New Certificates & Degree Programs from PIT-UN Members

New Certificates & Degrees from PIT-UN Members

Institutionalizing PIT

March 2023

Case Western Reserve University: Graduate Certificate in DSSI

Case Western Reserve University offers a Graduate Certificate in Data Science for Social Impact (DSSI), which equips students with the skills to use data science to improve social welfare. The certificate program is overseen by the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and the Case School of Engineering, and as such aims to operate at the intersection of data science and social science. Students take four courses to earn this certificate.

Cleveland State University Ohio: Society 5.0

Cleveland State University Ohio offers an interdisciplinary graduate certificate, Society 5.0, which is focused on the impacts of emerging technologies on the future of human life. Students take four courses across three colleges to earn this certificate.

Miami Dade College: College Credit Certificate in GIS Technology

Miami Dade College offers a College Credit Certificate in GIS Technology, accompanied by a dual enrollment opportunity for high school students. The certificate acts as a stackable component of the college’s Associate in Sciences degree in Computer Information Technology (CIT); students who wish to do so can continue on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in CIT. The goal of this program is to forge a career pathway for students in Miami Dade County to pursue GIS (geographic information systems), with a particular focus on environmental hazards awareness and community engagement (issues that are particularly relevant in the greater Miami area).

Arizona State University: Master’s of Science in Public Interest Technology

Arizona State University’s Master’s of Science in Public Interest Technology equips students to become leaders in the PIT field. Though the degree includes technical courses, the Master’s program emphasizes social responsibility over technical competency.

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IEEE Journal fosters Transdisciplinary Dialogue for Public Interest Technology

Robot city science fiction. Image by ParallelVision from Pixabay.

Transdisciplinary Dialogue for Public Interest Technology

Institutionalizing PIT

March, 2023

Although Public Interest Technology (PIT) is a nascent field, it builds on longstanding scholarly traditions of investigating the interplay between technology and society. Roba Abbas of the University of Wollongong and Katina Michael of Arizona State University have led a groundbreaking effort to cultivate scholarship that encourages transdisciplinary dialogue and advocates for the development of PIT. 

The journal IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, was the first academic outlet to publish a special issue dedicated to PIT, providing a wealth of scholarship building on the outcomes of the IEEE SSIT’s International Symposium on Technology and Society 2020 (ISTAS20). Each edition includes at least one free, downloadable PDF, including:

A Conceptual Model and Metaplatform for Public Interest Technology Design: “[D]esigning public interest technologies (PIT) needs to prioritize qualitative values of people and communities as suprafunctional requirements.” (Jeremy Pitt and Stephen Cranefield, Vol. 2, Issue 2, June 2021)

Bringing Care and Concern to Engineering Students Through STS Knowledge: “In this article, I discuss how the matters of concern and the matters of care can be utilized within engineering education to shift students’ attitudes regarding the social impact of their work.” (Anne Y. Patrick, Vol. 2, Issue 2, June 2021)

Insider Threats and Individual Differences: Intention and Unintentional Motivations: This study extends “research on the development of a brief cybersecurity questionnaire … to identify individual differences that are associated with cybersecurity vulnerabilities and cyber hygiene behavior.” (Jordan Richard Schoenherr, Vol. 3, Issue 3, September 2022)

What Happens to COVID-19 Data After the Pandemic? Socio-Technical Lessons: “In this paper, we examine the Australian COVID-19 technological response…was the data effectively used or integrated into the proposed processes?” (Katina Michael and Roba Abbas, Vol. 3, Issue 4, December 2022)

Several of the journal’s PIT articles were first presented at ISTAS20, which featured 210 abstracts and represented over 400 authors from 27 countries. The Full Conference proceedings are available, as are the special issues on socio-technical design, co-designing the future, and purpose-driven socio-technical innovation for PIT.

You can subscribe to the quarterly publication here, and submit articles here.

