policy options for a sustainable global food system, with focus on developing countries. Topics include economic policy related to nutrition, health, consumption, production, natural resource management, trade, markets, gender roles, armed conflict, and ethics. A social entrepreneurship approach based on case studies and active participation by students will be used.
Distribution Requirements: (AFS-AG, SBA-AG, SCH-AG), (SBA-HE)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY); (AFAREA, SAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Ability to analyze a specific food policy problem, identify the related policy issues, suggest one or more policy options to solve the problem, and estimate how each option would affect relevant stakeholder groups and their expected response.
  • Ability to undertake the above with limited information and within a short time frame.
  • Motivation to engage in the design and implementation of innovative solutions to existing and expected future problems related to the global, national and local food systems, i.e. to be a social or policy entrepreneur within or outside the public sector.
  
GDEV 4721 - Peace Building in Conflict Regions: Case Studies Sub-Saharan Africa Israel Palestinian Territories (4 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019  
GDEV 4770 - Seminar on Issues in African Development (1 Credit)  
Crosslisted with CRP 4770  
Examines a broad range of critical concerns in contemporary Africa including food production, human resource development, migration, urbanization, environmental resource management, economic growth, and policy guidance. The weekly presentations are made by invited specialists. Students write weekly memos about the talks.
Exploratory Studies: (AFAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • To learn about African development, people, cultures and societies and explore development theories with their alternative viewpoints related to a specific theme.
  • To explore alternative viewpoints and exchange ideas on different African development-related topics.
  • To strengthen written and oral skills in synthesis of and reflection on readings, seminars and discussions.
  
GDEV 4850 - Sustainability Project Lab (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with ENVS 4850  
This course is a project-based course, meaning you will work in teams with a community or campus partner on a sustainability project with multiple outcomes or goals. A project will be outlined with an assigned community partner working towards sustainability and you will work to produce deliverables that meets the needs of the partner. The project will require you and your peers to utilize the skills you have learned during your time at Cornell. During this process you will learn about sustainability in action, project planning and management, and practicing the ‘soft skills’ that will help you navigate life after graduation. Most importantly you will gain experience working in teams to deliver real-world project results to partners– this can be research, practice, or a combination.
Prerequisites: GDEV Students: GDEV 2130 or GDEV 3740 or GDEV 4045 or GDEV 4190 or permission of instructor. ENVS students: NTRES 2201.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Juniors and Seniors in Global Development or Environment and Sustainability majors.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG, SCH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Learning Outcomes:
  • Refine skills for critical reading and thinking, data analysis and oral and written presentation of findings.
  • Construct and refine project management abilities.
  • Develop a relationship with a community partner and gain experience in delivering results to a real-world partner.
  • Design a professional report collaboratively.
  
GDEV 4880 - Global Food, Energy, and Water Nexus – Engage the US, China, and India for Sustainable Future (3-4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with ANSC 4880, FDSC 4880, AEM 4880, CHEME 4880  
This course is offered by six Departments at Cornell, in collaboration with five Universities in China and India. Video conferencing will be used to connect classrooms in the three countries in real time. Important issues related to the food, energy, and water nexus and its implications for nutrition security, one health, environmental sustainability,climate change, and economic development in the US, China, India, and other countries will be described. Challenges associated with these issues will be evaluated and strategies to address them will be proposed. Engagement of these countries with each other and the rest of the world will be explored. The course serves as a platform for students from Cornell, China, and India to learn from and interact with each other in the same class, and to share their thinking, creativity, and perspectives on these issues.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: juniors or seniors only.  
Distribution Requirements: (AFS-AG, D-AG, SCH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL, CU-SBY); (SAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and compare the major food, nutrition and health, energy, water, and economic challenges facing the US, China, and India.
  • Describe barriers to food and nutrition security for all people in each of the three countries and globally and propose solutions for overcoming these barriers.
  • Identify and quantify the requirements of energy and water for producing, processing, transporting, and/or preparing food.
  • Evaluate various predictions of regional and global impacts of climate change on agricultural production and human health in the 21st century.
  • Collaborate as members of interdisciplinary teams composed of students from the US, China, and India to analyze and solve problems that affect food, water, and energy security.
  • Effectively and respectfully debate, with people of opposing views, issues related to food, water, and energy nexus.
  • Prepare and deliver focused, clear, impactful, and culturally sensitive presentations to an international audience of peers .
  
GDEV 4940 - Special Topics in Global Development (1-3 Credits)  
The department teaches trial courses under this number. Offerings vary by semester, and are advertised by the department before the semester starts. Courses offered under the number will be approved by the department curriculum committee, and the same course is not offered more than twice under this number.
Exploratory Studies: (LAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
GDEV 4961 - Perspectives in Global Development (1 Credit)  
Crosslisted with AEM 4961, NTRES 4961  
A variety of speakers present seminars on international development topics relating to sustainable development throughout the world. Students attend each seminar and submit a five-page essay at the end of the semester reflecting on the speakers' presentations and analyzing connections between topics.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 4970 - Independent Study in Global Development (1-3 Credits)  
Informal study may include a reading course, research experience, or public service experience.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-UG)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 4980 - Teaching Experience in Global Development (1-4 Credits)  
Designed to give an undergraduate student practical teaching experience and deepened subject matter knowledge through working with a Development Sociology faculty member in planning and teaching a course. An enrolled student will regularly discuss teaching topics with the supervising faculty member; topics such as course objectives, subject matter, teaching techniques, and assessment strategies. The specific responsibilities will be negotiated between the faculty member and student, but, as appropriate for the particular course, may include researching course-related topics, preparing course materials, leading discussions, commenting on assignments, writing exam questions, assisting with grading, gathering student feedback, and tutoring.
Prerequisites: previous enrollment in the course to be taught, or other appropriate previous training and experience.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain practical teaching experience.
  
