After reading over the mission and vision for the program and the 10 Tests for Effective Mission --> Vision, I had a few thoughts about revisions that could be made. The mission and vision are not short and simple and I think that the wording could be changed to make... Continue reading

This week’s reading, Section 3 of Systems Thinking Made Simple, discussed how we could further develop our own systems thinking skills or help others to develop them. I thought that these chapters raised a lot of interesting points that resonated with me. One in particular was the idea of dichotomy.... Continue reading

This week’s reading covered the basics on becoming a systems thinker—from creating your own systems maps (with information on tips for choosing colors and shapes for mapping) to understanding the structure operating behind these maps. Although I found this week’s reading to be a little on the dry side, I... Continue reading

*I apologize for the late post! I submitted my blog entry last night and when I went to go check on it today, I saw that it wasn't posted—so I had to re-write it. * A topic that has been reoccurring in different readings this week is messaging. In Collaboration,... Continue reading

In the last semester of my undergraduate career, I took a course called “Climate and Civilization” with one of my favorite professors, Dr. Mitch Wagener. This course was the turning point for me in deciding that I wanted to enter the environmental field. Learning about how fast ancient civilizations have... Continue reading

Over the past couple of months, I have been going back and forth with different ideas for future career paths. Now that we are about halfway done with this program, it’s time to start thinking seriously about where I want to end up. Something that has always interested me and... Continue reading

I’m choosing to go off the beaten path (not too far) this week and write about something that is of great interest and concern to me. The article put together by the Stockholm Resilience Center about resilience and its connection to socio-ecological research put forth many interesting (and in my... Continue reading

Undoubtedly, climate change is an issue that encompasses all aspects of our lives. Its effects are widespread and cause devastation worldwide. If this is such a pressing issue, why are we not talking about it more? One problem that has been brought to my attention multiple times is that people... Continue reading

Wicked problems in and of themselves are not new. They have been around since the dawn of time and will continue to confuse those that come after us. Systems thinking is evolving and we are learning from and taking lessons from all different fields in order to solve these problems.... Continue reading

In Chapter 6, Meadows presents 12 leverage points, which are placed in order, based on their effectiveness of their ability to change a system. Meadows explains that complex systems may often surprise us and utilizing these leverage points in the “wrong” way can produce unwanted behavior. The leverage point that... Continue reading

“The Big Idea- The Sustainable Economy” presented many ideas that could be easily applied to systems thinking. Resilience, self-organization and hierarchy are three characteristics of systems described in Meadows, Chapter 3. In particular, resilience is the ability of a system to survive and persist in a changing environment. In order... Continue reading

Imagine a large community of families living together in harmony. Each individual in this community cooperates and communicates with the others to complete tasks that they are assigned to them. Survival of each individual would not be possible without the combined effort of the whole community. Though this sounds a... Continue reading

Systems are everywhere. They can be as microscopic as the exchanges of oxygen between our cells and as immense as the mechanisms that govern our galaxy. Because systems act on all scales and they are in constant motion all around us, it is imperative that we understand them. As environmentalists,... Continue reading