Faculty Chair(s):
Martin Linsky
The Curriculum
Community Problem Solving is designed to support each team in working more effectively in their own communities and to foster learning within the community teams.
Case Study Method
The program utilizes the case study method developed at Harvard University. Case studies present real-world problems from the point of view of a leader or team of leaders. The community teams will work together to reason through cases that present challenges and opportunities and identify new problem-solving concepts and alternative practical solutions. Tackling case studies in a diverse and talented group of peers from communities all around the country is exhilarating, often tough, and certainly unique. The process equips teams with new ideas to apply to their own community challenges.
Individual Community Challenges
Before the start of Community Problem Solving, a brief written assignment is prepared and submitted by each teams. These community challenge cases describe the lasting change the teams hope to produce in their community. This is important preparatory team work for a fast-paced, intensive team-based course and the full team must be involved and contribute.
For the brief assignment, the faculty will provide guidelines for the teams to:
- Carefully diagnose the adaptive problem that their community faces.
- Identify the specific results the team wants to achieve.
- Briefly describe any key past efforts that have been made on their issue.
- Clarify why it is now time to address the problem or address the problem in a new way.
- Analyze the key players, their positions, their interests, and their capacities to take action.
- Explain the key barriers to the community’s progress on this issue.
- Ask the one important question to they need answered during the program in order to make progress at home when they leave.
The program focuses directly on the team challenges throughout. It is divided into plenary sessions, conversations held across teams to capture commonalities, and small, structured sessions where the individual community teams meet to apply relevant new constructs and frameworks to their own issues. Teams will build concrete plans of action to take home and continue their work together. After six months, the faculty and facilitators will organize a feedback session with groups about their progress.
Examples of challenges used by past teams during Community Problem Solving:
Day Labor Drop-in Center
An influx of undocumented workers has divided a mid-sized suburban community experiencing a boom in growth. For the past few years, Latino day laborers have gathered each morning in the parking lot of a convenience store, waiting for trucks to pick them up for landscaping, construction, and odd jobs. Once just a handful of men, now nearly a hundred turn out every day to wait in an area designed for a dozen cars. Some community members have called for the creation of a day labor drop-in center that would offer shelter from the weather, a water cooler, adequate rest rooms, and contact information for social services. Others in town virulently oppose spending tax dollars to accommodate workers who have entered the country illegally. Advocates for the drop-in center have been called un-American; some have received threats of violence. At a time when immigration is a hot-button electoral issue, news of this has spread beyond the local press, attracting attention in the national media.
High School Drop-out Rates
Low-income and minority high school dropout rates have reached alarming figures in a mid-sized American city. Many of these students are seemingly trapped in a downward spiral of declining education and economic opportunity. The statistics paint a grim picture. Just half of all Hispanic and African American students finish high school in four years. Academic performance is similarly troubling: only 70% of Hispanic and 67% of African American students test at or above grade level. In order to help reverse this tide and foster the next generation of skilled workers, a diverse group of community partners have come together to create dynamic learning opportunities for at-risk youth. One of the largest employers in the state, working in tandem with the local school system, has begun collaborating with foundations such as the United Negro College Fund, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and Citizens Schools, a national initiative that mobilizes thousands of adult volunteers, to help address this growing epidemic.
Green Grow
Two neighboring suburban counties face similar pressures as they struggle to develop long-range growth plans that deal responsibly with sustainability and environmental impact. Both counties generate significant income from tourists visiting their breathtaking parks, beaches, and hiking trails; there is a shared awareness about the need to plan for the future in ways that ensure the preservation of these natural assets. Land-use groups are advocating in favor of clusters of high-density, mixed-income developments built around a proposed light rail line between the two counties, arguing that this will preserve open space, alleviate current traffic congestion, and curtail sprawl that would only exacerbate problems in the future. Opponents of the plan include an alliance of conservationists who favor stricter zoning laws for all new residential construction and a coalition of homeowners who fear higher taxes.
No individual applications will be accepted.
Each team must choose a person to coordinate the process and be the primary contact for the team. Please see the Admission page for details.