GDEV 4990 - Independent Research in Global Development (1-4 Credits)  
Permits outstanding students to conduct laboratory or field research in global development under appropriate faculty supervision. The research should be scientific: systematic, controlled, empirical. Research goals should include description, prediction, explanation, or policy orientation and should generate new knowledge.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-UG); (SAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 5030 - FoodCycle: Systems Thinking Toward Circular Economy for Organic Resources (3 Credits)  
In seeking to understand issues and opportunities at the nexus of agriculture, sanitation, water, health and the natural and built environments, students will gain skills in systems thinking, participatory design and innovation towards systems change. Through individual and collective work, students will conduct general and specific systems analysis and construct systems models to identify opportunities to reduce carbon pollution, improve system health. Students will seek to learn from cases and literature from diverse national and international contexts. The Cornell campus will be considered a living laboratory for an inquiry into how organic resources flow through our facilities, and how waste flows might be utilized to produce energy, fertilizer, food, building materials and/or other valued products. Students will engage with local entities (facilities, organizations, farms and other enterprises) to gain specific information that will inform our analysis. Students will engage in hands-on work to learn about ways in which organic resources can be up-cycled.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe concepts and skills related to systems thinking, analysis and intervention, including ability to understand and design pathways to change in diverse contexts.
  • Explain systems related to organic resource management, such as those involved in food, agriculture, sanitation, the built environment, and health-related surveillance.
  • Analyze and conceptualize context-related similarities and differences that influence problems, opportunities and pathways to change.
  • Design a waste-to-value chain (e.g., porta-potties/toilets ; loo-litter from corn cobs [similar in purpose and format to kitty litter]; making building materials from agricultural wastes).
  • Create up-cycling activities, including design, invention, production and utilization.
  
GDEV 5045 - Data and Development (3 Credits)  
Development is inherently a multidisciplinary and applied field, one that requires academics, practitioners, and policymakers to consider and consult a wide range of information, data, perspectives, and questions. But how do policymakers use data to make informed decisions? How do practitioners use data to inform program development and practice? What sources and types of data do they use? What is the role of data in grant writing, assessment and evaluation, and in communicating policy issues to the public? What questions can (and can't) data help answer? Students in this class will learn about the role of data in community development practice, programming, and policy, and connections to asset- and needs-based assessments and frameworks.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and compare multiple sources of data for use with applied audiences and partners.
  • Integrate data-analytic work with knowledge of development, including how communities function and interact between individuals and state and national and global enablers and constraints.
  • Analyze multiple data sources and understand their particular strengths and weaknesses.
  • Distinguish verifiable facts from value claims; distinguish findings and claims based on rigorous methods from political arguments; summarize, analyze, and interpret research findings to help impact various policy issues.
  • Understand the political and empirical realities of public service through direct collaboration with local and state-level partners.
  • Demonstrate clear and persuasive writing skills for an applied audience of partners.
  
GDEV 5050 - Invention and IP Management (3 Credits)  
The course lays out the process of managing inventions, including evaluation and conversion into IP and tangible biological property assets; includes Inventiveness Analysis, development of a “Property Control Position” (IP and bioproperty), market applications, and Value Proposition Analysis. Intellectual property strategy development, and alternatives for commercialization and implementation pathways also covered. Emphasis is on practical aspects of IP protection (patents, trade secrets, copyrights, plant breeder’s rights, and tangible personal bioproperty for new product development and venture creation. Technology transfer and international aspects described. The course is particularly relevant to students interested in the intersection of innovative technology management, IP and contract law, and business development. The use of invention and the Property Control Position for economic and global development are reviewed.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Factor intellectual assets and their impact through technology transfer, value intellectual assets and understand the process of their transfer and gain exposure to the global trends in technology transfer including the negotiation and transaction execution process.
  
GDEV 5085 - Circular Economy Seminar (2 Credits)  
This seminar, open to students across the university, introduces circular economy principles and frameworks through a series of faculty and practitioner-led talks and activities. It features discussions about specific initiatives to keep materials - from organics to plastics, construction materials, textiles and more - in use. It also features sessions on efforts to bring about, manage, and govern circular economies, from the re-design of materials to efforts to help people repair and re-use the things they own. We will examine a city at the forefront of circularity initiatives, and prospects for a future in which products are engineered with living materials.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify key principles of the circular economy.
  • Analyze the application of those principles in a blog post.
  • Describe efforts to propel, manage, and govern circularity and regenerate nature.
  • Connect with faculty on campus interested in circularity and working on related research.
  
GDEV 5130 - Introduction to Social Science Research Methods (3 Credits)  
Introduction to social science research. The course reviews the general process through which social scientists derive credible answers to important questions about social change and social influences on individual behavior. It covers all steps in the research process, from the formulation of a research question to the final presentation of findings. The course is designed as a preparation for future work in social science research, but it is also intended for students who simply want to sharpen their capacity to evaluate the claims made by researchers. The course combines theory and application. A group research project is used to apply the concepts and ideas from the textbook and lectures.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify, compare, and apply the basic concepts of research, such as variables, operationalization, units of analysis, sampling, reliability, validity, and design.
  • Compare the linkages between type of research questions (i.e. descriptive vs. causal) and the implications for design, analysis and inferences/interpretation.
  • Examine the ethical issues involved in research, and practice ethical research standards.
  • Identify and explain the difference between quantitative and qualitative research.
  • Integrate theory and previous research to create research questions and hypotheses and to identify and analyze the appropriate method and variables needed for research questions.
  • Analyze existing secondary data using SPSS and basic univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis.
  • Design a research project and poster that will (a) present your research question; (b) review background literature and theory related to your question; (c) present your own univariate, bivariate and multivariate findings and, (d) address possible limitations and further directions for your work.
  
GDEV 5140 - Mapping Our Worlds with GIS: Cartography and Analysis in GIS (4 Credits)  
How things are related in space matters for many things-where different groups live and work, who faces health hazards, how people experience the places they live in, and more. Maps are powerful tools because they help us recognize things we might not otherwise see-and because they present pictures of the world that people act upon to pursue goals. In this class we learn how to conduct spatial analyses and make maps, shouldering the responsibility entailed by the power maps can confer. In-class lectures and activities will provide conceptual and technical foundations for spatial analysis and cartography. Lab sessions and assignments will give a practical introduction to using GIS software to map and analyze spatial patterns.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain conceptual issues and choices involved in making maps and understanding phenomena that take place across space.
  • Use GIS software to implement data management and spatial analysis operations.
  • Use GIS software to create informative maps and justify your choices in displaying information on those maps.
  • Gather data, conduct an analysis, and present findings regarding a spatial phenomenon.
  • Discuss and apply key concepts in social scientific work on mapping and spatial analysis.
  • Frame research questions on phenomena with spatial dimensions, conduct analyses, and report findings in ways that reflect advanced reasoning and build on conversations within their discipline.
  
