Forming a student chapter of the System Dynamics Society
O. Pala, B. Guneralp, E. Rouwette
o.pala@kub.bl
In this session we would like to introduce the idea of a student chapter of the System
Dynamics Society. The goal of this new chapter is to form a closer link between students
of system dynamics. The authors of this proposal have repeatedly found that there is no
strong link between the students of SD. The idea to form a student chapter within the
society came up to help overcome this. We then contacted Prof. Barlas and Prof.
Radzicki. Consequently, the issue was discussed at the Policy Council and formation of a
SD Student Chapter was approved. After getting the necessary information on what
should be done to form a chapter, we started working on the idea.
We propose to form a chapter with the following aim:
e To extend the knowledge of feedback systems among SD students all over the world.
e To intensify the communication between and form a basis for cooperation amongst
the graduate students in their research projects.
e To arouse interest among undergraduate students towards System Dynamics.
e To promote the communication between the students of SD and the practitioners of
the field.
e To form a medium to help SD students to get into contact with field related graduate
studies and job opportunities.
Forming such a chapter, we can have the following possible activities:
e Seminars with lectures and excursions.
e Generating a complete database of information of SD programs in the world. The
database can include information about addresses, curricula, all professors and
graduates. Also a database for job possibilities for SDers.
e Finding out interested professors and promoting more courses to be held in English,
which could increase the possibility of study exchange.
e Workshops and summer academies to be organized in a country on a certain topic.
They would include lectures and excursions when applicable.
© Competitions: (1) With an SD based game that the participants would play and have a
discussion at the end about possible strategies. (2) It may be a real life problem to
work on using SD. These could be workshops arranged by companies.
e Graduate Students' Gathering: This would give the graduate students an opportunity
to present their PhD topics and discuss with other PhDs.
In this short plenary presentation we will introduce the student chapter, and invite those
interested to a workshop in which we can discuss our ideas further.
