social_change

April@MIIS: World Class Speakers, Cultural Events, Conferences

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu Featured, Monterey Cyber Security Initiative, newsroom, social_change, trade
TEDxMonterey

TEDxMonterey returns to the Monterey Institute on April 26 with a look at “Edges.”

April is an exciting month at the Monterey Institute with a plethora of activities, including many events that are open to both the campus community and the larger Monterey Bay area community. Upcoming include:

  • Friday, April 4: The annual International Trade Conference, focusing this year on “U.S.-China Agriculture Trade Barriers,” starting at 8:00 a.m. in the Irvine Auditorium. (Free and open to the public; please register online.)
  • Friday, April 11: The Monterey Institute welcomes Steve Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA, delivering the keynote address “Bringing Human Rights Home” at the annual Human Rights Fair in the Irvine Auditorium at 6 p.m. (Free and open to the public; no registration required.)
  • Saturday, April 12: The annual International Bazaar is one of the most cherished events of the year at the Monterey Institute, where students and other community members come together and enjoy food and entertainment from the various cultures represented on campus. The Bazaar always coincides with Spring Visit Day, offering prospective students and their families the opportunity to visit campus. (International Bazaar is for the MIIS campus community only; prospective students may sign up for Visit Day online.)
  • Thursday-Friday, April 17-18: “Ukraine, Russia and Cyber Threats” is the very timely topic of a unique cyber security conference co-hosted by “Suits and Spooks” and the Monterey Cyber Security Initiative, featuring speakers from Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain, Estonia and the United States discussing the current Crimean crisis and global cyber security risks. (Open to the public; registration fee for public attendees; free registration for MIIS faculty, staff, and students.)
  • Friday, April 18: As part of the Spring 2014 Colloquium on Economic Diplomacy and Statecraft, the Institute will host renowned political economist and commentator Francis Fukuyama for a public lecture in the Irvine Auditorium at 6 p.m. The title of his talk is “Economic Diplomacy and Global Governance in a Multi-polared World.” (Free and open to the public; no registration required.)
  • Saturday, April 26: In its fifth year at the Monterey Institute, the theme for TEDxMonterey 2014 is “Edges” – a celebration of what emerges when we embrace the edge: discovery, invention and transformation. A diverse group of speakers will share their stories, insights and scientific discoveries, and audience members will have ample opportunity to interact with each other as well as presenters during breaks, over lunch and at the reception to be held after the program concludes. (Open to the public; ticket purchase and registration online.)

In addition, the week of April 21 will also feature a host of activities organized by Monterey Institute staff, faculty, and students to celebrate Earth Day, with each day of the week be devoted to an issue or area such as energy, food, and water.

Whatever your area of interest might be, we hope to see you on campus this month! 

MIIS Student Wins Projects for Peace Fellowship for Cholera Prevention Project in Haiti

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, Fellowships, internships, IPS, newsroom, social_change
Wesley Laine

Wesley Laine (MAIPS ’14) holding one of the beneficiaries of his innovative water project.

Monterey Institute student Wesley Laine (MAIPS ’14) will receive $10,000 in funding for his Cholera prevention project in Haiti through the prestigious Projects for Peace fellowship. “I am really grateful to MIIS and the Kathryn Davis Foundation for believing in my project — Cholera Prevention: Service, Solidarity, and Peace,” says Wesley. The foundation’s Projects for Peace initiative encourages students at the Davis United World College Scholars Program partner schools to design grassroots projects that promote peace and address the root causes of conflict among parties. The fellowship is funded by the Davis family in honor of Kathryn W. Davis, a lifetime internationalist and philanthropist, who died last year at the age of 106. She founded the program when she turned 100 years old, challenging young leaders to “bring about a mind-set of preparing for peace, instead of preparing for war.”

Wesley is very passionate about his bottom-up approach to form a real partnership with people in rural Haiti to improve hygiene with the aim of preventing waterborne pathogens, especially cholera. His work has been featured at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting (see news story from October 2013). He likens the project to a marathon and says: “I am in it until the end. That is my promise to my compatriots in Haiti.”

Applicants for Projects for Peace fellowships are encouraged to use their creativity to design projects and employ innovative techniques for engaging project participants in ways that focus on conflict resolution, reconciliation, building understanding and breaking down barriers which cause conflict, and finding solutions for resolving conflicts and maintaining peace. Wesley has designed his project to “empower the individual agency with a focus on establishing a preferential option for the poor.” He is very happy with the many professional growth opportunities he has been provided with through his studies at the Monterey Institute, including a semester in Paris with Middlebury Schools Abroad and Development Project Management Institute intensive training program in Rwanda this January.

