Class to solve ‘wicked’ problems

By Jarrod Thacker

As many students scramble to sign up for spring classes, they may be interested in a different course available next semester.

The innovative course, Systems Thinking for Sustainability, is a multidisciplinary effort pursued by the colleges of education, business, engineering and design, which aims to encourage teamwork and thorough problem-solving skills between people of different educational backgrounds.

Students will work together next semester in groups, where they will be joined by different majors and tasked to collaborate on a project that deals with sustainability, such as campus living, said Dusan Sekulic, principal investigator of the project.

“Sustainability means different things to different people,” Sekulic said, emphasizing that each student will bring a new perspective to their group.

“We are not forcing students from education to write differential equations; we are asking them to come with what they know and what they understand,” Sekulic said. “To talk about the issues from their point of view.”

The situations students will face in the class will not have simple solutions, according to the course’s planning documents. Described in the documents as “messy, wicked problems,” students will have to rely on each other’s strengths in order to efficiently solve them.

However, they are not totally alone.

Several co-principal investigators have played an integral role in the design and deployment of the course: Gregory Luhan, Leslie Vincent, Fazleena Badurdeen and Margaret Mohr-Schroeder, who will help facilitate the learning process in the form of lectures and instruction.

Class participants will also be able to take of advantage of help from teaching assistants.

Adam Brown, a graduate teaching assistant for the course, reinforced the takeaway point of the experience.

“The focus of the class is to try to consider all the angles, instead of just your own,” he said.

To fund the design and implementation of the class, UK received a three-year grant to its Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math program from the National Science Foundation.

The course’s success will be a good indicator for other institutions, such as Ohio State and Arizona universities, who have already expressed interest to follow in UK’s footsteps, Sekulic said.

The course will be listed under three different course numbers during the registration period: ARC 599-003, MKT 390-002 and ME 599-004, worth three credit hours.

Students interested should contact the faculty involved for additional information.