Accepting Applications for Spring 2022's Semester in Navigating Complexity

The Semester in Dialogue: Navigating Complexity will allow students to explore what makes problems complex/wicked and offer you ideas to help navigate an increasingly complex future.

Systems thinking recognizes that complex problems are different from simple or complicated problems. Some challenges are only simple or complicated, meaning they will be predictable, controllable and designable, like sending a rocket to the moon. Other challenges are complex, meaning they are unpredictable, self-organizing and emergent, like raising a child, like climate change.

Dialogue is intended to be an engaging and inclusive conversation for all participants and is based on an understanding that everyone in the room comes from a different background and has diverse interests and views. The goal of the Semester in Dialogue is to create a space where views can be expressed and where participants can actively listen to each other and learn something new. Dialogue ultimately provides a space to bring together diverse viewpoints, explore these differences, and work towards understanding them better.

The Semester in Dialogue: Navigating Complexity is about centering dialogue and systems thinking to help students build capacity and deepen the relationships necessary for navigating our complex and chaotic world.  

What wicked problem inspires you to take action?