From: Economic and Political Development Concentration
Date: December 14, 2020
Subject: EPD Newsletter #15



Hello EPD-ers!

It's the final newsletter of the semester! We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your hardwork, engagement, and support for our programs this semester. Get in touch with us if you have any ideas, suggestions, or feedback for the next! 

As usual, we bring you some news, events, and opportunities for you this week! 

All the very best with papers and exams, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS! See you next semester!

This week’s newsletter includes:

  • Upcoming EPD & Other Events
  • EPD Audit Plan in Stellic - due by 1/15/2021 
  • Jobs, Internships, and Other Opportunities
  • Student Spotlights
  • Pick of the Week
  • EPD Office Hours

UPCOMING EPD & OTHER EVENTS












[Virtual Book Launch] COVID-19 and Migration: Understanding the Pandemic and Human Mobility

Thursday Dec. 17, 2020 | 5-6:30PM  
Register here: https://t.co/S6FWa6521F?amp=1

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every domain of life. Migration and human mobility in general are not exceptions. Join us for the launch of the first edited volume on COVID-19 and Migration. The book brings together the world’s foremost experts on human mobility to understand the many and complex links between the pandemic and human mobility. Following an introduction by the editors Ibrahim Sirkeci and Jeffrey H. Cohen the launch event features flash-presentations from six of the book’s chapter that shed light on specific thematic areas – such as health, agriculture, remittances, and multilateral cooperation – as well as in-depth country experiences – such as South Africa and India.

Speakers:

Ibrahim Sirkeci and Jeffrey H. Cohen: Editors
Monette Zard and Ling San Lau: The Future of Mobility in a Post Pandemic World: Forced Migration and Health
Daniel Naujoks: Multilateralism for Mobility: Interagency Cooperation in a Post-Pandemic World
Philip L. Martin: Covid-19 and International Labour Migration in Agriculture 
Sadhana Manik: ‘Unwanted but Needed’ in South Africa: Post Pandemic Imaginations on Black Immigrant Entrepreneurs owning Spaza Shops
Melissa Siegel: Covid-19, Remittances and Repercussions 
R.B. Bhagat: Covid-19, Migration and Livelihood in India: Challenges and Policy Issues 
 

Attention May 2021 Graduates: Review Your EPD Concentration Audit Plan in Stellic          

This message is for students who plan to graduate in May 2021. Please read carefully

This year for the first time, EPD will use Stellic to approve your concentration audit plans. Stellic is SIPA’s new auditing tool and automatically matches approved courses you have either completed or are currently taking with EPD requirements. 

To make sure that you are on track to meet your EPD requirements for graduation, we ask that you log in to Stellic at https://columbia.stellic.com, and carefully review your EPD profile before you start registering for spring courses. If you have yet to fulfill a specific EPD requirement, be sure to plan accordingly. 

Each student expecting to graduate in May 2021 must finalize their EPD audit plan in Stellic by Friday, 1/15/2021. EPD will then confirm that your plan has been approved and that you are expected to complete all concentration requirements by checking off the EPD Concentration Audit Certification button in your Stellic profile.

Additional instructions
o   Students who wish to count a course that hasn’t been approved for EPD can submit a request to Ilona Vinklerova (iv2105) for the course to be considered. They should email her the course syllabus and specify which requirement they wish to count it for. In general, a course to be approved for EPD must focus on issues in developing countries and/or emerging markets. Note that EPD double counting policy would still apply here. We ask that you allow for three business days to receive a reply.  

o   If you received approval for a course substitution for an EPD requirement but it is not yet reflected in your profile, forward your approval confirmation email to Ilona Vinklerova (iv2105) and she will adjust your Stellic profile. 

 o   If you are an MPA-EPD student, you must also fulfill the MIA language requirement and prove language proficiency in a language other than English. Students can fulfill the language requirement with any modern language offered by Columbia University language programs or the Language Resource Center. This requirement can be met in one of the three ways listed here.  

We urge you not to wait until the last minute to review your Stellic profile. Allow yourself enough time to sort out any pending requirements. Note that the spring semester starts on Monday 1/11/2021, and registration for continuing students begins on Tuesday 1/5/2021.
 


JOBS, INTERNSHIPS AND OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

Check out this week's OCS New Job and Internship Opportunities CLICK HERE and Upcoming Deadlines for Jobs and Internship Application CLICK HERE





Columbia University Sustainability Journal: Call for Submissions

Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development is a Columbia University-published online academic journal dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary dialogue on sustainable development. As an intellectually rigorous forum, Consilience connects students, researchers, professors, and practitioners from a variety of academic fields and geographical regions. The Journal has global presence and scope, with our most recent issue including coverage of India, Ghana, Brazil, and Australia.
Each semester, Consilience invites select experts whose research they feel exemplifies their mission statement to submit their work to the Journal. This semester Consilience is looking for students that have any work they would like to submit to the Journal for their 24th edition. For this Spring 2021 issue, Consilience aims to focus on the global events of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic and racial injustice.
We encourage you to view past issues in their archive and to consider submitting your work for their upcoming publication. Their author guidelines, with further description on the types of articles the journal is looking for, are available here. Papers selected for publication undergo a thorough review and editing process. If interested, please submit all articles through their online form. The current submission deadline for our upcoming issue is January 31st 2021. 