GDEV 5170 - Land Systems and Sustainability (3 Credits)  
This course delves into the critical role of land systems in addressing global sustainability crises. Recognizing the profound impact of land use on specific areas such as deforestation, urban sprawl, and agricultural practices, it is grounded in the concept of transformative change - defined as a comprehensive, system-wide reorganization of land systems. This reorganization includes shifts in paradigms, goals, and values related to land use. Students will examine case studies on issues such as land degradation and biodiversity loss to explore the multi-dimensional nature of land systems changes, emphasizing the need for actions that integrate local and global objectives. Through multiple writing exercises and discussions, we will re-imagine land use strategies to better organize our communities, institutions, and societies for sustainable outcomes amidst future uncertainties.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Define transformative change in the context of land systems and articulate its significance in addressing socioeconomic and environmental challenges.
  • Analyze the multi-dimensional aspects of transformative land systems change, recognizing the necessity for shifts in perspectives, practices, and structures at various scales.
  • Analyze the global objectives of key sustainability frameworks and explain their specific implications for land systems transformation.
  • Engage with the concepts of equity and justice as foundational to envisioning and implementing transformative land systems change.
  • Graduate students who complete this course will be able to: evaluate the role of land-related crises as catalysts for change and contrast this with the concept of deliberate, value-driven land systems transformation.
  • Graduate students who complete this course will be able to develop strategies to foster transformative land systems change at multiple levels, from local community initiatives to global policy frameworks.
  
GDEV 5223 - Community Learning Ecosystems: Place, SDGs & Hope (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 5223, LEAD 5223  
Running shoes are not required, yet we are in training for a marathon. In this course we're enhancing our knowledgebase, toolbox, and collective leadership as we take up a contest unprecedented in human history- inclusive and just sustainability. Part race against the clock, part design challenge and part performance test, Team Humanity needs all of us to be informed, prepared, and in the game. Having teammates to train with nudges us to keep going as we learn with and from partners, communities and action leaders in this grand challenge. We examine five major concepts and explore their mutual generativity as we look for leverage points of system change: just sustainability; lifelong learning; place; learning ecosystems and social competencies for collective leadership and learning.
Prerequisites: experience in design and facilitation in one of these areas- nonformal education, asset-based development, community-based arts, participatory action research or public sociology/anthropology.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Investigate and apply theories and practices of five core concepts central to the course: Lifelong learning, place and placemaking, inclusive Just Sustainability, community as ecosystem of learning; learning cities/learning localities, collective intelligence, and collaborative social action for sustainability.
  • Work in real-world sustainability endeavors at multiple scales (local, national, & international) through collaborative undertakings (both as a class and independently).
  • Develop further as a learning-centered leader by serving in a mutual, co-learning partnership as the educational mentor with an adult learner.
  • Recognize, and engaged with, a variety of policy actors, practice networks and action arenas germane to lifelong learning and sustainability.
  • Deepen own experiential knowledge of component elements of learning cities through engagement in local and wider settings at three levels: self, self with another, and self with multiple others.
  • Increase own sustainability literacy.
  
GDEV 5230 - Gender and Development (3 Credits)  
The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 5 states that countries should Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. In this course, we unpack the different and often competing definitions of 'empowerment' and 'gender equality' deployed in development, and consider the historical lineages of feminisms and development theory that led to women and girls as an important constituency. We examine the programs and policies associated with these lineages and consider how women's and girls' intersectional experiences of gender, shape the outcomes of the programs and policies designed to improve their lives. This course blends practice and theory, encouraging students to evaluate the material effects of diverse approaches to reducing gender inequality through case studies, writing, and readings in gender and development.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe at least three distinct historical movements in gender and development and the various feminist theories these movements are connected to e.g. liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, and intersectional feminisms (e.g. Third World Feminism, Black Feminism, and other decolonial feminisms).
  • Summarize current approaches and major debates in reducing gender inequality across sectors including: economic empowerment, education, health, and agriculture.
  • Connect case studies of gender and development practice to the SDG 5 policy framework.
  • Assess case studies of gender and development practice evaluating the strengths and weakness success of these models for promoting gender equality.
  • Synthesize theoretical and empirical evidence into convincing and cohesive written analytical arguments.
  • Describe & critique key mainstream approaches to gender and development policy including gender analysis and gender mainstreaming.
  • Critically analyze SDG 5 as a policy framework for reducing gender inequality, utilizing feminist theoretical frameworks as analytical tools.
  
GDEV 5295 - Data Science Workshop with R (3 Credits)  
This course introduces students to the applied aspects of R programming, a powerful tool for data analysis and statistical modeling widely utilized across various scientific and research disciplines. R's comprehensive environment supports everything from data manipulation to complex statistical analyses and graphics, making it an ideal choice for data-driven research. Students will engage in a hands-on exploration of data import and management, mastering basic and advanced R functions, and utilizing loops for repetitive tasks. They will also learn to create compelling visualizations using R's graphing tools, which are crucial for interpreting and presenting data effectively.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Manage and Manipulate Data: Efficiently import and manage datasets, and manipulate variables using R to prepare data for analysis.
  • Utilize R Functions: Apply R's basic functions for computing summary statistics and performing essential data operations, enhancing their ability to handle complex datasets.
  • Create Visualizations: Employ various plotting and graphing tools, including advanced R packages, to create meaningful visual representations of data, aiding in both analysis and storytelling.
  • Optimize R Scripts: Develop and utilize functions and loops to improve the efficiency of R scripts, enabling more sophisticated data analysis tasks.
  • Conduct Statistical Analysis: Perform fundamental statistical analysis, applying linear models and other statistical tools to interpret data insights critically.
  • Present Data Effectively: Learn to present data in an elegant and informative manner, crucial for communicating findings to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  
GDEV 5300 - Impact Evaluation for Development (3 Credits)  
The course will cover impact evaluation theory and empirical methods for measuring the impact of development programs (including randomization, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, and propensity score matching). The curriculum will combine theory and practice. The primary objectives of the course are to provide participants with the skills to understand the value and practice of impact evaluation within development economics, design and implement impact evaluations and act as critical consumers of impact evaluations. Open to students who have taken statistics.
GDEV 5350 - Youth Organizations and Leadership Development (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 5350  
Participants learn how to facilitate both youth and adult volunteer leadership development. They examine factors affecting membership, purposes, design, operation, and administration of youth organizations.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate application of experiential learning models in education.
  • Explain how youth organizations relate to secondary education and career exploration.
  • Demonstrate knowledge and skills necessary for managing a 4-H/FFA chapter.
  • Explain how the 4-H/FFA functions on the local, state, and national levels.
  • Apply youth leadership theory to development of targeted youth organizations.
  • Engage in the issues surrounding youth development in education & society.
  
