Specialization and Sample Elective Course Descriptions
Specialization Courses in Whole Systems Design
Applications in Human Systems
Apply systemic concepts to issues such as leadership, power, conflict, group dynamics, democracy and community. Students consider critiques and resistances to systemic thinking as well as ways to introduce the concepts and approaches more effectively. They compare early systemic thinkers such as Mary Parker Follett to more contemporary ones.
Design for Social Innovation
Study design theory, thinking and skills with attention to collaborative approaches and process. Explore diverse theorists from the design traditions as well as systems, sustainability and psychology. Students learn design as an intentional co-creation process of acting and being in the world to facilitate organizational renewal, societal change and personal transformation.
Structures of Meaning: Distinctions, Intentions and Outcomes
Learn how meaning is constructed, individually and collectively, through the structures as well as contents of thought. Draw on mathematics, design, science, engineering and psychology to consider how distinctions and boundaries are created, and, once created, how they impact communications, conflict, design and decision-making. Students deepen their understanding of wholistic/systemic perspectives and gain skills for developing greater clarity around intention.
Systemic Change and Persistence
Students explore persistence, change and resilience in human systems. They consider differences between mechanistic and autopoietic systems and their implications. Studying systems dynamics, structures and archetypes, students gain skill in describing and communicating about significant patterns of interest and possible points of intervention.
Elective Courses in Whole Systems Design
Design as a Practice of Wholeness
In this pragmatic exploration of wholism students explore notions of aesthetics and utility from various cultural perspectives and orient their own approach to designing within a wholistic/systemic understanding. Framing design as a practice of wholeness and systemic thinking, students explore the intrinsic relationship between beauty and function. They critique a variety of designs and propose wholistic alternatives.
Experience of Place
Study the relationship of place to identity formation, well-being, community and organizational development and culture. Understanding the relationship between epistemology and ontology, students explore the link between somatic awareness and a wholistic paradigm. Students consider built and "natural" environments – from an office to a landscape – in terms of their effects on behaviors, and consider how to design for preferred outcomes.
Metaphor, Worldview and Change
Explore language as reflection and shaper of worldview and as a leverage point for change. Study draws on linguistics, rhetoric, design, cognitive and social sciences. Students critique metaphors – drawn from organizational, community, environmental and civic life – for their meaning, entailments and consequences; consider alignment with intentions; and propose language more congruent with intentions. Explore systemic relationships among language, perception and social possibilities.
Specialization and elective courses from other Center degree programs
Independent Studies
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