For first-year student Shruti Sahoo, UC Berkeley’s campus seemed to sport a divide: on one side, highly politically engaged students, and on the other, those focused on being part of the cutting edge of technological innovation.
She and 32 other students spent this past spring in a course dedicated to making explicit how the two might connect: Building Bridges Between Democracy and Technology for a Better Society. Part of the Challenge Lab series run by the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET), the course invites students to brainstorm, develop and pitch web-based platforms with the potential to effect positive social and political change at the broadest scale possible.
The course was co-developed by Kirk Bansak, a Berkeley political science professor and Gert Christen, who helped lead former San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s public sector innovation lab. Christen now teaches entrepreneurship to Berkeley students, focusing on connecting them with opportunities and current developments in nearby Silicon Valley.