The “Challenge of Science Leadership” course is instructed as an intensive workshop over three consecutive full days. The curriculum was designed by the UK-based Barefoot Thinking Group and focuses on effective tools and techniques that early career science professionals can employ to enhance individual effectiveness as leaders within their diverse collaborative and individual professional endeavors.

The highly interactive course draws on individual's unique experiences to unlock effective tactics for: thinking strategically (from engaging different thinking styles, to creative thinking around around scoping, scoping, analyzing, visioning, and innovating); influencing behavior (from leadership styles and giving feedback); and enabling action (from time tactics to visualizing networks, to action planning around big ideas).

The course will provide students with practical insight into how science is translated into policy and management, particularly in the context of Latin America. Lectures, discussion, and analytical exercises will explore what is required for fisheries science and policy to be effective. The course emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of policy instruments, institutional arrangements, science diffusion, participatory monitoring, governance, co-management, and socio-economic considerations. Students will have opportunities to engage actual data from real fisheries, gaining familiarity with the complete process leading to decision-making in fisheries management and resource conservation. 

This course offers an in depth description of computer models and mathematical models commonly used in fisheries and conservation research and management, and that form the basis of fisheries stock assessments. Models will include age-structured modeling, area-based models, and surplus production models. A key component is teaching participants how to estimate parameters of interest to management by fitting models to data using sum of squares, likelihood based methods, and Bayesian methods. This objective is met by participants solving real-life problems using computer models in a mixture of lectures and computer labs. The first four days will be Excel-based and aimed at intermediate students. The last three days will be based on programming in the statistical programming language R, providing advanced techniques for spatial modeling and MPAs; simulation and estimation, catch status plots; Bayesian I and Bayesian II.

The appropriate design of resources management institutions requires a holistic perspective that considers the synergies between ecological and social dynamics. Thus, in recent years, the concept of “social-ecological systems” has gained interest, facilitating decision making with this integrative approach. This course will introduce students to the theory behind social-ecological systems science and the tools most commonly used in their analysis. Through a class project, the students will be able to analyze real case studies and expand their analytical skillset. The final goal of the class is the creation joint peer reviewed publication.

This workshop explores the core concepts and tools of systems thinking and how they can be applied to our daily lives through simulation games, experiential learning and interactive discussions. Through a group simulation, students learn the Iceberg Model – going from event, pattern of behavior, structure, mental model to shared vision – to help us identify and enact high-leverage interventions in a social system. The class learns how a system’s structure determines its behavior by exploring the fundamental modes of dynamic behavior: exponential growth, goal seeking, oscillation, limits to growth, and overshoot and collapse. These are basic building blocks for understanding dynamic complex systems.

This intensive course introduces by lecture and in an interactive, group study fashion, the transdisciplinary study of the world’s aquaculture ecosystems. It examines the principles of ecology (natural and social ecology) as they relate to the ecological designs, structures, functions, and social ecologies of integrated aquaculture farming ecosystems. The class studies examples from the world’s major aquaculture species and discuss their history (and “her-story”), natural and social ecologies, current status, and futures. This course also includes hours of interactive classroom and evening work by students in group studies. 

This course provides a background in the evolution of fisheries models and how they are used to inform policies and management. The class covers fisheries models that describe the growth, reproduction, and harvest of fishes. It also covers the biological reference points derived from fisheries models, such as maximum sustainable yield and spawning potential ratio, and how these are used to inform policies and management. The course includes lectures on the history and theory of these models, as well as computer labs to demonstrate their implementation.