Student Clubs

     

Type of Offering

Student Clubs
Net Impact Brandeis

Net Impact Brandeis is committed to building responsible leaders who use the power of business to create a positive social, economic, and environmental impact. We accomplish this by organizing professional trainings, educational events, and networking opportunities for the benefit of Net Impact members and the wider Brandeis community. Founded in 2005, NI Brandeis is led jointly by students from the International Business School and the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

Latin America and The Caribbean Development Working Group

Last year the Latin America and Caribbean Development Working Group focused on three activities for all Heller students:

* Rodney North from Equal Exchange gave a lecture on Fair Trade, Livelihoods and Development. It was well attended and generated great participation.

* Magdalena Gonzalez, a Colombian human rights activist spoke about the State sponsored violence and violations of human rights in the context of the Plan Colombia and the role of the US in all this.

* A Venezuelan movie "To Play and to Fight"was screened showing the positive impact of a classical music training and performance program among youth at risk in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas. Prof. Cohen from the Ethics Center led a lively discussion afterward.

Gender Working Group

The Heller Gender Working Group's mission is to bring a critical gender perspective to advance social, economic and environmental justice. Its goal is to support the integration of a gender analysis perspective into Heller teaching, research, and advocacy.

Education and Development Working Group

The Education and Development Working Group is a a student-led working group interested in a wide range of education issues, including the role of education in development. The goal of the Group is to introduce events, seminars, and courses on education and development to the Heller experience and to expand professional networks. It also provides a way to gain practice-oriented skills and knowledge for future careers

The mission of the Education and Development Working Group is threefold:

? To carry out activities in the Heller Community to raise awareness and increase knowledge about the role of education to advance development and social justice;

? To promote growth of the members by building skills and knowledge of the current research, policy, and practice of education; and

? To advocate for the need to incorporate education and capacity building into all development programs to achieve sustainability and advance social justice.

Recent activities include: setting up a blog, providing training, developing a Resource List including relevant courses, books, films, and other references, hosting speakers and events.

Heller Queer Student Association

Inclusion of students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) in the Heller community is critical to achieving the school’s mission of advancing social justice. The Heller Queer Student Association (HQSA) provides opportunities for LGBTQ students and straight allies to network and participate in a range of social, political, and scholarly activities to increase the visibility of LGBTQ issues at the Heller School and beyond. We welcome students from all programs at Heller (PhD, MPP, MBA, MA Sustainable International Development, MS International Health Policy & Management, MA Coexistence and Conflict). In addition, we have also initiated gatherings and programming with students from the other graduate programs at Brandeis.

Health Care Quality and Student Leadership

The group promotes membership in a community of graduate students to generate health care related ideas and identify opportunities to attend professional events in the Boston area. The group also seeks to strengthen the community of health care students within Heller, guiding and supporting Heller students from all five degree programs who have an interest in issues of quality in health care delivery, policy, research, and leadership. Finally, as an affiliate, Heller Chapter members will have access to the Open School’s educational resources: a wealth of on-line materials as well as modules that teach valuable skills for improving the quality of medical care here in the US and abroad.

LGBTQ Working Group

The Goals of the LGBTQ Working Group are:

1. Raise the Profile – Contribute to, and raise the profile of, the knowledge and discourse on social policy and management affecting equality and quality of life for LGBTQ citizens by:

– Providing recommended reading lists

– Discussion groups

– Social networking events

– Co-sponsoring a Heller 50th Anniversary signature event on “50 Years of the American Gay Rights Movement and the Challenges Ahead”

2. Inform the Curriculum – Explore and propose how the Heller School curriculum could be more inclusive of LGBTQ culture, research, policy and management paradigms

3. Generate New Projects – Develop proposals for evaluation, research, and/or capacity building projects related to the LGBTQ community and to undoing homophobia and related discrimination in the world community

HellerSAVE Group on Sustainability

HellerSAVE (Sustainability, Awareness and Valuing the Environment) is an environmental initiative of Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. HellerSAVE consists of researchers, administrative staff, graduate students and faculty from throughout the School who have come together in order to foster positive change.

Our mission is to work cooperatively with the entire Heller community—students, staff, and faculty—to maximize the level of environmental responsibility practiced by the Heller School. We seek to apply the School’s credo, “Knowledge Advancing Social Justice,” to the environmental realm that is thoroughly interconnected with other issues with which we concern ourselves here.

Justice Peace and Conflict Working Group

The Justice, Peace and Conflict working group's mission is to promote understanding and bring awareness within the Heller community of current issues pertaining to peace, justice and conflict through events, workshops, conferences, dialogue and debates.

Past Events have included:

-UN International Day of Peace: the event featured Coexistence and Conflict M.A. student-practitioners in the area of peace – Former Lost boy Atem Aleu and Rwandese former soldier (Presidential Unit) Seth Karamange. Also art installations of peacemakers, flags of conflict display and the global map of the history of peace accords and current conflicts.

-Speaker Series: featuring world class peacebuilders and makers

-Special event: Hosted the Sudanese Ambassador to the USA. He spoke about the January Southern Sudan referendum.

Working Group on South-South Poverty Discourse

The function of the South working group is to foster scholarly inquiry in the Heller community on what a South discourse means in relation to itself. The group aspires to link the souths (US, global, and equatorial) through creating an epistemological position statement which can stand alongside the North/South hegemony. This group will focus on the social impact of South-South discourses across continents and borders through discussions, lectures and writing projects. The group will address people and/in the environment because the concept of “south” is shaped by the physical landscape.

The South working group has three interconnected goals:

1. Explore an epistemology of a South-South dialogue

2. Foster linkages within the Global South

3. Strengthen the links between the US South and the non-US Global South

Racial Inequalities Working Group
Net Impact Social Entrepreneurship Working Group
Africa Development Working Group

The aim of Africa Development Working Group is to bring together students, academics, leaders, development practitioners, and friends interested in supporting the development of the African continent by engaging in educational and social projects that educate and create awareness both within and outside the Brandeis community about the African culture, beliefs, values, and ideologies. Key activities include inviting speakers to address key issues in Africa, hosting African events and strengthening African cultural identity, encouraging Brandeis scholars to take their skills, knowledge and experiences back to Africa, networking with other development bodies, institutions, and groups within Brandeis University and outside Brandeis University, and holding African student gatherings for peer mentoring shared learning.

HIV/AIDS Study Group

The AIDS Study Group (ASG) is a Heller work group open to the entire Brandeis community (students, staff, and faculty) devoted to examining the HIV/AIDS pandemic at local, regional, and global levels using multiple disciplinary and analytical lenses, including scientific, social scientific, gender and sexuality, human rights, and ecological/environmental.

Immigration Working Group

The Heller School Immigrant Working Rights Group includes students, staff, and faculty from the Heller School and the larger Brandeis University community, as well as non-Brandeis community members from Waltham and the surrounding area. The group's goals include: promoting research and evaluation activities around immigrant issues and policy, both by the group's members and in partnership with researchers/groups inside or outside Heller; active engagement in advocacy for immigrant rights and inclusion and developing partnerships with immigrant community groups and advocacy organizations; keeping the Heller and larger Brandeis community informed on immigrant issues through events (panels, talks, movie screenings, etc.) and distribution of information through mailings, emailings and notices in campus publications; and finally providing a resource for research or other professional activities by members of the group on the subject of immigration, including networking and opportunities for presentation/review of draft research.