Before departing from campus, students from GHELI Faculty Director Sue J. Goldie’s Harvard College course, Gen Ed 1063: World Health: Challenges and Opportunities, dropped by the Incubator for an open house. This open house was an opportunity for students to connect with others interested in global health, learn about GHELI and Professor Goldie’s work, and have an informal chat about what "working in global health" could look like.
After a tour of the pedagogical studios and spaces with Instructional Design Specialist, Nina Bhattacharya, the students were also joined by the course’s teaching fellows for the roundtable discussion. The conversation was organic and dynamic, surfacing individual student’s research interests that ranged from health economics to HIV/AIDS management. Many acknowledged how the analytic skills developed in class helped them understand the evolving COVID-19 pandemic with more nuance.
As a General Education course, Gen Ed 1063 emphasizes broad analytic and critical thinking skills, more than acquisition of facts and details. The course has no prerequisites aside from an open mind, curiosity about alternative perspectives, a willingness to self-reflect, and a commitment to “be present” and engage – with the issues discussed, the material read, the products made, and the learning community created. Developing skills across data literacy, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking, and policy analysis, students apply their abilities to a creative final project—some of which are now on display at the Incubator.