Despite being listed as an engineering course (ENGR), this course is open to any student with an interest in developing leadership skills related to multidisciplinary social challenges. In this experiential learning course, students will see the social consequences of leadership decisions made by companies and other organizations in Africa and discuss the rationale that led to those decisions during meetings with leaders, decision makers, and other representatives from those parties. The course aims to provide students across a range of disciplines the opportunity to interact and work together to ideate and develop strategies for tackling both broad, complex problems and specific, service, and socially focused challenges based on principles that are rooted in empathic problem solving. Students will contextualize what makes specific approaches for problem solving successful locally, regional, nationally, and internationally. The course will develop the students’ skills to work across cultures to ideate and iterate through the process of problem-solving, while appreciating the social and cultural challenges that lie within.