GDEV 5400 - Agriculture, Food, Sustainability and Social Justice (3 Credits)  
How is our food produced: where, by whom and under what conditions? What are the major trends and drivers of the agriculture and food system? How has our agriculture and food system changed over time? What are some of the environmental, social, nutritional and health implications of our food system? In this course we will use a sociological perspective to examine the social, political, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture and food. We will consider the historical background to our food and agricultural system, and will look at different agriculture and food issues in the Global North and South. We will also examine examples of alternative agriculture and food approaches and concepts, such as food sovereignty, agroecology, food justice, fair trade and community-supported agriculture, all of which attempt to support more sustainable, socially equitable agriculture and food systems. Engaged, critical learning is encouraged, including regular field trips for hands-on learning, guest speakers and films as well as discussions and lecture-based classes.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Discuss food and agriculture systems and how these are changing.
  • Identify and understand the extent and importance of the social aspects of such systems and to interpret and evaluate food system information from a sociological perspective.
  • Discuss food and agriculture system issues, including (a) what the issues are, (b) how opposing sides define the debates on these issues, what their respective definitions presuppose, and how they assess situations under contest, (c) what categories of people tend to be on opposing sides, and (d) what are the shorter- and longer-term social and environmental implications of these positions.
  • Discuss food system topics rationally using sociological concepts and insights, especially when engaging people with whom you disagree.
  • Get information about agriculture, food systems and modern society from personal observation and from print, electronic, and other sources.
  • Work with others to (a) define practical, sociologically-informed questions, (b) research those questions, and (c) draw rational conclusions from the information gathered.
  
GDEV 5410 - Refugee Pathways: From Conflict to Resettlement (3 Credits)  
In collaboration with refugee resettlement centers in New York State, this community-engaged course will explore: the global systems of inequality that produce forced migration; the politics of who gets to be a refugee; the uncertain pathways from conflict to internal displacement and/or non-permanent settlement; the comparative racialization of refugees in the United States; the process by which refugees are resettled in Upstate New York; the challenges and opportunities of community integration in three Upstate NY cities; and the role of local schools and universities in promoting refugee justice and community building. Students will work on collaborative projects with refugee-supporting organizations in Upstate NY and will be required to attend at least one course-organized site visit to a partner organization in Buffalo, Syracuse or Utica.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe some of the major theoretical and practical conundrums and debates in the field of refugee studies.
  • Evaluate and critically respond to arguments made by leading migration scholars.
  • Explain the main actors, processes, and governance structures that dictate forced migration, non-permanent settlements and refugee resettlement in a variety of contexts.
  • Compose high-quality work products that are relevant to the practice of refugee resettlement in Upstate New York.
  • Differentiate between the pathways, challenges, and opportunities associated with resettlement for various refugee groups.
  • Recommend ways that educational institutions can best support refugees from various backgrounds.
  
GDEV 5443 - Global Climate Change Science and Policy (3-4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EAS 5443  
This Engaged Cornell course will introduce students to climate change science and policy, with a focus on how science factors into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and how negotiations take place at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP). The course will enable Cornell students to participate in global, engaged learning at the most significant annual meeting of the U.N. on climate change; and make a vital contribution to their academic studies and decisions about future work in international environmental affairs. Students will critically analyze contemporary climate change science and global environmental policy-making; develop and address pertinent research questions; engage with experts in the field and help them with policy-relevant research; and develop experience with communications and social media. The course will involve lectures, discussions, readings, and group projects. Teams of students will work with partner organizations representing developing countries, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations to help them prepare for the COP. This innovative, cross-disciplinary course will provide a career-changing opportunity to students to engage in the global policy-making process to address a difficult environmental problem.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-ITL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will develop substantive knowledge to: describe the basics of climate change science and the technical, scientific, economic and political challenges and opportunities that solving climate change represents; understand the diverse perspectives from a cultural, political, scientific and economic view of the problem and solutions of climate change to develop intercultural competence; explain the global climate change negotiations process, and articulate different viewpoints and north/south perspectives on the politically charged topics associated with climate change; evaluate future developments in light of the complex political and ethical issues behind climate negotiations.
  • Students will gain skills to: improve personal reflection; develop partnerships; work on projects.
  • Students will also develop technical skills to: communicate about climate change to/with different audiences; develop intercultural competence by working with diverse peers and partners; develop professional skills working and communicating with international partners.
  
GDEV 5500 - Development in Action: Fall Faculty-Led Study Trip Preparation (0.5 Credits)  
This 7-week fall course prepares students for a faculty-led winter study trip within the Global Development department. Students will spend class sessions gaining familiarity with a particular global development challenge (i.e., hunger & sustainable food production, inequality across the life course, environmental challenges & solutions, etc.) through readings, lectures, and in-class discussions. Upon completion of the fall course, students then enroll in 2.5 practicum hours of winter session credits, where they travel to meet with actors on the ground who are navigating and developing solutions to these challenges.
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. Fees for associated winter trip will vary by class section.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-ITL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the state of a set of development challenges in a specified context.
  • Map the range of actors and institutions working to address this challenge.
  
GDEV 5501 - Development in Action: Winter Faculty-Led Study Trips (2.5 Credits)  
Each section of this course is a different faculty-led winter study trip that follows a 0.5 credit Fall course where students gain familiarity with a particular global development challenge (i.e., hunger & sustainable food production, inequality across the life course, environmental challenges & solutions, etc.) through readings, lectures, and in-class discussions. Then, in this winter session course, students travel to meet with actors on the ground who are navigating and developing solutions to these challenges.
Prerequisites: GDEV 3500/GDEV 5500.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. TBA.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Winter 2025, Winter 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the impact of various global and/or local development-related policies, strategies, and interventions in selected countries.
  • Demonstrate cultural sensitivity and understanding by engaging respectfully with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
  • Demonstrate adaptability and resilience in unfamiliar and changing environments, recognizing these as essential skills in the field of global development.
  
GDEV 5502 - Dev in Action: Spring Break Faculty-Led Study Trip (3 Credits)  
This course is the shell course for the spring courses that includes a faculty-led Spring Break practicum within the Global Development department. In these courses, students spend 10 class sessions gaining familiarity with a particular global development challenge (i.e., hunger & sustainable food production, inequality across the life course, environmental challenges & solutions, etc.) and a particular geographic context through readings, lectures, and in-class discussions. The course continues during an intensive Spring-break field study trip, and concludes with post-fieldwork analysis, reflection, and follow-up during the last 5 weeks of the semester.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment preference given to: Global Development majors. If the program is jointly run with another department (i.e. PLSCI) each department will hold half of the seats for their students during pre-enrollment.  
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. Course fee varies based on trip/location. Each section has a program fee that covers travel, lodging, and meals, and Global Development students may be eligible for needs-based financial support from the GDEV department (see individual section notes for more details). The tuition costs are all included in the Spring term.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the state of a set of development challenges in a specified context.
  • Map the range of actors and institutions working to address this challenge.
  • Evaluate the impact of various global and/or local development related policies, strategies, and interventions in selected countries.
  • Demonstrate cultural sensitivity and understanding by engaging respectfully with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
  • Demonstrate adaptability and resilience in unfamiliar and changing environments, recognizing these as essential skills in the field of global development.
  
