Projects and Project-based Courses
Faculty, scholars and students in Organizational Dynamics are encouraged to work on applied research and projects involving local, national and global organizations. Project outcomes include meeting defined organizational objectives and delivery of academic scholarship. Our educational model is to be collaborative which means we work with stakeholders in the organization sponsoring the project. Members of the requesting organization become co-designers, co-teachers, and co-actors with the facilitation of our faculty and students during all phases of a project.
As projects do not directly correspond with the Penn academic calendar, students may need more than one semester to complete their project obligations and academic work (interim course grades are provided). Students participate in a project for many reasons including to experience direct application of theories and models (DYNM 645), complete an independent study (DYNM 699), gather data for a capstone (DYNM 705 or DYNM 899), and to demonstrate competencies within an internship.
Project-based courses are identified with the academic code “DYNM 645.” All project-based courses are supervised by a member of the DYNM faculty, have a syllabus, meeting schedule, defined deliverables, and earn course unit (CU) credit for a Penn degree. Project-based courses may or may not have a full program fee or an advance reading list. Most require preliminary academic or defined experience for entry.
2010-2012 Projects
Russell Byers Charter SchoolFor this project, activities include organizational system diagnosis, planning, designing, and implementation. We will apply Interactive Planning as well as other systems methodologies to the challenges of the Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia. Interactive Planning is a method of planning that eliminates the need for forecasting, and substitutes the use of assumptions and contingency planning in its place. Additionally, students will use design rather than only research as a way of handling systems of interacting problems (messes). Design aims to dissolve the messes rather than to solve their components. |
 |
Prison Pre-entry and Re-entryhttp://www.leonaking.org/community.html In this project, students use theory and practice to advise Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams and an advisory committee co-Chaired by Leon A King II, Esquire on the steps that need to be taken in the areas of prisoner pre-entry and re-entry to enhance public safety in the City of Philadelphia. Pre-entry and re-entry are defined as anything that combines the traditional elements of punishment with an evidenced-based program that prepares and assists an individual in living a crime free life. |
 |
Design a New Degree Programhttp://www.organizationaldynamics.upenn.edu/graddegreeprograms The Penn Organizational Dynamics program is engaging the DYNM 645 Systems Thinking & Design project class to help with the preparation and facilitation of a workshop to design a new DYNM degree. For this, we would like to invite you to take a short survey to help us identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the Organizational Dynamics Masters programs from your point of view. The survey is anonymous and the information you provide will be kept confidential. A design workshop will follow the Spring Brunch on Saturday January 7, 2012. |
 |
Sudden Cardiac Arrest Survivalhttp://www.organizationaldynamics.upenn.edu/survival The Special Task Force on Reframing the System of Survival for Sudden Cardiac Arrest includes thought-leaders, instructors, EMS providers, researchers, scholars, suppliers, manufacturers, community members, and survivors. Our objective is to design, develop, and test a new approach to thinking, planning, and acting – not a revision or update of current clinical protocols – which we hope will save more lives following sudden cardiac arrest in the community. |
 |
Virtual Organization Development and Change Laboratoryhttps://sites.google.com/site/virtualodlabprojectpublic/ Students in the Virtual Organization Development and Change Laboratory explore the wicked problem of how to design and conduct operations and organization development in 3D Immersive environments when organizations are geographically distributed. This pilot project seeks industry, government and academic contributions and applied research partnerships, multi-disciplinary scholars, registered students and interested others in the Organizational Dynamics community to help identify and des describe current virtual world organization development and design projects. Here are two papers that resulted from this project: |
 |
Penn Facilities Services Process Improvementhttp://www.facilities.upenn.edu/ Each year Penn’s Facilities Services organization responds to over 65,000 requests for repairs in University facilities ranging from a football stadium and high rise residential towers to laboratory, academic office and classroom buildings. In 2008, Facilities Services asked Organizational Dynamics faculty member, Dr. Martin Stankard to assess repair work processes and their supporting information systems and to recommend improvements in responsiveness and timeliness of repair service to customers throughout the University. |
 |
Projects/Programs/Portfolios ProjectsFOR P3 STUDENTS ONLY: DYNM 645 – 080: Project Team Strategy offers students the opportunity to synthesize the knowledge, skill, and creativity gained within the P3 curriculum, as well as other Organizational Dynamics courses completed, with professional demands from their work environments. |
 |
Accenturehttp://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/insight-high-performance-process-excellence-podcast.aspx The purposes of this project were to prepare and facilitate three Business Process Management (BPM) design workshops and to consolidate the results of the workshops. The workshops were delivered in Philadelphia, London, and via virtual technology in order to engage participants located in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. The primary input into, and design activity of, the workshops were the values identified via case studies, the determination of how the focus on certain values influences the process of process management are to be put in place, as well as a process of process management white paper. Another output of this project was a contribution to the textbook, Value-Driven Business Process Management by Peter Franz and Dr. Mathias Kirchmer. |
 |
International House of Philadelphia (Completed Spring 2011)“A group of scholars from the graduate program of Organizational Dynamics in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania addressed the systemic problems of the International House of Philadelphia through the process of Situational Analysis, an activity of Idealization, which is part of Interactive Planning. Specifically, this capstone describes how the scholars analyzed the systemic environment of the International House of Philadelphia through eleven activities in order to address its challenges and synthesize a compelling argument for organizational change.” To Read More, here is an MS thesis that resulted from the project: |
 |
Foreign Policy Research Institute (Completed Spring 2011)For this project, activities included organizational system diagnosis, planning, designing, and implementation. We applied Interactive Planning as well as other systems methodologies to the challenges of Foreign Policy Research Institute. Interactive Planning is a method of planning that eliminates the need for forecasting, and substitutes the use of assumptions and contingency planning in its place. Additionally, students used design rather only research as a way of handling systems of interacting problems (messes). Design aims to dissolve the messes rather than to solve their components. |
 |
Curtis Institute of Music (Completed Spring 2011)“This project studied the Curtis Institute of Music and how the school is challenging students to expand their thinking by involving a diverse group of stakeholders in the complete redesign of performance experience. A description of an interactive planning and idealized design project, called the Curtis Leadership Workshop, is presented.” To Read More, here is an MS thesis that resulted from this project: |
 |
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) Diffusion of Innovation (Completed Summer 2010)Students completed a crash course on the literature concerning the successful diffusion of innovation with a focus on diffusion in organizations. A field trip to CHOP familiarized them with the procedure known as tracheal intubation (inserting a breathing tube), the complications frequently associated with this life-saving but potentially life threatening procedure, and a quality improvement intervention developed at CHOP that physicians there hope to initially diffuse to 20 other hospitals nationally. |
 |
