Abstract for: Masterful Classes - Graduate (three one-hour workshops)

This workshop will be presented by three professional system dynamicists who have thought a great deal about teaching in the field and who have been recognized by students and colleagues as master teachers. The aim of each of the three sessions in this workshop is a self-contained class teaching something interesting and useful about the real world and something interesting and useful about modeling skills and the system dynamics approach. The teachers will strive to make these “masterful classes.” Andy Ford from Washington State University will describe the power of interdisciplinary modeling using system dynamics. The talk begins with stories from the work on boom towns in the west and on electric utility problems during the 1970s-80s, and moves to a classroom example on salmon populations of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Brad Morrison from Brandeis International Business School will explore the joys of tiny concept models. Beginning with conceptualization and continuing to formulation, we will interactively develop and then analyze a tiny model. George Richardson from the University at Albany will present a class focusing on urban dynamics, interactively developing a small model in which the classic urban dynamics pattern emerges naturally, almost magically.