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The System Dynamics Congress |
On December 8-10, 2006, the Puerto Rico LSAMP Program, through the Bridge-to-the-Doctorate Initiative, offered The System Dynamics Congress at the Mayaguez Hotel and Casino (plenary session) and at the UPR-Mayaguez (workshops). One hundred eighteen (118) participants: 45 faculty members, 42 undergraduate students and 31 graduate students, from 14 different institutions attended the activity. The largest number of participants were in the fields of Engineering (35); Biology (29) and Chemistry (25). Two STEM professors from Columbia and one from Mexico also attended the congress.
This Congress was extremely helpful to our students. STEM graduate students are in fields where the most interesting and important research problems emerge at the frontiers of the established scientific disciplines. To address the urgent need of enhancing our students' capacity to make decisions on the increasingly complex interdisicplinary problems that we face as a society, we must provide students with new intellectual techniques that expand their problem-solving process and promote creative thinking. System dynamics is a modeling and computer simulation approach designed to do precisely that. System dynamics offers:
a language to facilitate interdisciplinary communication
a set of thinking skills to simplify complexity
tools to model and simulate dynamic systems
computer programs that guide the user in the construction, simulation and visualization of models
a conceptual framework to organize human intervention on systems
The objectives of the Congress were to:
Expose faculty and students to the system dynamics modeling approach
Enhance understanding of systems dynamics and its relevance as an intellectual tool
Initiate them in the practice of building system dynamics models
Provide them with a sound foundation in system dynamic modeling
Three internationally renowned experts in the field offered a plenary conference the first day and conducted the two-day workshops at UPR-Mayaguez. The speakers were:
Hans U. Fuchs, Professor of Physics at Zurich University of Applied Sciences at Winterthur, Switzerland. The topic of the conference was “ System Dynamics Modeling in Science and Engineering” and the topic of the workshop was “ The Flow of Blood in the Systemic Circuit: Introducing System Dynamics Modeling and Simulation”. Workshop participants received a CD ROM with the “I Think Software” that includes Fisheries Models and Model Building Tutorials.
Andrew Jones, Researcher at The Sustainability Institute in North Carolina. The topic of the conference was “System Dynamics Modeling – A Tool for Learning in a Complex World”, and the topic of the workshop was “ A Hands-On Workshop in System Mapping and Simulation Modeling”. Workshop participants received a copy of the CD prepared by the Sustainability Institute on “Systems Thinking”
Juan Martín García, Director of the System Dynamics Chair at La Salle Ramón Llull University in Barcelona, Spain. The topic of the conference was “ Practical Applications of System Dynamics: An Engineering Perspective”, and the topic of the workshop was “Practical Exercises on System Dynamics”. Workshop participants received a copy of his book “Theory and Practical Exercises of System Dynamics” with a CD with the program to run the exercises.
Abstract of Conference and Topics Covered in Workshop