Schedule
- Session 2 (July 7 - 25, 2025)
- Synchronous time: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 12:30 - 2 p.m. ET
Description
Do you have what you need to be a leader in the 21st century? How can you learn to be an innovative thinker who can handle today’s challenges and tomorrow’s uncertainties? Futures Leadership is a collection of skills you can develop to better adapt through change. In fact, according to the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), these skills help leaders “understand why and how we use the future to prepare, plan, and interact with the complexity and novelty of our societies,” because complexity, novelty, and uncertainty are part of what makes us human.
The Futures Leadership Seminar will provide you with interdisciplinary tools for addressing real-world challenges, while creating projects that matter to you, in your chosen field(s) of study. Participants will be tasked with designing resilient practices that address a range of complex scenarios—from fictional simulations to factual case studies. This will involve applied research in strategic foresight, intentional planning, ethical policymaking, emotional intelligence, and other essential areas that emphasize how to think instead of what to think.
Here's why that’s important: In this era of AI, automation, and interconnected digital systems, information is more abundant and accessible than ever before. It’s not enough to solve static problems correctly. Current algorithmic models can often do this without much trouble. Future leaders use creativity and adaptive thinking to address life’s dynamic, wicked problems—which usually have uncertainty at their core.
By the end of this intensive three-week experience, future leaders will sharpen strategies for handling uncertainty through careful analysis, targeted research, close reading, thoughtful collaboration, and proactive problem solving across disciplines. These transferable skills will help prepare participants to make an impact on the communities they hope to serve with their work.
Expected learning outcomes
- How do future leaders build equitable, just, and sustainable practices that honor all forms of life on this planet?
- Who do we often overlook when mapping our visions for the future, and why?
- What motivates our academic work, and how might we incorporate that into our plans for future change?
- Where can we turn for research on problems that matter most to us and to the communities we hope to serve?
- When do we incorporate ethics in our practice, and how?
Program Director: Dr. Clayton Colmon
Dr. Clayton Colmon is the Director of Curriculum Design for the Arts and Sciences Online Learning team at Penn. Clay believes lifelong learning is integral to any sustainable social system and has taught in higher education environments for over 15 years. He is an advocate for fostering belonging in knowledge-building communities and uses justice-oriented design practices to support this work. In addition to teaching at Penn, Clay has taught at the University of Delaware and at Claremont Graduate University.
Clay’s research is interdisciplinary, as he examines technology’s impact on queer placemaking, critical imagination, and strategies for social change. He has presented and published scholarship on speculative fiction, Afrofuturist music, urban spaces, and transformative practices in digital teaching and learning design.
He received his Bachelor of Arts in English and political science, with honors, from Rutgers University. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Delaware. In his free time, Clay finds joy in trail running, reading, gaming, making music, and dreaming about the future with family and friends.