MIIS Team Reaches Finals of Regional Hult Prize Competition, Makes Key Connections

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, DPMI, Featured, FMS, IPS, MPA, newsroom, social_change
MIIS Hult Prize Team

From left: Maria Kovell (MPA ‘14), Amitay Flores (IPS ‘14), Amanda Boyek (IPS ‘14), Natalie Cox (MPA ‘14), Amy Ross (MPA ‘14)

A team of Monterey Institute students—Maria Kovell (MPA ‘14), Amitay Flores (MAIPS ‘14), Amanda Boyek (MAIPS ‘14), Natalie Cox (MPA ‘14), and Amy Ross (MPA ‘14)—made their mark at the Hult Prize regional competition last weekend in San Francisco, and left the competition with something at least as good as a win: a path forward for their innovative project.

The team first beat hundreds of competitors to win a place in the 2014 Hult Prize Regional Finals in San Francisco, then proceeded to wow the judges there, who selected them as one of four teams (out of 47) to advance to the final round of the regional competition. The other three finalists came from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Hult International Business School in San Francisco, and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

The 2014 Hult Prize Challenge, a collaboration with the Clinton Global Initiative, was to design a sustainable business model addressing non-communicable disease in urban slums. Executives from Intel, IDEO, Google.org, EMC and Matternet were represented on the judging panel that supported the Monterey Institute team and voted them into the final round. The team was encouraged by the reception their idea received and plan to move their venture, Salud2, forward after graduation in May with a pilot in Mexico. They will be meeting with people from some of the organizations they connected with at the competition and are also exploring options with MIIS faculty and staff.

“It was an energizing experience for us. MIIS coursework and programs like the Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) and the Development Project Management Institute (DPMI) opened our minds and pushed our thinking to the level required to tackle today’s most complex problems,” says Amy Ross. The team sincerely thanks the MIIS faculty that supported them along the way and would like to congratulate the MIT team that moved forward from the San Francisco Regional Finals and will present their venture at the Clinton Global Initiative in September.

Student Teams Compete in MIIS Water Innovation Challenge

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, internships, MPA, newsroom, social_change
Water Innovation Challenge

Participants in this spring’s water innovation challenge gather in the Digital Learning Commons’ Design Space to work on this wicked problem.

As our motto, to “be the solution,” indicates, a Monterey Institute degree involves much more than classroom theory. Monterey Institute students have numerous opportunities via immersive learning experiences to develop their professional skills by completing fieldwork and working on real-life issues as part of their class assignments. This spring semester, a group of faculty and staff from across the Institute has launched an innovation challenge for teams of students willing to tackle a true wicked problem.

The challenge, Nor Any Drop to Drink? – Securing the Future of Monterey County’s Fresh Water Supply, involves participating in a series of stakeholder conversations and workshops and working with teams to come up with solutions to a problem that is at once very local and yet global in its wickedness. As Professor Kent Glenzer of the Development Practice and Policy program says, it serves three main purposes: “First, it promotes interdisciplinary work among students, and stretches them to look across degree silos. Complex problems don’t lend themselves to single-discipline solutions. Second, it gives students a real-world laboratory for trying out what they are learning in the classroom. And third, it allows students to engage with local stakeholders – the powerful and the excluded – and forces them to find solutions that are acceptable by many. And it’s a great networking opportunity to boot!”

Ten teams have risen to the challenge and started to interact with stakeholders and experts. They have been tasked with coming up with ideas that are:

  • sustainable across future generations
  • progessive regarding economic growth
  • affordable,
  • socially,economically and politically just, and
  • compelling to local stakeholders

A panel of external judges will select winners in late April. The team with the idea deemed best by the judges will receive a monetary award of $2,500.

MIIS Students Advance to Regional Finals for Million-Dollar Hult Prize for Social Benefit Ventures

Anne-Marie Steiger asteiger@miis.edu development, Featured, IEP, MPA, newsroom, social_change
Hult Prize Teammates

Hult Prize competition teammates Natalie Cox, Amitay Flores, Maria Kovell, and Amy Ross.

The Hult Prize is described as “the world’s largest student competition and start-up platform for social good.” This year, more than 10,000 teams from 350 universities in 150 countries sent in proposals focusing on the 250 million slum dwellers suffering from chronic diseases. In January, a team consisting of five MIIS students in the Development Practice and Policy programs, Amanda Boyek (MAIPS ’14), Natalie Cox (MPA ’14), Amitay Flores (MAIPS ’14), Maria Kovell (MPA ’14), and Amy Ross (MPA ’14) got word that they had advanced to the regional finals in San Francisco.

The MIIS team’s proposal is centered around improving youth nutrition and they are now hard at work preparing for the next stage which will take place on March 7 and 8 in San Francisco. “The Hult Prize competition is a unique opportunity to fully develop our ideas into a feasible plan for action,” says Natalie Cox, “and also a chance to see perspectives from students around the world.” Other regional finals will be held in Boston, London, Dubai, Shanghai and Sao Paulo at the same time. One winning team from each host city will move into a summer business incubator, with the final round hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative at its annual meeting in September of this year.

“We are very proud of the Monterey Institute team,” says President Sunder Ramaswamy. “The Hult Prize competition challenges them to put into practice many of the concepts and techniques they have been learning here, and we are delighted to have them represent MIIS in the regional finals.”