Spark Social - Challenge yourself to improve society @UICE

The University of Iceland offers this transdisciplinary course for senior graduate students registered in all schools and disciplines across the University. The course is also open to students from all Aurora universities. The course combines online content, three virtual sessions that take place over the semester, and a three-day capstone experience on-site at the university of Iceland.

Participants will gain insights into current and future challenges and learn about how these are being addressed. Participants will work in collaborative interdisciplinary teams under the guidance of experienced industry and academic leaders to apply their new knowledge toward developing their own recommendations for tackling immediate and foreseeable challenges. Students will gain a deeper understanding of their own strengths as well as developing methods and approaches for innovative thinking under the guidance of experienced teachers. 

The course incorporates the approach of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which is part of the Aurora Competency Framework. This concept includes both social entrepreneurship, a way to achieve social change by employing entrepreneurial principles with or without the formation of new organizations, and social innovation, a process of developing and deploying effective solutions to challenging and often systemic social and environmental issues in support of social progress.