BUS 366/ENGL 267 – Social Enterprise Storytelling

Four credits, EXP
2 week in Scotland; 2 weeks on campus
Professors Beth Staples and Emily Landry

This course offers an opportunity for international, interdisciplinary, and experiential learning with a focus on the techniques of storytelling in a unique context for social impact businesses: the Orkney Islands. The Orkney Islands offer a rich context for exploring contradictions between hyper-local community culture and global innovation in the renewable energy sector. According to the Rural Social Enterprise Hub based in Scotland, a 2019 survey reported that although rural and remote areas hold only 17% of the country's population, they produce 33% of Scotland's social enterprises. Students will study and practice creative writing techniques, and then bring those techniques into written projects examining two social enterprises in Orkney: (1) Restart Orkney, a charity organization in Kirkwall that counsels and employs vulnerable populations and runs a storefront that participates in Kirkwall's circular economy and (2) [http://(https://www.aquatera.co.uk/]Aquaterra, a for-profit venture in Stromness that is helping overcome some of the most pressing sustainability and energy challenges locally and globally. Students will be responsible for multiple writing assignments that explore and serve these businesses and process their own experiences of this unique place. In addition to interacting with these social enterprises, students will get to know the islands though cultural excursions. Orkney is a dramatic and one-of-a-kind landscape blending modern technology with neolithic sites. We will visit the Standing Stones of Sternness, Skara Brae, local farms, take a windmill tour, and meet with famed Scottish storyteller Tom Muir, among other experiences.

For further details, please contact Professors Staples (bstaples@wlu.edu) or Landry (elandry@wlu.edu).

Applications open October 7th, 2025.