Community-Based Investing - Systems and Practice

The Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) at Tufts University is searching for a part-time lecturer or Professor of Practice to teach the online graduate-level course Community-Based Investing - Systems and Practice.

This online course will explore the core principles and practices of community-based investing. The course is offered within a recently launched graduate Certificate in Impact and Sustainable Investing. This program is housed within the UEP graduate program, renowned for a 50-year history in training 'practical visionaries'.

Preferred applicants will offer students engaging opportunities to think strategically about their own personal relationships to capital and the societal systems that distribute and redistribute investment resources. The ideal candidate would be able to draw upon their own experience to connect theory to the practice of community-based investing. The instructor would be expected to transmit foundational knowledge from raising and deploying capital to the back-office fundamentals of administering a loan fund. Preferred candidates should also have experience designing investment approaches that make wise use of blended and integrated capital strategies. Candidates might also offer background in community stakeholder design, fund governance, and methods for ensuring that community-based strategies offer people that are most impacted the most say.

The course offers students a systems thinking approach to community-based investing, providing critiques and honest insights into the challenges faced by community investors and the tools needed to craft practical solutions to meet those challenges. Community Based Investing provides students hands-on tools for financing sustainable, resilient, and inclusive local economies. Students gain exposure to a range of community-based funding models, culminating in an ability to generate their own.

Tufts University offers extensive resources in online course development. In addition, the selected candidate will have access to prior course content including digital lectures, reading lists, and the full array of tests and assignments, designed to stimulate integrated learning in the online platform.