People
The Pulte Institute for Global Development's core team is composed of administrators, faculty, researchers, and staff spread across three specialized operating divisions:
- The Innovation and Practice Division
- The Entrepreneurship and Education Division
- The Evidence and Learning Division
Our core team is supported by several undergraduate interns, who provide administrative support, as well as dozens of graduate students and fellows, who provide research support. We also collaborate with hundreds of faculty, staff, and administrators throughout campus.
Innovation and Practice Division
The Innovation and Practice Division links the brilliant research efforts of Notre Dame faculty and students to inform and support sustainable development programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Our team of skilled practitioners translates the University’s research through a lens of integral human development to impact and challenge systems contributing to poverty and inequality.
Through this division, the Pulte Institute is unique in its ability to leverage expertise across multiple disciplines to advance solutions to complex problems. The Institute supports innovations with potential development applications in both the physical and social sciences. Through this division, the Pulte Institute supports the mission of the Keough School of Global Affairs to not only understand, but also actively attend to the cultural, social, ethical, economic, natural, political, and technical dimensions of global development. To achieve this, the Applied Innovation Division:
- Supports innovations such as new research methodologies, business models, policy approaches, or delivery methods that benefit the global community;
- Provides assistance to strategic planning, design, and implementation of sustainable development programs and policies;
- Contributes to the translation of research to influence nation-building and the creation of effective states; and
- Facilitates partnerships and systems strengthening among civil society, government and private sector institutions, to increase outlets for innovation and opportunities for research application.
Entrepreneurship and Education Division
The Entrepreneurship and Education Division builds capacity and develops the unique attributes of global citizens and development professionals so that they can affect change in their own societies. This division works with professionals at all career levels from the public and private sectors, as well as civil society, on complex global challenges that cut across disciplines, industries, and geographies.
The division's portfolio of projects, to varying degrees, involve research; education; outreach; and engaging students, faculty and staff at Notre Dame, as well as global partners and professionals in other contexts. The division's team of experts and affiliated internal and external partners:
- Engage in, and deliver, innovative curriculum design and pedagogy;
- Strengthen and advance the skills, competencies and abilities of people and communities in low- and middle-income contexts;
- Focus on entrepreneurial and market-oriented problem solving, leadership, human-centered design, foresight, and innovation;
- Provide technical, administrative, and logistical support to effectively deliver programming; and
- Leverages the experience, cultural diversity, and educational backgrounds of program participants to create an engaging learning environment for all.
Evidence and Learning Division
The Evidence and Learning Division focuses on generating useful evidence for approaches and policies that foster integral human development. In the context of the global sustainable development goals, corporations, funding agencies, governments, and NGOs are no longer satisfied with simply throwing money at projects in developing countries without evidence of results.
This division seeks to support decision-makers through mixed methods, rigorous, and complex designs that help determine the short- and long-term impacts and other results of projects created at the Pulte Institute, elsewhere at Notre Dame, or at one of our partner organizations. The purpose of the evidence, and supporting division activities in data management and decision science, is to achieve individual, group, and organizational learning to improve human dignity across the world.