Solving Global Challenges (SGC)

Snapshot:

Solving Global Challenges (SGC) equips students with innovative strategies for thinking systemically about the world around them, uncovering shared root causes of global issues that may seem otherwise unrelated. Using the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, students explore pressing challenges in areas such as public health, gender equality, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability.

Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches across STEM, social sciences, and humanities, students strengthen their skills in critical analysis and creative problem-solving as they take what they learn in the classroom and design effective and sustainable solutions to the complex issues that shape our future. Students leave with new perspectives and tangible strategies to identify and approach challenges in their own communities and beyond.

Sample Lecture Offerings:

  • Climate Change in Perspective: Douglas Kysar
  • Healthy Lives at All Ages: Global Health Challenges, Responses, and Aims: Cara Fallon
  • Reframing Refugees in an Unsettling World: A Critical Refugee Studies Perspective: Quan Tran

Sample Seminar Offerings:

  • The Dark Side of AI: Ukraine as a Case Study in AI-Enabled Human Trafficking
  • Hashtags for Justice: How Social Media Is Shaping Democracy and Political Accountability
  • Are You Smarter Than a Mosquito? A Challenge to End Malaria
  • Fashion for Show: The Fast Fashion Industry and how Consumers Fall for Greenwashing
  • Sisterhood and Sacrifice: Gender Equality in Literary Classical Contexts
  • Disinformation in the Age of AI: What the Online Generation Can Do
  • The Price of Freedom: Global Uprisings and the Modern Nation-State

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 and why is systemic thinking important when creating solutions to the issues we face today? How can we use it to avoid the ‘good intention, terrible execution’ trap?
  • How can we design sustainable cities that’s equitable for everyone?
  • 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?