GDEV 5510 - Engaged Learning Through Extension, Outreach, and Instruction (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 5510  
Course is designed to explore strategies and instruction across three aspects of adult education: the Cooperative Extension Service as a structured delivery vehicle, outreach in more informal and non-traditional formats, and college instruction as a formal structure to deliver technical expertise. The intent is to develop a program to meet our target audience, then implement a plan that successfully meets the needs and expectations of instructor and participants alike. The graduate level option will incorporate workshop, outreach, and instructional presentations developed from the grad student's area of expertise. A unit plan of instruction will also be developed.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will become aware of differences and similarities across the audience profiles and develop targeted approaches to each.
  • Students will gain understanding of the history and future development of extension programming and how it impacts instructional methods and opportunities.
  • Students will develop a personal philosophy and vision for presenting technical information in a professional, yet approachable format that stimulates questions and further inquiry.
  • Students will gain competency in selecting and integrating appropriate technological tools for instruction across a variety of audiences.
  • Students will develop techniques to establish programming that differentiates presentations for a workshop, outreach program, and classroom presentation.
  • Students will understand assessment strategies to verify learning objectives have been met and ascertain participant attitudes toward topics.
  
GDEV 5680 - Environmental Decision Making (3 Credits)  
The objective of this course is to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the science underlying decision making with an emphasis on environmental decisions. The course will introduce the basics of information processing and demonstrate how and why we as humans often make 'bad' decisions. They will study how policy makers are able to intervene and influence people's behavior. Throughout the course students will work in groups to try to influence an environmental behavior around campus or town- developing an experiment and executing it. In the process students will learn how to write up an academic study that provides rational, justification, and analysis of the results of your experiment.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Use the lens of behavioral science to understand environmental problems and the implications for sustainability.
  • Articulate the core drivers of environmental decision-making and barriers to pro-environmental behavior.
  • Develop a behavioral experiment to test interventions for increasing sustainable behavior in coordination with a community partner.
  • Assess the behavioral outcomes of various environmental policy interventions.
  • Write a clear academic manuscript contextualizing and analyzing the results of an experimental study.
  • Apply decision science to their own academic research.
  • Develop and write an effective research proposal for their own empirical study.
  
GDEV 5710 - US Education System: Courts, Data, Law and Politics (3-4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with AMST 5710, SOC 5710, EDUC 5710  
This course aims to explore and answer a single question about America's promise-of success if you work hard and do well in school: Why do we have such substantial and long-standing inequality in the U.S.? In answering this central question, we will investigate the goals, roles, and outcomes of formal educational institutions in American society and the legal and policy environment in which they operate. Specifically, we will review historical state and federal policy, trace the $700 million spent, and interrogate the sociological functions of public and private K12 schools, including the successes, failures, and enigmas of school organization and policy at the local, state, and national level.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Cornell Teacher Education Program or permission of instructor.  
Exploratory Studies: (AFAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will recognize and assess the sociological function(s) of American Schools (e.g., socializer, sorter, trainer, and caretaker) as well as its role as a change agent, an equalizer, and reproducer of society's inequalities.
  • Students will critique education as a major public policy issue in American society.
  • Students will synthesize the legal framework and justification for local, state, and federal roles in public and private schooling.
  • Students will explore and interpret social and fiscal data to clarify policy assumptions and critiques.
  • Students will integrate and discuss their own schooling and what role they can play in the future of school improvement.
  
GDEV 5740 - Qualitative Research Methods (3 Credits)  
This class provides students with an introduction to qualitative research methods. While we will center our attention on questions, problems, and issues related to the field of global development, the class will also be relevant for students from other fields. In class lectures, discussions, and assignments, we will learn about, draw from, and interweave frameworks and tools from a wide variety of fields. In doing so we will explore the challenges and benefits of both multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Questions of ethics, responsibility, and relationality will be taken up throughout the class, including our obligation to reject extractive colonial methods and ways of knowing. On this theme, we will explore theorists and practitioners of publicly engaged, participatory, feminist, indigenous, emancipatory, and action-oriented research.
Forbidden Overlaps: COMM 6830, GDEV 4740, GDEV 5740  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Formulate and produce a robust qualitative research design and proposal.
  • Justify the choice of methods in qualitative research projects.
  • Devise and defend choice of qualitative data collection and analysis strategies.
  • Produce research findings in written and oral formats.
  • Determine appropriate ethical principles in creating research designs.
  • Model in research projects an attitude of openness, humility and respect in interactions with others, including those who hold different perspectives and worldviews, or who differ along lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic class or political or religious affiliation.
  
GDEV 5850 - Sustainability Project Lab (3 Credits)  
This course is a project-based course, meaning you will work in teams with a community or campus partner on a sustainability project with multiple outcomes or goals. A project will be outlined with an assigned community partner working towards sustainability and you will work to produce deliverables that meets the needs of the partner. The project will require you and your peers to utilize the skills you have learned during your time at Cornell. During this process you will learn about sustainability in action, project planning and management, and practicing the ‘soft skills’ that will help you navigate life after graduation. Most importantly you will gain experience working in teams to deliver real-world project results to partners– this can be research, practice, or a combination.
Prerequisites: GDEV Students: GDEV 2130 or GDEV 3740 or GDEV 4045 or GDEV 4190 or permission of instructor. ENVS students: NTRES 2201.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Juniors, Seniors, and MPS students. Enrollment restricted to Global Development and Environment and Sustainability majors.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Learning Outcomes:
  • Refine skills for critical reading and thinking, data analysis and oral and written presentation of findings.
  • Construct and refine project management abilities.
  • Develop a relationship with a community partner and gain experience in delivering results to a real-world partner.
  • Design a professional report collaboratively.
  • Additionally graduate students will be able to: Apply and refine analytical skills to develop a professional report grounded in academic theory.
  • Develop & write an effective thesis or capstone project draft.
  
GDEV 5900 - Circular Systems (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with SYSEN 5371  
This transdisciplinary project-based course features small teams advancing technology and policy for the circular economy using the Cornell Campus as a living lab. Students are first grounded in concepts of circular economy, industrial ecology and systems engineering. Using this knowledge, students will be developing simulation models as part of the course using system dynamics modeling. All modeling and simulation are taught from the ground up, and students do not need to have a strong computational background before taking this course. Please note that the distance learning is only available for the graduate level.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe, explain and discuss the central principles of the circular economy. Apply these concepts in real-world applications.
  • Use a system model to evaluate social and environmental impact and to develop ideas and strategies for making change. Students will design plans for increasing circularity on campus, identifying barriers and thresholds for a more sustainable campus systems.
  • Demonstrate their ability to apply the results of life cycle assessment and material flow analysis in different domain applications.
  • Build networks and coalitions for change. By connecting with experts in their fields of interest. Students will gain advisors and mentors to guide them as they develop their projects, building a collective network to advance circular economy at Cornell (CE@CU).
  • Produce ethical modeling deliverables that evaluate marginalization of stakeholder groups in the lifecycle of technology.
  
