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Announcing IPD's AidData Summer Fellows for 2017!

3/29/2017

2 Comments

 
IPD is pleased to announce our 2017 AidData Summer Fellows! AidData and IPD have worked closely over the past few years to send graduate and undergraduates all over the world to work with partner organizations on all things data. AidData Summer Fellows improve the capacity of civil society in developing countries to use geocoded data, which localizes development funding and activities down to the district, town or street corner level. Funded by USAID, summer fellows embed with local universities, think tanks and civil society groups for two to three months, equipping local organizations with the skills to use this data in program planning, advocacy and research.
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Here is the current roundup of 2017 AidData Summer Fellows from the University of Texas at Austin:​​
  • Hina Acharya is a first-year Master of Global Policy Studies student at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Her policy interests are in International Development and regional interests in South Asia and Africa. Prior to graduate school, Hina served as an English teacher in Nepal and as a student advocate for a non-profit in Omaha, Nebraska. This summer, she will serve as an AidData summer fellow for the Open Sustainability Institute in Kampala, Uganda to support and advocate for Open Data efforts in the country. 
  • Kevin Strybos is a senior undergraduate student majoring in Geography in the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. He will be working with USAID in Lima, Peru assisting their team with GIS-related projects.  Kevin will also be training people new methods for using geospatial tools and how to run more complex types of analyses with ArcGIS. Kevin will work on building upon geodatabases, creating maps related to LULCC (deforestation, coffee production, burn incidents, etc.) and developing story maps with ArcGIS Online for USAID Peru.  
  • Paul Kuhne is a Master of Global Policy Studies student at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He will be working with the Open Sustainability Institute (OSI) of Uganda supporting their sustainability work. Paul will be geocoding key sustainability projects around the country and helping them build a repository of information that supports their IGAD Climate Prediction & Applications Center. OSI's interventions serve to provide critical information to both citizens and government officials in order to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. Paul will also help OSI write a policy brief that will be presented to the government outlining recommendations for preparedness and development strategies. 
  • Katherine Whitton is a first-year Master of Global Policy Studies student at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies International Development and Governance. Prior to graduate school, Katherine was in US Peace Corps serving as an education volunteer in Ethiopia (2013-2015). She started working with Innovations for Peace and Development (IPD) in Fall 2016. This summer she will be interning through the AidData Summer Fellowship Program at the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) in Kampala, Uganda. She will either work in the Trade & Regional Integration Department (agriculture policy) or the Micro department (infant mortality). Both positions will involve a feasibility assessment, production of geocoded data, geocoding and GIS training, and research plan development.
2 Comments

Student Spotlight: Akshat Gautam

3/21/2017

8 Comments

 
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1. What is your year and major at UT?
I am a sophomore and Economics and Mathematics double major.

2. How long have you been in IPD and how did you hear about the organization? Are you part of a specific team within IPD?
I joined IPD my freshman year, and have been here for the past 3 semesters. Being extremely interested in getting a research opportunity, I was actively looking for avenues for getting involved. That is when I heard about IPD from one of my professors. I am in the Governance and Development team, as well as the Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA) team.

3. What is the most rewarding part of contributing and being an active member of IPD? Have you faced any challenges while working in IPD?
Being able to work closely with such motivated students and professors is definitely the most rewarding part of IPD. That has expanded my knowledge about the developmental work being done around the world. The most challenging part at first was finding the right balance between IPD and studies. But the benefits and the amount I learn at IPD provide something that a classroom education can never provide, which makes it worth the effort. 

4. How does your work with IPD relate to your career goals?
I wish to go to graduate school and eventually work in the developmental economics field. Thus it is essential that I make good use of my time at UT and gain as much knowledge and experience as I can about the field. Fortunately, IPD has given me the perfect opportunity to do so.
Working with the Governance team, collecting and analyzing data to find the existence of clientelism in Honduras, has expanded my knowledge about developmental politics. Meanwhile the CEPSA team gives me an important insight into the realm of global aid tracking and analysis, and also the limitations that come with it.

5. What are your hopes for the rest of this school year?
The hope is definitely to come up with a publication-worthy article for the Governance team, now that we have gone through the hard part of finding and cleaning up the data!

8 Comments

Student Spotlight: Haley McCoin

3/6/2017

25 Comments

 
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Dedicated, ambitious students are what IPD possible! Meet Haley who has been with IPD for almost two years.
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1. What is your year and major at UT?
4th year International Relations and Global Studies Major (IRG)

2. How long have you been in IPD and how did you hear about the organization? Are you part of a specific team within IPD?
I've been in IPD since the fall of my sophomore year, I heard about the organization from a friend who was in it and suggested that I might be interested in the work IPD was doing. This semester, I'm a part of the Data4Peace team. In the past I was on the Natural Resource and Conflict team. 

3. What is the most rewarding part of contributing and being an active member of IPD? Have you faced any challenges while working in IPD?
I joined IPD out of an interest in developing skills that weren't necessarily offered to me through my liberal arts courses for my IRG degree. I was really interested in learning GIS, and when I expressed this interest to team leads, they made sure to incorporate me into GIS-related projects to help me learn the ropes. I think being able to see yourself actually grow in a skill set is really rewarding, and not something you always get when taking a more conceptual and analytical course load where progress is harder to measure. In addition to the reward of that measurable personal growth, IPD has really exposed me to important global issues and opportunities to contribute to meaningful solutions to issues I find interesting. 

4. How does your work with IPD relate to your career goals?
One of my favorite parts of IPD is that it coordinates undergrads and grad students into the same space and the same conversations about issues we're all interested in. Those conversations and connections have really helped me envision the ways in which the skills I'm learning in IPD will likely come in handy when I'm applying to grad school in a few years. 

5. What are your hopes for the rest of this school year? 
GRADUATE—I'm trying to really soak in as much of UT and Austin as I can before I graduate! 


25 Comments

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