Alternatively, Consilience is also seeking graduate/doctoral students and scholars to serve as peer reviewers for our upcoming issue. Those interested in serving as anonymous peer reviewers must either be enrolled in a doctoral-level/graduate-level program or have a doctoral/graduate degree relating to sustainable development. They will be using Publons to acknowledge and support the work of our peer reviewers. Please take a moment to fill out this brief form to be added to our contact list of peer reviewers.

Please contact consiliencejournal@gmail.com with any questions. 
 

CAREER RESOURCES

SIPA Career Website & Resources
Check out great career development resources for students that can be found on SIPA Career Resources Website.

Factsheets on Career Development - Tips for international students and on connecting with alumni, interviewing, networking, PMF information, writing resumes and cover letters and other career development topics.

Career Overview Factsheet - Information, sample employers, and online resources for a variety of fields and industries

Sector-Specific Fact Sheets - Lists of employers by industry or field, organizational charts, and information on IFC and World Bank internship programs and YPPs.

Check out other resources in the website.
 


STUDENT SPOTLIGHTS

Senqi Ma is a second-year MPA-EPD student, specializing in Data Analytics and Quantitative Analysis. He was born and raised in Shandong, China, where Confucius was born and created his philosophy two thousand years ago. Senqi spent 7 years studying Chinese classics and culture, holding a Bachelor’s degree in Chinese Classics from Wuhan University and a Master’s degree in Chinese philosophy from Peking University. Before SIPA, he spent one year experiencing different roles in public, private, and non-profit sectors, and eventually found his interest in international development. At SIPA, Senqi had several internships with different NGOs and became highly interested in U.S.-China relations while interning at the John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution. In his future career, he hopes to combine his skills in culture, development, and international relations to work on development-related issues or better Sino-US relations. Senqi enjoys travel and photography. From 2016 to 2017, he spent half a year in Italy and traveled around Europe (find out his photography on Instagram @masenqi). He loves tea, cooking, and opera, especially Chinese opera. He is currently in NYC (just in front of IAB!) and can be reached out for a tea chat through LinkedIn, Facebook, or email (sm4736).


Nneka Karimo is a Nigerian-American first-year MIA-EPD student specializing in Management and Gender. She was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, with a Bachelors in Economics from the American University Nigeria. Prior to SIPA, Nneka worked as a volunteer with "project Sunshine Nigeria," which saw underserved communities' overall wellness. Highly passionate about girl's education, she hopes to start a nongovernmental organization that focuses on providing access to quality education girls and optimistic about a world where the girls reach her full potential. She understands its importance in development and women's empowerment. Her goal is to equip women with the right tools to tackle generational, situational, and relative poverty, especially those from low-income families and rural displaced regions of Nigeria. She is passionate about the development of Africa and her home country, and optimistic SIPA will help equip her with the knowledge needed to effect the desired change, positively impacting Africa's most populous country and the continent at large. She hopes to travel the world, meet and learn from diverse cultures, and values people with integrity and empathy. Fun Fact: Nneka is obsessed with the color pink, loves to cook, has a degree in industrial chemistry, and currently serving with the United States Air Force.

(Reach out to us if you'd like to be featured in the next newsletter!)


PICK OF THE WEEK

This week's featured film:
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
In 1843, the celebrated British novelist, Charles Dickens, is at a low point in his career with three flops behind him and his family expenses piling up at home. Determined to recover, Dickens decides to write a Christmas story and self-publish it in less than two months. As Dickens labors writing on such short notice, his estranged father and mother come to bunk with him. Still haunted by painful memories of his father ruining his childhood by his financial irresponsibility, Dickens develops a writer's block which seems to have no solution. As such, Dickens must face his personal demons epitomized through his characters, especially in his imagined conversations with Ebenezer Scrooge. Now with a looming deadline, Dickens struggles for inspiration against his frustrations and his characters' opinions in a literary challenge creating a classic tale that would define the essential soul of modern Christmas..


This week's featured book: Letters from Father Christmas (J.R.R Tolkien)

From English fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien, this calligraphy picture book would make just as much sense if it were titled Letters from Father Tolkien. Its filled with letters Tolkien wrote to his children every year at Christmas—all told from the from the point of view of either Father Christmas or a talking polar bear, and accompanied by the most whimsical illustrations. Bookworm tip: Make sure your tablet is capable of showing off the vibrant colors.











(We would love to hear your recommendations! Let us know what you have watched/read/listened to recently so we can feature them in the next newsletter!)
EPD OFFICE HOURS

José Antonio Ocampo, EPD Co-Director
Sign up online: https://tinyurl.com/officehours-ocampo

Jenny McGill, EPD Co-Director and Workshop Director
Sign up online: https://tinyurl.com/mcgill-oh

Ilona Vinklerova, EPD Manager
Sign up online: https://sipa.campusgroups.com/meetings/1060915/IlonaOfficeHours 

Séléna Batchily, EPD Program Assistant
By appointment at ssb2200@columbia.edu

Saiful Salihudin, EPD Program Assistant
By appointment at sas2409@columbia.edu

Your friendly PAs,
Séléna & Saiful