Systems Inquiry: Explore Your Interests

Start with curiosity rather than a solution

Beginning with a proposed solution can limit what we notice and whose knowledge we seek out. Systems Inquiry asks us instead to start with curiosity: to learn more about how an issue is experienced and understood by others, to explore what is already being done about the issue, to question our assumptions, and to investigate the interconnected conditions that produce the outcomes we see. This openness matters. It can help us avoid assuming that our own perspective is the most important one, overlooking work already underway, or deciding what others need before learning from them.

1. Begin by Asking: What am I Curious About?

Graphic featuring a Grinnell student reflecting on questions that can help identify an area to explore. The questions are: “What questions or topics keep coming up in my classes, conversations, work, or daily life?” “What do I find myself wanting to understand better?” “What experiences, relationships, or responsibilities have shaped what I notice or think about?” “What responsibilities do I have—or hope to have—to my family, community, profession, or others?” “What issues affect people or places to which I feel connected?” “What have I encountered at Grinnell that is new or unfamiliar to me?” “When have I noticed people experiencing the same community, institution, policy, or system differently?” “What do I know because of my own experiences? What might I understand less well?” “What am I studying, and what social, civic, or environmental questions connect to it?” “What assumptions might I already be making?” “Whose experiences or knowledge might help me see something I haven’t considered?” “What is already happening around this issue, and who is already engaged?” and “What might I discover if I resist deciding what should happen next?” The graphic concludes: “You don’t need to answer all of these questions. One question that makes you curious is enough to begin.”

Systems Inquiry can begin with something you experience, notice, hear about, study, or simply want to understand better. You might already have a social, civic, or environmental issue that matters deeply to you. Or you may have no idea where to begin. Both are good starting points. Our interests and questions can grow from many places: our experiences, identities, responsibilities, relationships, academic studies, communities, values, or encounters with something unfamiliar. You don’t need to identify a single “passion” or cause to begin.

2. Talk it Through with A Civic Education and Innovation (CEI) Adviser

You don’t have to know exactly what you’re interested in—or what you want to do—to meet with us. A Civic Education and Innovation adviser can help you explore your interests, experiences, responsibilities, academic questions, or curiosities and consider where they might lead. Together, you might identify people to talk with, organizations to learn from, courses to explore, programs or events to attend, or other ways to deepen your understanding.

Meet with a CEI Adviser (See Hyperlinks to CEI Staff)

3. Explore Community Organizations

One way to learn about an issue is to discover who is already engaged with it. Our Community Partner Database can help you explore organizations in Grinnell and beyond, learn about the issues they engage with, and identify people and organizations whose experience and knowledge might deepen your understanding. Exploring an organization doesn’t mean you need to volunteer with it. Simply learning who is already doing the work—and how they understand the issues they encounter—can be an important part of Systems Inquiry.

Explore the Community Partner Database

4. Get Involved and Continue Your Learning

Sometimes our questions emerge through experience. Grinnell offers many opportunities to encounter social, civic, and environmental issues, learn from others, and discover questions you may not have considered before.

Social Justice Tour – Center for Careers, Life, and Service | Grinnell College

Social Justice Tours: Explore Grinnell and the surrounding region through local history, community knowledge, contemporary challenges, and the people and organizations connected to them. Tours can reveal connections between past and present while raising new questions about the systems that shape our communities.

More About CEI Social Justice Tours

Social Justice Tour Story Map

The Undivide Project

Social Innovator in Residence: Learn alongside practitioners engaging deeply with complex social or environmental systems. Conversations, workshops, class visits, and community events offer opportunities to explore the questions, experiences, relationships, and approaches informing their work.

More About the Social Innovator in Residence

policy studies students standing in a farm field talking with a local regenerative farmer.

Community-Engaged Courses: Explore social, civic, or environmental questions through academic study while learning with community partners and drawing upon knowledge and experience beyond the classroom.

Learn About Community-Engaged Learning Courses (Hyperlink TBD)

Three students preparing the local community meal.

Service Leadership Work-Study: Spend sustained time with a community organization, building relationships and learning more about the people, assets, challenges, and systems surrounding its work.

Explore Service Leadership Work-Study

Volunteer & Community Opportunities: Connect with organizations engaged with issues you want to understand better. Volunteering can help meet immediate community needs while also creating opportunities to listen, learn, build relationships, and better understand how an issue is experienced and addressed.

Learn More About Volunteering

a room with people sitting around tables and discussing issues they care about

Dialogue, Events & Conversations: Hear different perspectives, share your own experiences, ask questions, and explore issues with others through community dialogues, speakers, workshops, events, and conversations.

Learn More About the Listening Project