This class is one of the core requirements for the Environmental Masters of Engineering program, in conjunction with 1.133 Masters of Engineering Concepts of Engineering Practice. It is designed to teach about environmental engineering through the use of case studies, computer software tools, and seminars from industrial experts. Case studies provide the basis for group projects as well as individual theses. Recent 1.782 projects include the MMR Superfund site on Cape Cod, appropriate wastewater treatment technology for Brazil and Honduras, point-of-use water treatment and safe storage procedures for Nepal and Ghana, Brownfields Development in Providence, RI, and water resource planning for the island of Cyprus and refugee settlements in Thailand. This class spans the entire academic year; students must register for the Fall and Spring terms.

This course is based on the work of the MIT-African Internet Technology Initiative (MIT-AITI). MIT-AITI is an innovative approach by MIT students to integrate computers and internet technology into the education of students in African schools. The program focuses upon programming principles, cutting-edge internet technology, free open-source systems, and even an entrepreneurship seminar to introduce students in Africa to the power of information technology in today’s world.
MIT-AITI achieves this goal by sending MIT students to three African nations in order to teach both students and teachers through intensive classroom and lab sessions for six weeks. The AITI program is implemented with emphasis on classroom teaching, community-oriented projects, and independent learning.
This course has two major components:

Content from a spring 2005 preparatory seminar offered by the MIT-AITI leadership. The goal of this seminar is to adequately prepare the AITI student teachers for their upcoming summer experiences in Africa.
A snapshot of the summer 2005 MIT-AITI program. This includes the Java®-based curriculum that MIT-AITI ambassadors teach in Africa each year, as well as content from an entrepreneurship seminar offered concurrently with the IT class.

In this 7th grade humanities lesson, students prepare Ghanaian Black-Eyed Peas and examine the exchange of foods between Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas during the Columbian Exchange.

This course is an introduction to selected musical traditions of West Africa. A variety of musical practices and their cultural contexts will be explored through listening, reading, and written assignments, with an emphasis on class discussion. The course includes in-class instruction in West African drumming, song and dance, as well as lecture-demonstrations by guest artists.
After an introductory unit, the course will be organized around four main geographical areas: Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria. An in-depth study of music from these countries will be interspersed with brief overviews of Southern, Central, and East Africa.

This assignment asks students to engage with different primary sources and perspectives to understand political change in the Gold Coast between World War II and 1950. Through close readings of documents, students can recognize how historical events, in this case, the experience of the Second World War and the Accra riots of 1948, transformed what was politically possible in the context of the Gold Coast. Students should see that national independence and the establishment of Ghana as a nation state were far from inevitable in the late 1940s as different actors, on the ground in the Gold Coast and from the vantage of the colonial government, negotiated changing expectations and aspirations.