Spring 2027

Sustainable Approaches to System Improvement

Examines sustainable approaches to system improvement, addressing natural capital, emission buildup, and base of the pyramid while strengthening mission-central concerns like cost, quality, and profit.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Mark Finster

Homework was assigned every other week and described as tricky, with one simple paper required. There were no exams in this course.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify the forces in an organization’s ecosystem that drive sustainability

  • Determine the capabilities needed to utilize forces that drive sustainability

  • Recommend sustainability improvements that strengthen the organization’s core mission

  • Apply sustainability principles and/or frameworks to address the challenge of improving an organization’s core mission

  • Analyze sustainability issues and/or practices using a systems-based approach to support organizational or societal sustainability strategies

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

None

  • None
OTM 370

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • None

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

MARK P FINSTER is recorded teaching in Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records

No records available.

Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Mark Finster

The material was engaging, and Mark Finster was clearly passionate about it, making the lectures interesting despite some dry moments.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2015: 3.48 GPA, 80.0% A/AB (n=40 letter grades); Fall 2016: 3.45 GPA, 69.8% A/AB (n=43 letter grades); Fall 2017: 3.51 GPA, 81.4% A/AB (n=43 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Mark Finster

Homework was assigned every other week and described as tricky, with one simple paper required. There were no exams in this course.

Past student reviews · Mark Finster

Finster was usually quite helpful in office hours and cared about students, ensuring the grade distribution did not get too low.

Topics

  • Natural capital, emission buildup, and base of the pyramid
  • Innovative system-improvement concepts
  • Mission-central concerns: cost, quality, customer, market, revenue, profit, brand, reputation sourcing, and quality of work life

Skills

  • Identify forces in an organization's ecosystem that drive sustainability.
  • Determine capabilities needed to utilize forces that drive sustainability.
  • Recommend sustainability improvements that strengthen the organization's core mission.
  • Apply sustainability principles and/or frameworks to improve an organization's core mission.
  • Analyze sustainability issues and/or practices using a systems-based approach.

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2017— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2017

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2017 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1022 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "4022a9d35ba432c419b27026071ce1450bb977048a57c86bbdf24ad1a1efe0bc",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}