“Solving the World’s Wicked Problems Through Local Sustainability Initiatives”
- Melissa Hinter
Melissa Hinter spoke at the Science Forum this Friday on how UT is tackling sustainability initiatives. I learned that “wicked problems” do not have clear solutions, have multiple causes, and are difficult to define. Some examples of wicked problems would be climate change, obesity, poverty, hunger, and more. She suggests that sharing knowledge across disciplines, collaborating with communities, and engaged learning are ways Knoxville can contribute to solving our local sustainability problems. I agree that sharing knowledge across disciplines is a wonderful idea. It would be awesome if there was a place we could all pool our knowledge together across different fields and careers like a website. Often times it is difficult to find what research is being done unless we know about specific companies to look for.
UT is doing a lot through the office of sustainability and with student research done in the sustainability major. If other majors were to help pool our knowledge, i think we could make more significant research and help divide and conquer the larger questions as she suggested earlier about collaborating across disciplines. I have always had a love for sustainable design and volunteer work so it was cool to see other opportunities i could do on my own outside of my school work.
A picture of me attending the event.
