International Futures Strategic Forecasting Professional

The International Futures Strategic Forecasting Professional Certificate is a five-course credential offered by the Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs. It develops advanced proficiency in the IFs platform and the systems thinking needed to analyze long-term global change. 

The sequence builds cumulatively: 

• Course 1 establishes the core IFs workflow: analyzing historical data, displaying a Current Path forecast, building alternative scenarios, and comparing results. 
• Course 2 moves from software use to concepts. It covers forecasting and foresight, systems thinking, model validation, and how to explain and defend IFs-based analysis in professional settings. 
• Course 3 applies these skills to human systems, including demography, health, and education, and examines how they shape long-term development. 
• Course 4 focuses on social systems, including economics, governance, political risk, and international relations, and how changes across these systems can affect national trajectories. 
• Course 5 examines natural systems, including food and agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and the environment. The course culminates in an integrated scenario that draws on concepts from across the sequence to examine tradeoffs among human development, resource use, and environmental pressures. 

Learners who complete the Professional Certificate will be able to design, run, compare, and interpret integrated IFs scenarios across human, social, and natural systems and communicate their strategic implications to decision-makers. 

Estimated learning hours: 65-85 hours