This course is designed for engineering students interested in applying their engineering knowledge and skills to address pressing social or environmental issues of our time. Using the principles of entrepreneurship, this course provides students with an understanding of the systems within which these challenges occur, analyze the range of opportunities and tensions that can be defined within a system, and construct a solution to respond to an important issue.

This course will be engage students independently and in groups through a variety of approaches that embed the principles of entrepreneurship and social change. Lectures will blend theory on key issues related to social entrepreneurship, as well as workshop-style sessions with industry experts and social entrepreneurs. These sessions will help students to understand the broader systems within which social or environmental challenges are situated, and how to introduce solutions into these systems that integrate the principles of entrepreneurship to yield benefits to communities and society as a whole. Students will apply these lessons through individual and group assignments that progressively build on each other through the course of the semester.