IDND112

Description

Section information text: This course will expose students to the concepts and practices associated with social innovation and social entrepreneurship - i.e., the development and growth of new, sustainable, and scalable approaches to the major social economic, and environmental challenges facing society. Students will learn a variety of tools and methods used for the development, implementation, management, and assessment of social solutions that they will be able to use over the course of their careers. This course provides the theoretical foundation and academic counterpart to the Social Innovation Fellowship and Social Innovation Fellowship Workshops. The course will emphasize the systemic, interdisciplinary, and often cross-sector nature of both the problems and their solutions. As a course rooted in the social sciences, students will learn some basic concepts of social science methodology and data collection techniques and analysis. This will be important to support their ability to read, understand, and interpret some of the research and data driven materials we plan to use in the course. In addition, there will be an emphasis put on using a systems approach to understanding the complexity of the social issues we will cover. While students' internships will provide one context for their understanding of social issues, the course will aim to provide the broader cultural, community, and societal contexts relevant to how issues arose and what solutions are the most likely to succeed. Student learning will be assessed through a set of writing assignments and a group project with writing and presentation components. As a seminar course, students will experience the course as highly participatory and interactive, experiential and dynamic. Students will actively engage with instructors and each other on the complex social issues facing our society using a variety of sources including texts and articles, cases, video, and guest speakers.