News

A panel discussion titled, “Co-Designing, Co-Teaching, and Co-Learning with Graduate Students: Making Interdisciplinary Teaching of Wicked Problems Work” at UW’s Teaching and Learning Conference provided compelling insights into the practice of interdisciplinary teaching.

The instructors for the Fall 2024 iteration of the Wicked Problem course "The Wicked Problem Climate Change" have been selected. Read about our instructors, and the course that will be co-designed over the course of the Winter 2024 term.

Seeking PhD candidates to teach an interdisciplinary course, The Wicked Problem of Climate Change

As part of the University’s strategic plans to develop talent for a complex world and focus on interdisciplinary scholarship, a team of PhD candidates will come together in spring 2024 to re-design and co-teach a course related to contemporary Wicked Problems. The course will be offered to upper-year undergraduate students from across the University to create a community of scholars, sharing different perspectives from the PhD candidate instructors and the learners in the classroom.

The course, offered in fall 2024, will focus on the Wicked Problem of Climate Change. We know there are brilliant doctoral researchers across the University who are immersed in studying climate change from interdisciplinary perspectives, addressing research on a policy, environmental, scientific, technological, and health perspectives, among others. Many of these researchers may also welcome the opportunity to be part of an interdisciplinary teaching team that will provide undergraduate students with a classroom experience where the academic content spans disciplinary boundaries.

The selected PhD candidates will work as a team to re-design the course (first offered in Winter 2023) and will receive training in the spring 2024 term from mentors in the Teaching Innovation Incubator. In the fall 2024 term, the team will collectively deliver the course to senior undergraduate students. Instructors will receive financial support for their contributions to the University’s teaching mission.

We encourage PhD candidates to apply using the online application form – details can be found on The Wicked Problem of Climate Change Innovation Incubator website. The deadline to apply is Monday, March 4, 2024, by the end of day.

The instructors for the Spring 2024 iteration of the Wicked Problem course "The Wicked Problem of Precarity: Living in an Uncertain World" have been selected. Read about our instructors, and the course that will be co-designed over the course of the Winter 2024 term.

Seeking PhD candidates to teach an interdisciplinary course, The Wicked Problem of Precarity: Living in an Unpredictable World

As part of the University’s strategic plans to develop talent for a complex world and focus on interdisciplinary scholarship, a team of PhD candidates will come together in winter 2024 to design, develop and offer a course related to contemporary Wicked Problems. The course will be offered to upper-year undergraduate students from across the University to create a community of scholars, sharing different perspectives from the PhD candidate instructors and the learners in the classroom.

The pilot course, offered in spring 2024, will focus on the Wicked Problem of Precarity: Living in an Uncertain World. We know there are brilliant doctoral researchers across the University who are immersed in studying precarity from interdisciplinary perspectives, addressing research on poverty, homelessness, housing scarcity, and food insecurity, all of which are contributing to a future defined by precarity. Many of these researchers may also welcome the opportunity to be part of an interdisciplinary teaching team that will provide undergraduate students with a classroom experience where the academic content spans disciplinary boundaries. We encourage PhD candidates to apply using the online application form – details found on The Wicked Problem of Precarity: Living in an Uncertain World Teaching Innovation Incubator website. The deadline to apply is Monday, November 13.

Plans are in place to offer a second "wicked problems" course in Spring 2024. A number of topics are being considered for the next offering, many of which were solicited from the end-of-term symposium held in March.