For our first SCEU “Unboxing the Curriculum” event, we’re pleased to have Brian Trelstad from Harvard University and Cheryl Gladu from Thompson Rivers University joining us!
Brian and Cheryl will each present a bit about their curriculum and then have an opportunity to answer questions, workshop, solicit feedback, and/or facilitate a conversation about the information they shared. The last 30 minutes of this 90-minute session will be either a bigger group discussion or breakout rooms for topic-specific conversations… we’ll workshop this format and set-up together!
Here is a bit about the course and/or projects that Brian and Cheryl will bring to the session:
Brian shared that he'll bring the following course to talk about: Social Entrepreneurship & Systems Change (SESC): Social entrepreneurs don’t just build organizations, they change systems. This course will explore the frameworks, tools, mindsets, and best practices that successful social entrepreneurs use to maximize their impact not just through the direct delivery of the products or services of an organization, but through the systems level work that collaborate to achieve. The course looks at social entrepreneurship through the lens of traditional social entrepreneurship and asks how people motivated by disrupting entrenched and often inequitable systems need different skills and mindsets to be effective. SESC takes a deep dive into how social entrepreneurs can become systems entrepreneurs by developing a coherent systems strategy, collaborating with others, building power, and mobilizing change. // We [Brian] have put the course on Harvard X: Social Entrepreneurship & Systems Change, and a link to that can be found here. It is a compressed version of the MBA course using a subset of the same cases offered free and also at a cost for a Harvard X certificate of completion.
Cheryl shared that she’ll bring the following courses to talk about: Course projects that I’ve incorporated into my Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Grad) and Creativity and Innovation (Undergrad) courses. I also have two courses in development that I would like to workshop, if possible. I’d love to learn from others and incorporate that in my current thinking on those classes – one is “Systems Thinking in Wildfire Management,” which is part of a specialized certificate we are offering starting Fall 2026, to support training and leadership in wildfire management (a hot topic in these parts, unfortunately) and the second comes out of my experience with the Creativity class mentioned above… I worked with my colleagues to restructure our Entr program and build a course called “Navigating complexity: Systems thinking as entrepreneurial practice,” which will be vertically integrated into the Creativity course above, providing students with a path to continue their work on thinking and acting on more complex problems.
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