A Continuing Education course through Lakehead University

Course Description:

The executive leadership of today’s social-benefit organization is faced with an increasingly complex environment. In order to make people’s lives better and to address community issues, more of the same-old solutions are no longer adequate. Leaders are being called upon to mobilize engagement through all levels of their organizations, identify and grow innovation, adapt quickly to change, and collaborate across sectors to enhance the resilience of their organization and the community as a whole. These requirements demand a unique set of capacities and a mindset that embraces complexity. In this course, community leaders and university faculty with expertise in complexity science will work together to build understanding of the complex dynamics of organizations and communities. Through conversational learning techniques and practical exercises we will develop the capacities to perceive, reason, and manage within complexity, to nurture an ecology of innovation, and to discover the simple solutions that often lie on the other side of complex problems.

Connie and Mirella have been sharing a journey through complexity science since 2010, when a conversation about teaching, learning and community resilience culminated in a joint presentation at the Resilience 2011 conference, an international gathering of scholars in complexity. Since then, both have brought the framework of complex adaptive systems theory and innovation to their research, teaching, community and organizational development work. They have written 5 papers applying complex adaptive systems theory to community issues, and have presented the ideas at several conferences. Both are deeply involved with the Food Security Research Network, which bases its approach and organization on complexity principles, and they have co-facilitated a university seminar on complexity science for 3 years. Mirella is an associate professor of social and community psychology at Lakehead University. Connie is a professor of social work at Lakehead University, with a background in organizational behaviour.