GDEV 5970 - Independent Study in Global Development (MPS Students) (1-6 Credits)  
Allows M.P.S. students the opportunity to investigate special interests that are not treated in regularly scheduled courses. The student develops a plan of study to pursue under the direction of a faculty member.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 6030 - Classical Sociological Theory (4 Credits)  
This course provides students with an overview of the classical theoretical foundations of sociology, focusing primarily on the work of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Students read original texts and contemporary treatments of them to examine the key questions, concepts, methods and explanations that contributed to the formation of the discipline.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Exploratory Studies: (EUAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Evaluate competing theoretical frameworks within sociology with newly developed reflexive skills.
  • Explore complex issues in the relationship of theory and history and develop analytic skills.
  • Use writing skills developed through composing weekly outlines that require synthesis of key ideas in the assigned readings.
  • Use oral skills developed through class presentations and discussions.
  
GDEV 6060 - Sociological Theories of Development (3 Credits)  
With the transformation of former colonies into developing countries, the notion of development emerged as a key conceptual framework for conceptualizing global hierarchies in wealth and power. Sustained by an apparatus of national and international agencies, and university programs in development studies, the 'development industry' generated a vast body of literature seeking to account for or promote social, economic, and political change. This course aims to familiarize students with some of the key theoretical approaches and debates in the field of development. Throughout the course, the concept of development itself is questioned and critiqued both theoretically and in terms of the challenges posed by development practice.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of influential schools of thought in the field of global development.
  • Enhance arguments through the development of critical thinking, reading and communication skills.
  • Demonstrate critical analysis by articulating concise responses to contemporary development arguments in varying contexts.
  • Engage meaningfully with collaborative research partners.
  
GDEV 6070 - Social Demography (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with PUBPOL 6050, SOC 6050  
The objective of this course is to provide a conceptual overview and technical tool-kit for studying population issues and public policies. What is a demographic perspective? And how can it be applied usefully to important domestic and international policy issues of the day (e.g., housing segregation, health and retirement, labor mobility and immigration, and above- and below-replacement fertility, school projections, etc.). The course will introduce students to various demographic data sources (e.g., decennial census and periodic fertility surveys), conventional measures (e.g., fertility rates and measures of poverty/inequality), and conventional demographic techniques (e.g., life tables, rate standardization, and population forecasting) used in social demography. For the most part, the course places the emphasis on the appropriate application of demographic tools and on scientifically-sound interpretations.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Appreciate the many different ways that demographers approach significant substantive and empirical policy problems.
  • Apply a demographic perspective and methods broadly across many different substantive areas in the social sciences (e.g., family social sciences, health, criminology, and education.
  • Pursue more advanced technical courses in demographic methods or in substantively-oriented demography courses.
  
GDEV 6075 - Program Evaluation for Community-Based Organizations (3 Credits)  
This course serves as an introduction to the principles and practice of collaborative program evaluation for community-based organizations. This is an applied research methods course in which students will learn how to develop frameworks and tools that help small and mid-sized organizations answer the question: Is our program working? and/or how can our program be improved? This course is part conceptual and part applied, teaching students critical thinking for evaluation and practical skills in M&E planning and evaluation design. During the semester students will work with a local community development organization in a consultancy project to design and present an evaluation plan for use in a real practice setting. ALL students will produce a rigorous non-experimental evaluation design for a local practice-partner organization or 'client.'
Prerequisites: GDEV 2130/GDEV 5130 or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe different epistemological approaches to evaluation practice, and the practical applications of these approaches for organizational problem-solving.
  • Distinguish between evaluation types, and identify the practical and methodological difference between experimental versus nonexperimental approaches to evaluation and when each are appropriate.
  • Assess the strengths, limitations and rigor, of diverse non-experimental evaluation designs.
  • Design a rigorous non-experimental evaluation and associated tools including: surveys, interview guides, sampling strategies, results frameworks, and theories of change.
  • Develop professional communication and relationship management skills and tools for managing professional relationships.
  • Demonstrate advanced translational communication skills.
  • Apply evaluative thinking skills to solve complex organizational problems.
  
GDEV 6080 - Demographic Techniques (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with PUBPOL 6060  
This is the second course in the demographic techniques sequence. It has two foci. First, we will learn the basics of constructing single and multiple decrement life tables, along with extensions to cause-deleted life tables. Second, we will learn the basics of survival analysis, as well as how survival analysis relates to life tables. Although the primary goal is learning to use these techniques, this class also has a heavy emphasis on thinking about how to use these methods to produce something new and important for research. The grad students will also be asked to complete a 10 page research proposal.
Prerequisites: statistics.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate how to build a life table using various methods and understand the connections between life tables and survival analysis.
  • Think creatively about how to use these methods and existing data to make a novel research contribution.
  • Write clearly about what the results from life tables can tell us about demographic processes.
  
GDEV 6120 - Urban Public Management (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with CRP 6120  
Local governments across the world face challenges of infrastructure and service delivery in the context of fiscal constraints. Innovations often involve devolution and privatization. Scholarly research debates whether these market approaches promote efficiency, regional equity, local economic growth and citizen voice. Students will review the theoretical bases for these claims and the empirical evidence from around the world. Students will write theory papers as well as engage in group work on practical policy questions facing cities.
Prerequisites: ECON 1110 or equivalent.  
Exploratory Studies: (EUAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2018  
GDEV 6150 - Qualitative Research Methods (3 Credits)  
This seminar introduces students to a number of qualitative research methods in the social sciences. Discusses field observation, archival research, in-depth individual interviews, and focus group interviews. Assesses the strengths and weaknesses of various strategies of field research and consider a range of practical matters such as choice of research site (and sample where appropriate). Considers choice of research questions and issues of feasibility in research plans. Ethical considerations are highlighted. Students produce a full-length research proposal of their own by the course's end.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Ph.D. students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Understand various qualitative research methods and be able to choose the best method for a project.
  • Analyze field research strategies and choose the most appropriate for a project.
  • Employ ethical considerations when carrying out qualitative research projects.
  
