Solving Global Challenges (SGC)

Session Snapshot:

Solving Global Challenges (SGC) focuses on innovative and cross-disciplinary approaches to solving the greatest challenges facing the global community in the 21st century. Using an interdisciplinary approach, students work towards developing solutions to issues with a global impact, focusing heavily on the 17 key challenges identified in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  These wide-ranging topics include global health, gender equality, poverty alleviation, art in protest, environmental sustainability, and green technologies. 

This session gives students the tools to translate between technical knowledge and in-practice implications.  SGC draws on a multitude of academic disciplines, from STEM to social sciences to the humanities and the arts. Students will practice skills in critical analysis, problem solving, and creativity as they explore and brainstorm innovative and sustainable solutions to a wide array of contemporary social, economic, and environmental problems.


Sample Lecture Offerings:

  • New Technologies for a Greener Planet: Dan Prober
  • Granting Refuge: The Role of State Institutions in Refugee Asylum Outcomes: Angela McClean
  • The Climate Crisis in Perspective: Doug Kysar

Sample Seminar Offerings:

  • Visions of AI, the wonderful and terrible dream
  • Will Machines Learn Better than Humans?: Decoding the Transformation of Education in the AI Era
  • Trapped by Poverty: Graphing the Cycle of Global Inequality
  • So You Want To Become a Dictator: A Practical Roadmap for Aspiring Authoritarians and Those Who Want to Stop Them
  • Is it all just in your head? Global domination, racism and the story of how psychology became a tool for torture
  • The Social Media Age and Activism Fatigue

Is SGC a Good Fit for Me?

If you are intrigued by any of the following questions, then this session is a great choice:

  • How can we design sustainable cities?
  • If feasible, should we edit human genomes? How could this be used and what impact would this have on society?
  • What are the most effective poverty alleviation strategies and how do we implement them?
  • Should artificial intelligence be used to solve human problems? What makes human intelligence different from artificial intelligence?
  • How do we balance environmental protections with economic development?