Dear Members of the Student Chapter of the System Dynamics Society,

Welcome to the 11th Snowball, your quarterly update from the Student Chapter, in which we bring you updates on Chapter activities and other points of interest.

This is the last edition of the Snowball before this year’s PhD Colloquium at the System Dynamics Conference in Albuquerque.  Inside you will find information on the Colloquium program and other activities, including a fundraiser we will hold to raise money for next year’s Colloquium.  Please remember to register for the Colloquium if you plan to attend.  We have a great program planned, and hope that this year’s Colloquium will be a fantastic learning and networking opportunity.

All past Snowballs can be downloaded from the Chapter Website, which has been updated with new information and a brand new format.

If you have any comments or suggestions for us, please feel free to keep in touch.  We would also like to hear about upcoming conferences or meetings, as well as about research interests of new or graduating members.  We hope to hear from you all soon, and look forward to seeing you in Albuquerque.

The Policy Council of the Student Chapter

2009 PhD Colloquium Update from Organizers Gönenç Yücel and Christian Lehr

In less that one month, this year’s System Dynamics Conference, and therewith the 10th PhD Colloquium of the Student Chapter, will take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The colloquium will take place on Sunday, July 26th at the Hotel Albuquerque.

We have received very interesting papers and extended abstracts from various fields of research, which will guarantee many fruitful discussions throughout the day.  As you may have seen in the tentative conference schedule, the colloquium program is beginning to shape up.  Prof. Dennis Meadows will be our keynote speaker on Sunday morning.  As in past years, the colloquium program will include a panel discussion.  The topic of this year’s discussion will be “professional ethics in the context of simulation modeling”.  Prof. George Richardson will moderate the discussion, and our panel will include Dennis Meadows, Kim Warren, and Alan Graham. 

We are still looking for a nice bar or restaurant near the hotel, where we plan to gather in the evening to relax, chat, and have some food and drinks after a day of hard work.  We will of course keep you up to date with all of the information on the colloquium.  Just make sure to take a look at the colloquium section of the student chapter website every once in a while.

As you may have noticed, we have asked you to register for the PhD Colloquium.  If you have not yet registered, please do so by sending a short email to phdcolloquium@systemdynamics.org.  We ask that you register even if you will be attending the event as an audience member, so that we can arrange for rooms and catering.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Albuquerque!

Fundraising Opportunity at the Albuquerque Conference

This year, the student chapter will sell system dynamics t-shirts at the Albuquerque conference.  We are hoping that this will become a regular fundraiser for the student chapter, so that we can provide lunch for participants at future colloquia.  The t-shirts will be sold for $10 each, and we will be able to apply the profits toward next year's colloquium.  We will need to sell the shirts during breaks at the conference.  If you are able to help sell t-shirts during breaks at the conference, please contact Asmeret at asmeret@wsu.edu.  This will be an opportunity to network with other conference participants while helping out the student chapter and making next year's colloquium even better.  Thanks for your help!

Inflow

We would like to welcome all of the new members to the student chapter.  If you know of anyone who is interested in joining, please have them visit the Student Chapter website and add their contact information to the members list.  Also, if they would like to be introduced to the student chapter through this newsletter, they can contact the Chapter Representative.

This quarter, we have one new member that we would like to introduce. 

Onur Özgün is studying Simulation Games, Complexity, and Learning with Prof. Yaman Barlas at Boğaziçi University in Turkey.

Most dynamic decision making problems constitute 'systemic complexity' which is mainly caused by the existence of time delays, non-linear influences and feedback effects in the system. Interactive simulators are often used to help and accelerate learning in and about such complex systems. But there is little evidence in the literature about to what extent conceptual and 'deep' learning can be acquired by playing with interactive simulators.  The main purpose of this thesis is to assess the extent of learning, by testing the 'transfer' of learning from one gaming situation to another.  Transfer of learning is only possible by a conceptual understanding of the system. Thus, the learner should not only be able to show good performance in a given decision game, but should also learn the underlying structure. There are different types of transfer of learning: Learning may be transferred between simulation games with different contexts, and/or with different levels of complexity.  In any case, as an integral part of the thesis, proper measures of 'systemic complexity' will be defined. Several simulators with different contexts and levels of complexity will be built and experiments will be carried out to measure the subjects' transfer of learning from one simulator to another.

Outflow

We would like to officially congratulate all of the student chapter members who have recently obtained their PhDs.  We would love to share your research with other student chapter members through the Snowball.  If you would like to add a synopsis of your research to our next newsletter, please let the student chapter President of Chapter Representative know.

Best Wishes

The Student Chapter Policy Council produces these Snowballs to benefit both the Chapter and wider society.  People volunteer their time and we would like to thank the people who have contributed to the newsletter – we appreciate it greatly.  If you have any suggestions for the newsletter, website, or the student chapter in general, please let us know. 
Best wishes,
The Policy Council of the Student Chapter