GDEV 6190 - Quantitative Research Methods (4 Credits)  
In this course, students will harness statistical analysis to tackle real-world questions. It is designed for undergrads and grads with introductory statistical knowledge. The curriculum covers techniques such as correlation, ANOVA, and regression but emphasizes the derivation of meaning for applied audiences using cross-sectional, nested, and time-series data. The hands-on experience extends to data cleaning, analysis of missing data, variable transformation, and other data management tasks facilitated by statistical software. Initially, students work on provided data. Later, they collaborate in teams finding data to complete a significant project suitable for publication. This practical approach equips students with the skills to analyze and interpret complex data, contributing to informed decision-making in social sciences.
Prerequisites: statistics course or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe how and why statistics are used in social policy research.
  • Illustrate the relationships between research questions, theory, data, and methods including: Select and carry out methods based on research questions, theory and available data.
  • Evaluate and describe the strengths and weaknesses of chosen methods.
  • Find multiple sources of data and manage selected data including data cleaning, manipulation, and merging multiple datasets.
  • Employ a full range of statistical techniques including: Univariate and descriptive statistics including distribution, spread, and skewness; Bivariate analysis including t-tests, scatterplots, crosstabs, and correlations; Multivariate analysis including ANOVA, OLS regression, and logistic regression with exposure to introductory spatial analyses, data visualization, time series regression, and multilevel regression.
  • Employ issues of reliability, precision, and competently discuss difference between causation and correlation.
  
GDEV 6210 - Foundations of Environmental Sociology (3 Credits)  
This seminar provides graduate students with a broad survey of the literature in environmental sociology. Students read foundational works in environmental sociology as well as key literature in the various substantive foci of this specialty. The principle objective of this course is to provide graduate students specializing in environmental sociology with a firm grasp of the content, controversies, and trends in the area. Sessions are conducted in a seminar style, and discussions are focused on close review of assigned readings.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Fall 2009  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Discuss the historical development of environmental sociology.
  • Discuss key ideas and recent developments in substantive areas of environmental sociology scholarship.
  
GDEV 6320 - Environmental Governance (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with NTRES 6310  
Considers the question of environmental governance, defined as the assemblage of social institutions that regulate natural resource use and shape environmental outcomes. Participants explore the roles of public policy, market exchange, and collective action in resource (mis)management. Introduces theoretical concepts from a variety of social science perspectives to support case studies and student-led discussions. Comparative analysis of how governance is pursued in different countries, historical periods, and ecological contexts (forestry, endangered species, water quality) highlight scope for institutional innovation. Students taking the course for graduate credit are required to read supplemental materials, undertake more complex research assignments, and participate in seminar discussion section.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the history and processes of environmental governance.
  • Apply terms, concepts, and methods of critical institutional analysis to environmental governance.
  • Take positions on classical and contemporary debates animating environmental policy processes.
  • Apply knowledge to a specific question, concept, or problem selected for the term paper.
  • Demonstrate content-specific oral and communication skills.
  
GDEV 6340 - Risk and Disaster (3 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022  
GDEV 6455 - Toward a Sustainable Global Food System: Food Policy for Developing Countries (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with AEM 6455, NS 6455  
Comprehensive presentation and discussion of policy options for a sustainable global food system, with focus on developing countries. Topics include: economic policy related to nutrition, health, consumption, production, natural resource management, trade, markets, gender roles, armed conflict, and ethics. A social entrepreneurship approach based on case studies and active participation by students will be used.
Distribution Requirements: (D-HE, KCM-HE, SBA-HE)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Ability to analyze a specific food and nutrition policy problem, identify the related policy issues, suggest one or more policy options to solve the problem, and estimate how each option would affect relevant stakeholder groups and their expected response.
  • Ability to undertake the above with limited information and within a short time frame.
  • Motivation to engage in the design and implementation of innovative solutions to existing and expected future problems related to the global, national and local food systems, i.e. to be a social or policy entrepreneur within or outside the public sector.
  • Graduate students will be required to lead/mentor their case study group of undergraduate students and be provided with an opportunity to identify an area of future graduate research for his/her own thesis.
  
GDEV 6620 - The Social Life of Land (3 Credits)  
The graduate seminar this spring will include three distinct pieces: first, an intensive reading of the classics in agrarian studies around the topics of state formation, economic exchange and systems, colonization and post-colonial studies, development, and environmental politics; second, regular attendance and participation in the weekly public symposium series; and third, organization of a student-led workshop to be held in early May with papers presented by the seminar participants. In order to prepare for the student-led workshop, we will select one keynote speaker to give a talk on the day of the workshop, and students will read each other's papers and work on their own throughout the semester.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2022, Spring 2018, Fall 2015  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Discuss the classic themes and literatures in Agrarian Studies.
  • Discuss the new work being done and cutting edge issues in the field.
  • Use course resources to create a broader network of key scholars in the field.
  • Submit a paper written for the course to a publisher.
  
GDEV 6770 - Seminar on Issues in African Development (1 Credit)  
Crosslisted with CRP 6770  
Examines a broad range of critical concerns in contemporary Africa including food production, human resource development, migration, urbanization, environmental resource management, economic growth, and policy guidance. The weekly presentations are made by invited specialists. Students write weekly memos about the talks. Graduate students (CRP 6770/GDEV 6770) facilitate one seminar question period.
Exploratory Studies: (AFAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • To learn about African development, people, cultures and societies and explore development theories with their alternative viewpoints related to a specific theme.
  • To explore alternative viewpoints and exchange ideas on different African development-related topics.
  • To strengthen written and oral skills in synthesis of and reflection on readings, seminars and discussions.
  
GDEV 6820 - Community Organizing and Development (3 Credits)  
This course is designed to provoke students from a wide variety of gradate fields to question and examine the cultural and political dimensions of development practice in everyday community settings and contexts. It's specifically focused on the history, theory and practice of community organizing, and the roles NGO, government, academic, and other professionals do, can, and should play in the public work of democracy.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Spring 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Discuss the history, theory, and practice of community organizing.
  • Discuss the roles that NGO, government, academic, and other professionals should play in the public work of democracy.
  
