What You'll Be Doing In This Course

In this course, you’ll explore global challenges by working directly with local community organizations addressing them here at home. In interdisciplinary teams, you will:

• Partner with a nonprofit or community group tackling issues such as food or housing insecurity, climate change, environmental justice, educational access, or systemic inequality.
• Volunteer at least 20 hours with your partner organization to build relationships, observe needs, and contribute to their mission.
• Apply design thinking—especially the first two stages, Empathize and Define—to understand diverse perspectives and frame complex problems.
• Conduct stakeholder interviews, map systems and user journeys, and synthesize insights into clearly defined design challenges.
• Share your findings through collaborative studio sessions, peer feedback, and a final presentation for your community partner.
• This is an immersive, hands-on course where you’ll move from community engagement to problem framing, laying the foundation for future solution design.

Skills You'll Develop

By the end of the course, you'll have practice with:

• Empathy Building: Understanding community perspectives through fair-trade learning and direct engagement.
• Research & Systems Thinking: Analyzing global issues in local contexts, including cultural, historical, and social dimensions.
• Collaboration: Working effectively in multidisciplinary teams and with real-world organizations.
• Problem Framing: Translating complex, "wicked problems" into clear design challenges.
• Communication: Developing professional reports, visualizations, and presentations for both academic and community audiences.
• Participatory Design: Facilitating activities that bring community voices into the design process.

These skills translate directly to careers in industry, nonprofits, entrepreneurship, and research.