Hacking 4 Oceans

Entrepreneurship + Ocean/Coastal Conservation Course

In Spring 2020, UC Santa Cruz offered  the first class of its kind focused on identifying solutions to key coastal and ocean problems using Lean Design 

In 2024, enrollment is open to students across the UC system and Monterey Institute of International Studies 

Learn Lean Launchpad and other Lean Design  techniques for startup success and solve real problems. 

Tackle complex problems critical to saving our oceans and coasts with an interdisciplinary team of students from across campus. 

Open to graduate and/or undergraduate students from any school, department, or program at UCSC or MIIS or through the APRU program.

Limited enrollment by permission of instructor team.

Interested in the course? Want to learn more? 

Complete the Interest Form

Join a Virtual Information Session

Email Hacking4Oceans@ucsc.edu

For more details, watch the short intro to the course below or review the slides

How do I enroll in the course? 

View  Hacking 4 Oceans Information Session slides below or CLICK HERE

Across the country, startups are using the principles of Lean design to create the next generation of  solutions. Startups operate with continual speed and urgency 24/7. Over the last few years they've learned how to be not only fast, but extremely efficient with resources and time using lean startup methodologies. The Lean Startup methods have been adopted to take on actual problems that are curated and presented either to students taking a class or made broadly available in open challenges to the community. 

In this course, you will use Lean Startup methods and approaches to solve actual problems facing ocean focused organizations (government, for-profit, and non-profit). 

Hacking 4 Oceans takes on problems facing the ocean. Some problems might use Lean to solve internal process problems (e.g. cut the time it takes to process permit approaches to advance adaptation) to large scale problems that have applicability in other regions (e.g. novel solutions to create sustainable aquaculture feed).  Students will form teams and choose one problem to work on for the quarter from a set of available problems. Each team works on a different problem.

Read stories about the course here

General

Course Title: Hacking 4 Oceans: Solving Ocean Issues with Lean Launchpad

Course #s:  CSP 281A, 5 units 

Syllabus:

Enrollees must complete the interest form. 

Term: 2024 Course offered Spring Quarter on Monday and Wednesday from 3:30-5pm over Zoom; First class is Monday, April 1 and Final class is Wednesday, June 6.

Teaching & Planning Team: Anne R. KapuscinskiRadhika Malpani, Andrea Carafa, and Sarah Eminhizer (additional advising from Steve Weinstein and Sue Carter)

Complete the Interest Form

Email questions to the Teaching Team: Hacking4Oceans@ucsc.edu