This course will enable students to develop knowledge, skills, and better understanding of the wider world - and their place in it. As leaders of tomorrow, young people can make a positive difference - and help build a fairer, safer, and more sustainable and secure world. The first part of the course will focus on the characteristics of leaders, and empowering of students to develop communication, networking and negotiation skills necessary for becoming leader in the contemporary society. Guided by the UNESCOs Education 2030 Agenda and Framework for Action, in particular the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 on Education, the second part of the course will provide students with the knowledge and skills to contribute to effective protection, management and conservation of water, land, air and living resources, and promote environmentally sound policies and sustainable development.

This course explores the notion of leadership seen in cross-cultural and international contexts. We critically examine the purposes of leadership and the variety of qualities of effective leaders under a range of conditions. We then focus on the challenges posed by complex problems under changing conditions. For this purpose, the main content of the course will consist in theme-based modules, each module aimed at developing an understanding of a family of complex problems. To develop this understanding, we work incrementally through key readings, beginning with basic descriptions of the problem from different perspectives, followed by class discussion to clarify our understanding and what we still need to understand. This leads to another round of reading to address these gaps in understanding and writing critical assessments of our current understanding. This cycle of reading, discussion, reading, writing proceeds for each module. The class will consist of at least two and at most three such modules as a means of developing the fundamental leadership capacity of recognizing, understanding, and addressing complex issues. The aim is to foster the capacity and confidence to deal with new and unknown complexities awaiting them outside the university.

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