By the end of this semester, students should:

1. Understand the main challenges associated with the fields of 
conservation and development practice and state-of-the-art 
thinking and approaches for their management and governance. 
2. Have acquired basic skills required of project managers: 
program management and budgeting, program-level monitoring and 
evaluation, and institutional learning and change.
3. Have acquired basic skills required of effective frontline 
facilitators of change: process facilitation, criteria and 
indicators, action research in support of research-practice and 
research-policy linkages, adaptive collaborative management, 
and networked governance.
4. Know how to communicate effectively, including writing for 
non-academic audiences and the delivery of demand-driven 
information and information technology.
5. Have a firm grasp of the relationships between social and 
institutional theory, conservation and development 
methodologies, and political and logistical constraints.
6. Understand the relationship between course themes and 
diverse areas of application (e.g., demand-driven development, 
conservation, community-based natural resource management, 
payment for ecosystem services, urban sustainability, biofuels, 
climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation).

PART 1: DEVELOPMENT AND CONSERVATION CHALLENGES (3 weeks)
1. Course introduction
2. Capacity and political constraints at individual and 
institutional levels 
3. Motivating and sustaining stakeholder interest
4. Power dynamics
5. Managing the understanding-action tension
6. Project life cycles and sustainability
7. Complexity of human and natural systems 

PART 2:  SKILLS FOR FRONTLINE FACILITATORS OF CHANGE (6 weeks)
1. Facilitation 
2. Demand-driven development approaches
3. Adaptive collaborative management
4. Action research
5. Criteria and indicators
6. Catalyzing collective action
7. Network/hybrid governance

PART 3: SKILLS FOR PROJECT MANAGERS (3 weeks)
1. Program management (technical, human and financial aspects 
of planning and monitoring)
2. Program-level monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment
3. Institutional learning and change
4. Donor relations

PART 4: COMMUNICATION (3 weeks)
1. Lessons learning and documentation in the context of change 
processes
2. Writing for/presenting to/reaching non-academic audiences