The Commonwealth Scholarships
Master of Science in Development Management.
The Open University UK is in partnership with Kulika Uganda in managing both the recruitment process and the progress of students who succeed in receiving an award. We have been working together successfully on Commonwealth Scholarship awards since 2006, but our partnership stretches back to the 1990s. This year 2012 we have been asked to nominate 15 people for Scholarships and a further 10 people as reserves.
THE OPEN UNIVERSITY / KULIKA UGANDA
MSc IN DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT
COMMONWEALTH SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS 201
April 2012
Dear Applicant
Thank you very much for your interest in applying for a Commonwealth Scholarship to study our MSc in Development Management. I am writing to say something about the process of application and about the degree.
1. The application process:
The Open University UK is in partnership with Kulika Uganda in managing both the recruitment process and the progress of students who succeed in receiving an award. We have been working together successfully on Commonwealth Scholarship awards since 2006, but our partnership stretches back to the 1990s. This year we have been asked to nominate 15 people for Scholarships and a further 10 people as reserves.
The recruitment begins with the application form you will be receiving with this letter. If you decide to go ahead and apply, your application will need to be with us no later than Monday 14 May. You must send it to:
mathias@kulika.org
and to
r.pinder@open.ac.uk
All applications will be considered by a panel that includes both Kulika and Open University representatives. We will select a long-list of people who will be invited to submit further evidence in support of their application. That evidence will need to be sent – to the same two people – no later than 30 May. This evidence, together with the original application, will again be considered by a panel that includes both Kulika and Open University representatives. This panel will choose the people to be nominated for Scholarships and those asked to be reserves. We have to make our choices known to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, which has the final decision on awards, no later than 11 June.
There is another important part of the application process. The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission has its own application process, and applicants must complete their electronic application form if they are to be considered for a Scholarship. The application form can be found at their website:
http://csc.do-it-online.org.uk/csc/ElectronicApplicationSystem.htm
Once on that site, you need to click on ‘Applicant’s Portal’. This will invite you to ‘register as a new user’: you take it from there! This form has to be completed no later than 28 May (i.e., before the end of our Open University/Kulika selection process). You are of course free to complete this form at any time up to 28 May, but I would recommend that you at least look at it – and ideally complete it – at your earliest opportunity. It is quite a demanding form, so ‘sooner rather than later’ would be a good rule to follow! If you have any problem with this, please feel free to contact me.
2. The Open University MSc in Development Management
The MSc is a course that was established in 1996, and is well regarded internationally. Almost 1000 students have achieved this award, including a significant number in Uganda and Kenya. You may well know one or more of our MScs, and if you do I would strongly recommend that you ask them both about its value and about the demands it puts upon students. I am confident that they will say it is both valuable and demanding!
The MSc follows a set pattern, beginning in November this year. Each year, Scholars study two 6 month modules (November – April, May to October). These are organised as follows:
Year 1: Certificate in Conflict and Development
Development: Context and Practice
War, intervention and development
Year 2: Diploma in Development Management
Capacities for Managing Development
Institutional Development
Year 3: MSc in Development Management
Optional module (usually relating to education or the environment)
The Development Management Project
Synopses of the modules (though not the optional ones) are provided at the end of this letter. The whole programme is undertaken on a distance learning basis, though provision is made for at least one day school in Kampala and Nairobi for each module, provided by an experienced tutor. Throughout each module, students have the benefit of a specialist tutor who guides their learning and assesses their performance.
Fees for these modules are covered by the Scholarships. I should also say that students who fail a module have to cover the fee themselves if they want to retake the module – though this is a comparatively rare occurrence.
I hope that this is helpful and that you will be encouraged to proceed with your application. And, if you are not successful, please be aware that we would be delighted to see you applying to study any or all of these modules, and that if you do you will be joining an impressive body of development management professionals in East Africa who have pursued this programme.
With best wishes,
Richard Pinder
Richard Pinder
Qualification Director
MSc in Development Management
The Open University
r.pinder@open.ac.uk
MANAGING . . .
. . . DEVELOPMENT
A picture of managers dealing in the diversity and complexity of particular contexts emerges from the five modules that form the heart of the Open University Global Development Management Programme. It is a picture of managers who:
• understand and engage with the context in which development is intended to take place
• are clear about the values, meanings and interests that inform their actions
• recognise the values, meanings and interests of other actors
• recognise the political and ethical dimensions of the processes in which they are engaged
• can manage conflict
• appreciate the significance of good inter-organisational relationships
• negotiate understandings and agreements that enable a range of actors to work together for change
• reflect critically on their own practice
The picture is of managers working in development contexts. But the skills displayed – the skills taught on the Programme – are skills required by managers working in any and all contexts.
