Inclusive Pathways Into Tech & Entrepreneurship
New Decal Course
Fall 2019
EECS 98—2 Units
Start Date: September 5th
Weekly Meetings: Thursdays 5-7pm
Location: Sutarjda Dai Hall, Room 242
Inclusive Pathways into Tech and Entrepreneurship is for students who want to get hands-on experience in creating a project that advances diversity in tech. This course engages in an innovative approach to teaching by bringing together students from tech and non-tech majors to learn what kind of diverse perspectives they need on their team to solve the world’s problems.
Students from arts, humanities, and social science disciplines will learn new pathways into technology careers where they can use their skills to enter unexpected fields and or a path to entrepreneurship. They will learn about resources like the Jacobs Institute Maker Space where they can develop a product prototype for a “big idea”. The course provides space to collaboratively critique one another on their business pitch. This course uses innovative pedagogy as a student-centered learning, student facilitated course that brings students across campus majors and diverse life experiences to contribute to discussion-based learning rather than a single-perspective lecture.
The course also leverages weekly guest speakers who are practitioners from diverse sectors of tech fields such as gaming design and medical technology who work finding sociological solutions using technology. Through guest speakers, students can learn about tech companies they may not know about, positions they may not know are career opportunities, network with the speakers and potentially get feedback on their big idea.
The course capstone project helps students in each of their unique pathways. Students going the entrepreneurship route will be able to pitch and prototype their idea or to prepare a Big Ideas submission, students going into a research pathway will have a research proposal, students interested in social justice might propose a convening or pilot an intervention to improve inclusion, or students can propose what a part 2 of a DeCal class would look like to help scale the course across campus and future semesters.
The course meets Thursdays starting September 5th from 5-7pm in Sutarjda Dai Hall. This is a 2 unit course.
If interested, please fill out the form here to initiate enrollment. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. You must also add the course to your registration “shopping cart” by searching the course number “33751” in order to enroll.
For questions, please contact Nicole Cotton at ncotton@berkeley.edu