Shamir, M., & Sanderson, M. R., & Cors, R., & Hendricks, N. P., & Hutchinson, S. L., & Parameswaran, P., & Derby, M. (2023, June), An integrated systems thinking graduate course that prepares students to solve the complex problems of the food-energy-water nexus  Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42631

\bibitem{asee_peer_42631}
  Shamir, M., \& Sanderson, M. R., \& Cors, R., \& Hendricks, N. P., \& Hutchinson, S. L., \& Parameswaran, P., \& Derby, M. (2023, June), \emph{An integrated systems thinking graduate course that prepares students to solve the complex problems of the food-energy-water nexus}
  Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland.
  10.18260/1-2--42631

Mirit Shamir, Matthew R. Sanderson, Rebecca Cors, Nathan P. Hendricks, Stacy L. Hutchinson, Prathap Parameswaran, and Melanie Derby.  "An integrated systems thinking graduate course that prepares students to solve the complex problems of the food-energy-water nexus".  2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland, 2023, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2023.  https://peer.asee.org/42631 Internet.  15 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_42631}
  Mirit Shamir, Matthew R. Sanderson, Rebecca Cors, Nathan P. Hendricks, Stacy L. Hutchinson, Prathap Parameswaran, and Melanie Derby.
  "An integrated systems thinking graduate course that prepares students to solve the complex problems of the food-energy-water nexus".
  \emph{2023 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland, 2023, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2023.
  https://peer.asee.org/42631 Internet.  15 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_42631
author = "Mirit Shamir, Matthew R. Sanderson, Rebecca Cors, Nathan P. Hendricks, Stacy L. Hutchinson, Prathap Parameswaran, and Melanie Derby"
title = "An integrated systems thinking graduate course that prepares students to solve the complex problems of the food-energy-water nexus"
booktitle = "2023 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2023"
month = "June"
address = "Baltimore , Maryland"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/42631}
number = {10.18260/1-2--42631}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Current and future global challenges, such as creating more resilient and sustainable communities; developing renewable energy; improving public health; and addressing climate change present complex scientific, technological, and societal problems. Thus, to tackle these global challenges and for the United States’ economic and technological competitiveness, there is a need for systems thinkers. Recent efforts to prepare graduate students to use systems thinking to address these problems are promising. This paper will detail the graduate-level, interdisciplinary Integrated Systems course structure that can be beneficial to the implementation of teaching systems thinking framework at the graduate level and the development of systems thinkers in STEM disciplines.
The NRT Integrated FEW Systems course is a 1-credit course, and part of the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) at our university. The NRT prepares master’s students and doctoral students from STEM disciplines to address the grand challenges of creating food, energy, and water systems in semi-arid regions that are more resilient. Solutions to resiliency problems often require systems-thinking frameworks. Systems thinking provides concepts and tools to understand complex problems that link society, economy, and the environment at multiple scales. 
The NRT Integrated FEW Systems course is a cross-listed course. Faculty from the College of Engineering, the College of Agriculture, and the College of Arts and Sciences have co-taught this class annually in the fall since 2019. This course is an introduction to systems thinking, with specific application to the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus. The course explores two basic types of systems and their interactions: natural-environmental systems and human-social systems. The course emphasizes the importance of systems thinking in developing effective policy to enhance resilience in FEW systems.  
This paper will discuss course format, content team teaching strategies, grading structures, evaluation, and lesson learned from teaching the course four years. The course lectures combine theory and practice, and design to establish knowledge base in system thinking concepts and tools, and focus on the unique challenges for management, governance, communication, and policy in the FEW nexus. Course grading includes reflections and analyses, creating system component maps with Loopy (a free online tool for thinking in systems), and a final project, an integrated system map. All assignments are individual assignments. The NRT external evaluator designed an annual NRT survey that assesses the NRT program at our university, including the impacts of the NRT Integrated FEW Systems course. Student ratings about their perceived ability to perform interdisciplinary systems tasks improved from the beginning to the end of the course, from ‘somewhat able’ to ‘very able.’  Students rated most course activities as “very useful”. 

AU  - Mirit Shamir
AU  - Matthew R. Sanderson
AU  - Rebecca Cors
AU  - Nathan P. Hendricks
AU  - Stacy L. Hutchinson
AU  - Prathap Parameswaran
AU  - Melanie Derby
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - An integrated systems thinking graduate course that prepares students to solve the complex problems of the food-energy-water nexus
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/42631
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--42631
ER  -