All majors are appropriate but may be best suited for those in Sustainability, Complex Adaptive Systems, Fulton Engineering, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, WP Carey (Business Analytics), Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
-First Year Students (new to ASU Fall 2025)
-2nd Year Students
-3rd Year Students
-4th Year Students- Seniors
-2nd Year Students
-3rd Year Students
-4th Year Students- Seniors
202
Tempe
Solution Theater is a framework within a Decision Theater environment designed to help citizens work together on complex societal challenges. It brings representative groups of 12 to 15 participants into a structured setting where they have shared access to data, models, and scenario tools that support informed discussion. The project responds to growing political polarization, media noise, and declining trust in institutions, science, and expertise. Rather than relying on voting, participants deliberate, build trust, and develop proposals through guided, bottom-up processes. The central hypothesis is that when trust-building is paired with neutral data-driven decision-support tools, diverse citizens can reach reasonable agreements at a small scale. Solution Theater serves as a test case for a functioning micro-democracy, offering evidence that collective decision-making is still possible. Insights from these experiments will inform how participatory systems might scale, how civic education must evolve, and how democratic institutions can develop resilience against misinformation and manipulation in a modern information environment.
This position will assist the Decision Theater staff with subject-matter research and analysis which may include:
Writing briefs
Briefing colleagues on background for topics
Researching through complex techniques and procedures, library research, structured
interviews or other project-specific methodology
Writing and editing material for publication and presentation
Maintaining research documentation and sources
Running models and tools for presentations to clients and visitors
Qualifications include:
Demonstrated public speaking experience
Strong qualitative research skills
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Detail-oriented
Ability to pick up things fast with a strong desire to learn
Demonstrated leadership experience
Previous knowledge or skill and/or equivalent experience in Outlook, MS Office Suite,
Word, and Excel, specifically macros and functions
Experience with collaborative platforms such as Google Docs
Ability to lift/move heavy furniture with the assistance of a dolly
Interest in learning how to utilize technology to support decision-making and public policy
Writing briefs
Briefing colleagues on background for topics
Researching through complex techniques and procedures, library research, structured
interviews or other project-specific methodology
Writing and editing material for publication and presentation
Maintaining research documentation and sources
Running models and tools for presentations to clients and visitors
Qualifications include:
Demonstrated public speaking experience
Strong qualitative research skills
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Detail-oriented
Ability to pick up things fast with a strong desire to learn
Demonstrated leadership experience
Previous knowledge or skill and/or equivalent experience in Outlook, MS Office Suite,
Word, and Excel, specifically macros and functions
Experience with collaborative platforms such as Google Docs
Ability to lift/move heavy furniture with the assistance of a dolly
Interest in learning how to utilize technology to support decision-making and public policy
Manfred Laubichler
Tempe