Creating Societal Impact

Creating Societal Impact (USG 4541)

Do you want to discover how to make a significant change in the world? Do you want to add an element of practical, societal engagement to your curriculum? If so, this curriculum enrichment course may be for you.

The anxieties of facing a future of great transformations regarding human-nature relations invite us to learn how to deeply adapt to new circumstances and ways of living.

How can we find new modes for bottom-up social, economic, political and ecological transformations? How do we begin setting in motion profound changes that are community-based, co-created, open-ended and include the non-human?

In Creating Societal Impact we will explore these questions in the form of reflexive community service learning.

The course will run in February – April (block 3), on Monday and Thursday nights from 17:30-19:30. It will count for 7.5 ECTS.

Creating Societal Impact is an interdepartmental course offered by UCU, the Utrecht School of Governance, the Utrecht School of Economics, and the Utrecht School of Law. It will allow 16 students in total.

The topic

Climate change is not only a threat: it is also an invitation to transformation. It asks of us to re-imagine human-nature relations, our economic models, our political systems, and the way we live together.

Of course those changes are too big to oversee; and none of us can know where they will lead to. But that does not have to lead to resignation. We can start identifying where there are already beginnings that look promising, and build on those. Or start making such beginnings ourselves. This is what we will do in Creating Societal Impact.

In this course we will learn how to engage with our world in terms of systemic transformation in a practical manner. By initiating small-scale interventions we will discover how they can lead to long-term and deep forms of change. 

How to apply

For your application, write a page (could be text, images, art, whatever does the job for you) in which you propose an entry-point for transformation: Where would you begin? 

Your entry point does not have to be feasible or ‘realistic’- after all, we are just imagining at this point. But in the making, keep in mind three questions:

  • What kind of transformation does it speak to? (like: economic, or inclusivity, or the representation of nature in politics?
  • Why do you care about this transformation?
  • What do you propose to do as a first step towards that transformation?

Send your page plus a short description of yourself to Gerard van der Ree (G.vanderRee@uu.nl) before 1 December.

How to register

If you want this off-campus course on your UCU transcript, you must request it as an off-campus course with the Exam Board.
Enrolment in OSIRIS will be taken care of by Gerard van der Ree and the Utrecht School of Governance.