So I took this elective course with a few of my favorite peers and beloved professor. This guy is brilliant, no doubt; he sold me on the program, and then this class. Just as he insisted our Systems Thinking training was a direct tie to being holistic about sustainability, he impressed upon me the value of modeling and simulation to serve as effective techniques for understanding and analyzing complex systems. "This is a critical skill set to develop as sustainability issues call for more effective decision making approaches characterized by understanding of the system, experimentation, and consideration of long-term consequences of decisions." Anyhow, I admit: I was rather hesitant to voluntarily sign up for a class centered around the use of Excel and other PC-software-only programs that I had to purchase (Palisade's Decision Tools 5.5). I mean, that sounds pretty techy, no? I could have gone for something on the softer side... social entrepreneurship maybe? But no, I stuck it out and ate it up. Ha, well that's exaggeration, but I did enjoy it. Thoroughly.