Decision Making for Sustainability

Leaders make individual and collective, often interdependent decisions in complex and adaptive contexts under high degrees of uncertainty. This course prepares students for making such decisions by combining modern decision science and support tools with extensive practice in careful and thorough decision making. Students will make and reflect on dozens of sustainability-related decisions, individually, within teams, and as part of the entire class, while simultaneously learning about complex adaptive systems, human psychology, and modern qualitative and quantitative decision support tools. Classes will take the form of workshops, during which instructors will support students as they analyze scenarios and co-develop adaptive plans. Student work will culminate in two final deliverables prepared collaboratively by the entire class, a proposal and a presentation to a panel of experts, that recommend from the perspective of multiple actors a multi-step theory of change, which accounts for potential future adaptations and unintended consequences. An application is required for enrollment in the course; see quarterly class information below for a link to the application.