Don’t pitch a solution. Understand the problem.
Dartmouth is entering the Skoll Centre’s global challenge for the first time. The team that wins here goes to Oxford, fully funded.
Run by SEID with the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact.
Most competitions reward the answer. This one rewards the research.
Map the System is run by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford, and it inverts the usual student competition. There is no pitch, no business model, no ask for funding.
Instead you choose a social or environmental problem and set out to understand it properly: where it came from, who holds power in it, how the parts feed each other, and why the solutions already tried have not held. Then you say where you think the real leverage is.
You do not need a solution, or a team, or prior experience
- Undergraduates and graduate students, from any department.
- Students drawn to system dynamics, social entrepreneurship or human-centered design.
- Anyone who did the Center for Social Impact’s Impact program or its human-centered design work. You already know how to map a system.
- Anyone with a problem they cannot stop thinking about, who wants to find out what their own academic or professional contribution to it might be.
Register as a team of up to four, or register alone. We run a matchmaking session in January for anyone without a team, though we cannot guarantee we will place you.
Six modules, and the sessions where they pay off
Watch on your own time
The Skoll Centre’s modules are short videos, roughly four minutes each, with tasks attached. Your team works through them together, applying each one to your own problem as you go.
Then everyone convenes
We meet in person after each module. Teams share what they have found, get unstuck, and hear what another team noticed that they missed. This is the part that turns six separate teams into a cohort.
And you revise
You go back with what you heard and sharpen the analysis. Six times, across winter and spring.
What happens when
Information session at DCCD, 63 S. Main St. Twenty minutes, then questions and food. One hour in total.
Second information session at the Class of 1930 Room, Rockefeller Center. Same format.
Applications open.
Applicants reconfirm. We know students decide in January, so you can register early and commit later.
Kickoff, and the matchmaking session for anyone without a team.
Modules one to three. Wednesdays, 5:30 to 7pm.
Module four. Spring sessions move to Mondays.
Modules five and six.
Dry run. You present to us and to the Center for Social Impact and get told what is not working yet.
The showcase. Every team presents. One goes to Oxford.
The global final, Oxford.
The showcase is on a Saturday. We are saying that early so nobody is surprised by it in May.
What is actually on offer
SEID covers the entrance fee and sends the winning team to the global final, travel and accommodation included.
$2,500 for the winning team. $1,500 each for second and third.
Systems analysis, stakeholder mapping, and the habit of understanding a problem before proposing anything. It transfers to whatever you do next.
Your work goes in front of a panel drawn from the Rockefeller Center, the Dickey Center and the Center for Social Impact, and then in front of Oxford.
- One session a fortnight, plus your own research time between them.
- Every team has somebody in the room at every convening. We set that expectation at application and we hold to it.
- Availability on Saturday 8 May.
Come to an information session
Twenty minutes on what the competition is and what it takes, then questions and food. No commitment, and no need to have a problem in mind yet.
Monday 26 October, 6pm.
DCCD, 63 S. Main St., 2nd floor, Hanover.
Wednesday 4 November, 6pm.
Class of 1930 Room, Rockefeller Center.
Cannot make either? Email seid@dartmouth.edu and we will keep you on the list.
Explore the other pillars
Curriculum, faculty engagement, and experiential learning.