Back in New Haven, ready for Term No. 6. Here are the courses I've selected for the semester.
CGSC 390 Junior Seminar in Cognitive Science
Discussion of historically important papers in cognitive science. Topics are varied and reflect student interests. Some attention to planning for the senior project. Intended for juniors in the Cognitive Science major.
MGT 562 Behavioral Perspectives on Management
Good managerial decision making requires both the ability to predict how others will decide and behave and an appreciation of one’s own biases, shortcomings, and behavioral tendencies. Toward this aim, behavioral researchers in psychology, marketing, economics, finance, organizational behavior, and political science have studied how people actually make decisions and how they actually behave in real-world contexts. This research has revealed how people are surprisingly limited in their rationality, their willpower, and their self-interest. Indeed, people are more prone to bias, myopia, and charity than rational models – and most managers – assume, and this fact has profound implications for managerial and public policy making. In this course, you will gain a realistic understanding of human behavior, and you will learn to apply this understanding to many perspectives relevant for management. In a course that features guest lectures by a diverse group of School of Management faculty engaged in cutting-edge behavioral research, you will learn how you can make better managerial and policy decisions – both by overcoming biases in your own decisions and by better understanding those whose behavior you are trying to change.
INTS 427 Social Enterprise in Developing Economies
Harnessing the power of markets in the fight against poverty has been an area of much study and experimentation over the past 30 years. Increasingly, entrepreneurs are using market-based business practices as a means to bring sustainable social benefits to locally impoverished regions of the world and provide a financial return to investors. Commensurately, many socially-oriented and innovation-minded investment groups are looking for these types of investments – bringing additional capital to this nascent marketplace. Philanthropic organizations and corporations also seek development of a unified system of metrics to measure the impact of grants, program related investments or base of the pyramid investments. Through required readings and case study examples, this class will explore the increasing importance of social enterprise as a means of fostering local empowerment to establish the building blocks of regional economic development. Structured as a seminar to promote active class participation, we will discuss and explore the many financial, political and cultural challenges faced by socially entrepreneurial organizations and their sponsors in each of their unique circumstances. In addition, students will be required form and work in small teams to identify, research and present the work of a social enterprise of their choice anywhere in the developing world. Students will be expected to spend part of their 2011 summer break completing field research with the organizations they choose.
PSYC 495 Research Topics in Psychology
Discussion of current and advanced topics and/or ongoing research projects. Specific areas of research correspond to 700-level courses.
PORT 140 Intermediate Portuguese II
Continuation of PORT 130.