Roba Abbas

Author: Roba Abbas, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, University of Wollongong. Visiting Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University (2022)

Author: Katina Michael, Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Arizona State University. Honorary Professor School of Business, University of Wollongong (2022- )

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Miami Dade College students & Code for South Florida develop a participatory budgeting prototype

PeopleBudget.org: Miami Dade College students and Code for South Florida develop a participatory budgeting prototype

Theme: Public and Critical Infrastructure

Format: Dashboard

See the GitHub Resources

Miami Dade College (MDC), in partnership with Code for South Florida and the City of Miami, developed the Miami Budget project – an open source platform for citizen inclusion in the budget of the City of Miami. Students worked with faculty and industry professionals from Code for South Florida, Microsoft, and the City of Miami to create the participatory web application, which allows Miami residents to be informed contributors to their local budget.

The code repository, developed by students for this project, has nearly 100 branches. The fact that all branches are merged and closed shows evidence of student progress and completion of the project. Hundreds of separate commits were made by students, representing thousands of hours of work.

 

Related Resources:

Code for South Florida, Open Hack Night and People Budget Prototype Dem

 

Public and Critical Infrastructure

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Career Information and Resources on Information Privacy in Smart Systems

Career Information and Resources on
Information Privacy in Smart Systems (Smart Cities),
Washington University Law School and UC Berkeley Law School

Theme: Public and Critical Infrastructure

Format: Careers

Leading global experts in privacy and security law – Daniel Solove and Paul Schwartz – have compiled a resources hub that houses everything from career information to statues to international privacy law materials. 

See the Resources

Related Resources: 

Privacy + Security Academy 

Public and Critical Infrastructure

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SALUS – The Crisis Hub, Pepperdine University School of Public Policy

SALUS – The Crisis Hub,
Pepperdine University School of Public Policy

Theme: Public and Critical Infrastructure

Format: Web-based crisis and event management platform

The Crisis Hub, a crisis and event management platform that puts the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) directly into the hands of crisis managers, public safety professionals, and policymakers. Through maps and hundreds of real-time data sets, SALUS empowers end users to make data-informed decisions, effectively manage resources, share information, and generate accurate situational awareness.

Use SALUS to enhance readiness and resilience for your organization and the community you serve.

SALUS - The Crisis Hub Website

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Networks and Mobile Systems Capstone, University of Washington (Fall 2021)

Networks and Mobile Systems Capstone,
University of Washington (Fall 2021)

Theme: Public and Critical Infrastructure

Format: Capstone Course

Networks and Mobile Systems Capstone, University of Washington (Fall 2021) 

This capstone course provides students with the opportunity to apply their computer science knowledge and skills in the context of building, and operating community-based Internet networks, based both on WiFi and 3GPP cellular technologies. The course includes a mix of classroom sessions, practical assignments, and a capstone group project addressing the need of a real-world network.

Course Website

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Seattle Community Network, Community Networking Toolkit

A resource guide for anyone interested in starting up their own community network.
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The Community Network Manual: How to Build the Internet Yourself

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Seattle Community Network Docs

Resources from the Seattle Community Network, a community-run cellular (4G LTE) Internet access network dedicated to providing fair access to underserved communities all across the Puget Sound
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Seattle Community Network Coverage Map

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Public and Critical Infrastructure

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Local Surveillance Oversight Ordinances White Paper

Surveillance

Local Surveillance Oversight Ordinances White Paper

Theme: Public and Critical Infrastructure

Format: White Paper 

Student white paper compares and contrasts local surveillance technology ordinances from across the country

In the past few years, jurisdictions across the country have passed local surveillance technology ordinances. These ordinances are meant to bring more transparency and democratic control to local government use of surveillance technology. They passed in response to a push by civil rights and civil liberties groups concerned with the increasingly powerful surveillance capabilities of local law enforcement agencies. 

This student white paper is an effort to catalog and compare the local surveillance technology oversight ordinances that have passed so far based on the text of the ordinances themselves. 

It is authored by Berkeley Law students Ari Chivukula ’21 and Tyler Takemoto ’22, under the supervision of Catherine Crump and Juliana DeVries.

Read the White Paper

Public and Critical Infrastructure

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