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? What lessons can science fiction and other speculative resources teach you about shaping real-world change? Futures Leadership includes a collection of skills you can develop now, in preparation for days to come. 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 make us human. The Futures Leadership Seminar will offer tools for addressing individual and collective challenges through everyday actions. The course will also push us to consider how we think as a prerequisite for examining what we 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. Current algorithmic models can often solve static problems without much trouble. Future leaders use creativity and adaptive thinking to address life’s dynamic, wicked problems which usually have uncertainty at their core. Seminar participants will leave this intensive three-week experience with models for applying foresight, planning, collaboration, emotional intelligence, careful observation, and SMART goals in their work. Ultimately, the course will revolve around building transferable skills that can help students make an impact in the communities they hope to serve.
Expected learning outcomes
- Explore research about questions that matter most to us and to the communities we hope to serve
- Map our visions for the future and discuss how we can realize them
- Study equitable, just, and sustainable leadership practices that honor all forms of life on this planet
- Develop a futures leadership toolkit and action plan that responds to a real world problem
- Practice incorporating ethics and compassion into our work
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.
