Systems thinking underway

Map the System 2025 is now in full motion at the University of Waterloo! The competition invites students from institutions worldwide to apply a systems thinking approach to complex social or environmental challenges.  

Since 2019, the University of Waterloo has consistently had a high engagement rate with a wide demographic of students, ranging from undergraduate programs to graduate programs, in all six faculties. That trend continues this year, with 44 teams and a total of 90 students studying in over 20 different academic programs registered. Registration closed at the end of January, and participating students are now starting to research their topic of interest. 

These topics range across geographies, locally from campus to national level challenges, and internationally from Bangladesh to Uganda. Many touch on access issues, such as legal information, healthcare with dignity, drinking water, or academic success. The registrations show students care deeply about challenges affecting vulnerable or excluded communities including people with disabilities, those who are unhoused, on lower incomes or new to Canada.  

Student teams can explore the same challenge from different angles and are encouraged to collaborate across disciplines, offering a diverse range of perspectives on crucial problems. The chart on the right indicates the breadth of subjects. If any of the topics relate to your academic, professional, or lived expertise or seem intriguing, feel free to reach out to the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement’s Map the System team to get involved. Some of the individuals or smaller teams registered would be eager to add team members and are permitted to do so up to 5 team members in total. Sometimes former Map the System participants help mentor and guide teams through the process and wider community members are warmly invited to act as advisors or interviewees. 

Registering is the easy part – it is now time for research! During February and March, students will be preparing their competition deliverables to be submitted by April 1. The top five teams will present their research on April 7th at the Campus Finals, and the winning team progresses to national finals at the Banff Systems Summit from May 19-22 and potentially the global finals in Oxford in July. 

This immersive learning journey begins long before the finals and has ripple effects long after as more students learn systems thinking skills that they apply in their research and work and help communities of stakeholders visualize the systems they participate in more clearly. 

Over the past six years, almost nine hundred UWaterloo students across different programs have engaged in the competition. Plenty of students have advanced to national finals and/or global finals. Most recently, Fiona Li collaborated with Mennonite Central Committee Ontario to show the injustices faced by Indigenous women in prisons. Her research won first place during the campus final in Waterloo and second place at the national finals in Calgary.  

Map the System opens a big window of opportunities for real-world change. The Canadian Apprenticing with a Problem grant is offered to the top 4 national teams want to take their research further. In addition to Fiona Li this past year, in 2020, a team from the University of Waterloo received funding to further advocate their project on transit-induced gentrification, especially from the Light Rail Transit (LRT), and pushed for positive change around housing affordability at the local and regional levels of government.  

Once again, if you have knowledge or connections related to this year’s challenge domains, don’t hesitate to reach out to the 2025 Campus Lead, Jordan Li or the Centre for Peace Advancement Coordinator.