Integrative Design and Entrepreneurship for Sustainability

Catalog description

This course aims to empower students with knowledge, orientations, and skills to evaluate pressing sustainability challenges and design entrepreneurial solutions that advance sustainability and deliver lasting positive change. Through case studies, frameworks, and hands-on projects, students learn about start-ups and venture capital, nonprofits and philanthropy, and other organizational models that can achieve co-benefits and sustainable outcomes. Students delve into the entrepreneurial founding and fundraising of organizations that foster the scaling process and utilize a holistic integrative design approach to examine systems, engage stakeholders, and ultimately develop organizational models with the goal of delivering scalable and sustainable positive impact. The course combines lectures, videos, readings, guest speakers, discussion sessions, and group project-based learning. Students work in small teams to examine and engage in designing, prototyping, testing, and iterating on specific solutions, interventions, and organizational model innovations. The course culminates in a group project and final presentation prepared collaboratively by each team. Please see the "Notes" section below for how to apply.