APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED FOR THE FALL 2016 COHORT
While intending to accept a max. of 20 students, we ended up with over 30 wonderful participants from a wide variety of departments and faculties.
Interested in getting on the wait list, or questions about a future Change Lab? Email instructors Paola Ardiles and Shawn Smith at change-lab@sfu.ca
More information? Read on!
The general format of the class is working in teams to understand a health related challenge, then develop and test an innovative, venture based response. The course is a full day studio experience Tuesday of each week, where sessions will be a mix of limited lecture, guest speakers, hands on workshops, and open work time in your teams to advance your ideas. Teams will present to community panels for feedback mid term, and be given the opportunity to connect with community partners and leaders to help ensure they build ideas connected to the realities of our communities, and possibly to see those ideas proceed in the real world.
Commensurate with the 7 credits, you should expect this to be an intensive experience. While this is the first Change Lab focused on health solutions, the experience has run in 5 previous years with a focus on environmental and sustainability challenges, and many students have described the course as the most transformative of their undergraduate degree – but you have to be interested in and committed to developing and testing real ideas, getting out of the classroom and talking to people, and taking responsibility for the direction of your learning during the term (there isn’t a lot of mandatory reading or information to memorize – you work with us to figure out what you need to learn to effectively advance your project).
Commensurate with the 7 credits, you should expect this to be an intensive experience. While this is the first Change Lab focused on health solutions, the experience has run in 5 previous years with a focus on environmental and sustainability challenges, and many students have described the course as the most transformative of their undergraduate degree – but you have to be interested in and committed to developing and testing real ideas, getting out of the classroom and talking to people, and taking responsibility for the direction of your learning during the term (there isn’t a lot of mandatory reading or information to memorize – you work with us to figure out what you need to learn to effectively advance your project).
Some of the topics you will learn about are social entrepreneurship, systems thinking, health/community health, business model development, personal development, effective teams, and more.