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Course Descriptions

Course Resources

Schedule:
**Policy & Planning
**Science & Statistics

Staff

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Responding to feedback from the full-week course, Introduction to Structured Decision Making, NCTC has developed a shorter course to target the skills and concepts most useful for managers.  The technical and quantitative aspects of the material are not included in this overview course so as to concentrate on the most applicable processes that a typical manager needs to know/be able to do.  The 2-day course takes managers through the PrOACT process, a helpful roadmap for decomposing problems and applying systematic thinking to make your decision.  Other concepts covered include evaluating trade-offs, uncertainty, risk and managing small to large decision problems.

College Credit:  2 semester hours

Who should attend:  “Managers” are those who have decision making authority either solely or as part of a larger decision making body.  In the FWS, managers would include Project Leader, Assistant Regional Director, Regional Director, Division Chief, and Assistant Director.

Objectives:  Participants will be able to:

• Articulate the relevance and benefit of using a formal, transparent decision making process instead of a descriptive decision making process.
• Be able to:

1. Direct staff to use the process when appropriate
2. Understand decision maker role in the process
3. Understand that the process takes an investment of time and possibly resources (e.g., may need to bring in technical expert not currently on staff)
4. Help define the problem
5. Formulate objectives and weight them appropriately
6. Critically evaluate alternatives, consequences, and trade-offs presented to them

• Successfully step through a multi-objective natural resource problem using the PrOACT process.
• Be able to set up a successful expert elicitation exercise for your decision problem when data is scarce. 

Prerequisites? 
Assigned pre-reading required before start of class.