Setting the framework:
TU871: Development: context and practice
TU871 explores contemporary debates on ‘development’. It does so in inter-disciplinary fashion, and with an understanding that development is not confined to a particular geographical area but is happening anywhere and everywhere, presenting us all with challenges that are professional and personal, practical and political. It confronts conventional understandings of development and encourages critical reflection on how development is best undertaken, from local through to global levels.
Above all, it demonstrates the need on the part of managers to appreciate the significance of context – historical, cultural, social, political, economic – if they are to bring about development.
The analytical and professional/practical skills presented encourage understanding both of what development is and might be and of how it is and might be done. The module thus provides an excellent grounding in development studies and a sound academic framework within which to build up skills for managing development, the concern of our wider postgraduate development management programme.
Intervening with understanding:
TU875: War, intervention and development
All development management interventions encounter and must deal with complexity, but some more than others. TU875 explores the case of complex political emergencies taking the form of civil wars, and establishes the basis on which interventions in such contexts can be developed that at worst ‘do no harm’ and at best make for a just and lasting peace. A central premise is that, because each war is different, the first step to a good intervention is to understand the roots of the war and the goals of the various actors. Another is that a good intervention requires a vision of what is a desirable society, and a willingness to expose that vision to scrutiny by others. In all this, there are lessons for managers working in any complex context.
The module sets out the theory and illustrates the practice of the diverse skills that contribute to the making of a good intervention:
• mapping the context, conceptually and diagrammatically
• making reality judgments
• forming value judgments
• coming to decisions
• building inter-organisational relationships
• negotiating understandings and agreements
The exploration of theory and practice related to interventions in civil war demonstrates that management with a development focus, informed by a vision of development, can make a significant contribution to social transformation, in this case from civil war to civil peace.
Getting the basics in place:
TU870: Capacities for managing development
Development management engages with the multiple challenges of ‘development’ – any development, anywhere – and this module sets out to build up the basic capacities for managing those challenges. It rests on the assumption that management – any management, anywhere – is essentially a political and ethical process, a matter of the use of power to bring about desired goals in contexts characterised by conflicts of interests, values and agendas.
The module teaches a range of skills needed and used by any manager, skills to do in particular with strategic thinking, research, advocacy, planning, policy making, and evaluation. The teaching is sharpened by exploration of the use of these skills in ‘development’ contexts, contexts where the issues are issues of freedom, of well-being, even issues of life and death, for individuals, organisations, communities, and nations.
The module – like the Global Development Management Programme as a whole – is designed for managers seeking to develop these skills and willing and able to reflect on the politics and ethics of their use. It is of relevance to managers in any sector – public, private, civil society – anywhere. No less importantly, it is open to all who have to manage, whether or not they are called ‘managers’.
In all this, the module demonstrates that capacities for managing development are quite simply capacities for managing.
Making for sustainability:
TU872: institutional development: conflicts, values and meanings
Institutions are critical for the success and sustainability of development processes. Managers – whether in the public sector, the private sector, or civil society – need the capacity to analyse the institutional landscape, design appropriate institutions, and establish good inter-organisational relationships.
This module aims to develop those capacities by:
• exploring the theory of institutions and institutional development
• examining the policy and practice of institutional development, in a variety of fields, including poverty reduction, governance, and humanitarian interventions
• exploring how relationships built around competition, coordination and cooperation underpin institutional development
• demonstrating how the skills of mapping and modelling, negotiating and brokering, contribute to institutional development.
The module examines issues of power, explores ways in which values, meanings and worldviews shape policy and practice, and shows how development management is always a negotiated process. In all this, it addresses and responds to the overwhelming experience of development management practitioners that the success or failure of their interventions depends primarily on getting the right relationships in place.
Making the case for change:
TU874: The development management project
Development managers are often called upon to undertake investigations that contribute to changes in practice and policy. The Development Management Project, the final, compulsory element of the MSc, provides an opportunity to learn, develop and practise the skills required for such an undertaking:
• establishing the need for an investigation
• defining the problem under investigation
• identifying ways of investigating the problem
• carrying out the research
• analysing the data gathered
• making an evidence-based case for change
The project is individually chosen, the choice determined by the student’s own passions and priorities. The process is guided by learning from previous modules of the Masters Programme. And the product is a report that makes the case for change in the understanding of, and the practice and policy related to, a significant development management problem.
Richard Pinder
Qualification Director
MSc in Development Management
The Open University
for more information;
http://www.kulika.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112:commonwealth-scholarships&catid=36:education&Itemid=37