GDEV 6880 - Global Food, Energy, and Water Nexus – Engage the US, China, and India for Sustainable Future (3-4 Credits)  
This course is offered by six Departments at Cornell, in collaboration with five Universities in China and one India. Video conferencing will be used to connect classrooms in the three countries in real time. Important issues related to the food, energy, and water nexus and its implications for nutrition security, one health, environmental sustainability, climate change, and economic development in the US and these two countries will be described. Challenges associated with these issues will be evaluated and strategies to address them will be proposed. Engagement of these countries with each other and the rest of the world will be explored. The course serves as a platform for students from Cornell, China, and India to learn from and interact with each other in the same class, and to share their thinking, creativity, and perspectives on these issues.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate student status, or permission of the instructors.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and compare the major food, nutrition and health, energy, water, and economic challenges facing the US, China, and India.
  • Describe barriers to food and nutrition security for all people in each of the three countries and globally and propose solutions for overcoming these barriers.
  • Identify and quantify the requirements of energy and water for producing, processing, transporting, and/or preparing food.
  • Evaluate various predictions of regional and global impacts of climate change on agricultural production and human health in the 21st century.
  • Collaborate as members of interdisciplinary teams composed of students from the US, China, and India to analyze and solve problems that affect food, water, and energy security.
  • Effectively and respectfully debate, with people of opposing views, issues related to food, water, and energy nexus.
  • Prepare and deliver focused, clear, impactful, and culturally sensitive presentations to an international audience of peers.
  
GDEV 6940 - Graduate Special Topics in Global Development (1-4 Credits)  
The department teaches trial courses under this number. Offerings vary by semester, and are advertised by the department before the semester starts. Courses offered under the number will be approved by the department curriculum committee, and the same course is not offered more than twice under this number.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
GDEV 6960 - Perspectives in Global Development (1 Credit)  
Crosslisted with NTRES 6960, AEM 6960  
A variety of speakers present seminars on international development topics relating to sustainable development throughout the world. Students attend each seminar and submit a five-page essay at the end of the semester reflecting on the speakers' presentations and analyzing connections between topics.
Exploratory Studies: (LAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 6970 - Global Development MPS Seminar (1.5 Credits)  
A seminar for M.P.S. - Global Development students to discuss important issues in their field and to prepare themselves to write M.P.S. project papers. Specific content varies.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 6980 - Teaching Experiences for MPS in Global Development (1-5 Credits)  
This course enables MPS students to get valuable teaching experience in any one of the GDEV courses for credit.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Student will obtain valuable teaching experience in the course chosen.
  
GDEV 7001 - Historical Sociology of Modernity (3 Credits)  
The notion of modernity - conceived as a schema for making sense of long-term processes of social and cultural change, and as a uniquely European phenomenon that was universalized through the impact of colonial empires and the world market, -- provides the deep conceptual framework for both classical social theory and contemporary theories of development. These dominant motifs, and the meta-theories that seek to legitimate them, continue to be the subject of heated scholarly controversy. In this course, we explore some of these controversies through engagement with a range of critical studies that seek to rethink the historical sociology of the modern world.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Exploratory Studies: (EUAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2021, Spring 2019, Spring 2017  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and interpret historical-sociological approaches to the study of social change.
  • Assess their continuing relevance (or not) to a world in constant motion.
  • Develop skills of close textual reading together with an appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of particular analytic frameworks.
  • Synthesize complex theoretical and historical arguments and present them in class.
  
GDEV 7201 - Ph.D. Research Design (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with CRP 7201  
This course provides a comprehensive review of the research and writing process to help Ph.D. students develop a strategy for writing a research proposal and journal article. The course provides a comprehensive review of the research design process and will result in each student developing his/her dissertation proposal. The course focuses on articulating research objectives, managing the research process, ethics, funding and professional development as a scholar. The course also explores how to write journal articles (journal selection, review process) and how to position your work in your academic field.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Ph.D. students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2020  
GDEV 7350 - Labor Sociology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with ILRGL 7350, SOC 7350  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2020, Fall 2016, Spring 2014  
GDEV 7500 - Food, Ecology, and Agrarian Change (3 Credits)  
This seminar is concerned with agri-food systems and their socio-ecological relations. There is increased attention and public discourse on agriculture and food systems, and its increasingly evident health and ecological implications. This seminar works with social science analytical approaches and contemporary issues and processes concerning food, ecology and agrarian change from development studies, sociology, geography, anthropology and related disciplines. The goal of the seminar is to develop analytical perspectives on the relationships embedded in food and agrarian systems and their political, social and ecological implications, and to explore various alternatives to the dominant mode of agriculture and agrarian relations.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2021, Spring 2019, Spring 2017  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain key social science concepts and theories related to food and agrarian systems.
  • Analyze food and agrarian systems using a range of theoretical perspectives, including political ecology, critical development studies, critical agrarian studies, agroecology and feminist theories.
  • Articulate key issues in debates in food, agriculture and agrarian studies and provide their own well-reasoned evaluations of these topics using theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence from the social and natural sciences.
  
GDEV 7900 - Graduate-Level Thesis Research (1-9 Credits)  
Thesis research for Ph.D. students only before A exam has been passed.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: students in the Graduate Field of Development Studies (formerly Development Sociology).  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 7910 - Teaching Experience (1-3 Credits)  
Participation in the ongoing teaching program of the department.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: students in the Graduate Field of Development Studies (formerly Development Sociology).  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 7970 - Development Studies Professional Development Seminar (1 Credit)  
This course will serve as a collaborative space where PhD students can learn and share about issues of course-taking selection, grant sources and writing strategies, preparation of CVs and cover letters, meet and interact with Field Faculty, engage in practice conference- and job-talks, and other useful professionalization practices for new and more experienced PhD students. Guest speakers will be engaged and current students and alumni will share useful and strategic practices.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to describe the research interests of their peers and GDEV faculty members.
  • Students will practice conference and job-talks and provide feedback to fellow students.
  • Students will design and develop their CV and learn various strategies that lead to a strong cover letter.
  • Students will develop skills related to employment-seeking activities.
  • Students will describe the range of academic and non-academic jobs that program Alumni are engaged in.
  • Students will apply other relevant professional development topics and strategies.
  
GDEV 8720 - Graduate Level Ind Study in Development Studies (1-9 Credits)  
Limited to master's and doctoral degree candidates with permission of the graduate field member concerned.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: master's and doctoral degree candidates.  
Exploratory Studies: (EUAREA, LAAREA, SAAREA)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Summarize and explain major theories and theoretical debates in the disciplines relevant to the student's research question.
  • Develop original research questions grounded in a review of the existing literature. Design and complete data collection and analysis for an original piece of research.
  • Demonstrate competence with the appropriate research methods and research design, depending on the research question.
  • Develop professional writing and communicating skills.
  
GDEV 8900 - Master's Level Thesis Research (1-9 Credits)  
Thesis research for master's students.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: students in the Graduate Field of Development Studies (formerly Development Sociology).  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
GDEV 9900 - Doctoral-Level Thesis Research (1-9 Credits)  
Thesis research for Ph.D. candidates after A exam has been passed.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: students in the Graduate Field of Development Studies (formerly Development Sociology).  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023