I teach environmental policy courses for Huxley College here at Western Washington University, and within that realm my focus is on the way that science interacts with policy processes. Students coming into my classes typically have strong passions for the natural world, and many of them are confident that they know the solutions to the world’s environmental challenges. In other words, they are in roughly the same position I was in after college. My experiences since then have shown me, however, that the world is more complicated and interesting than I had understood it to be. Simultaneous to helping them to develop their knowledge bases and communication skills, one of my main goals as a professor is to help my students understand the complexity that underlies real-world social and environmental problems. If I am doing my job right, students leave my classes less sure that they know how to fix the world’s problems, but better able to critically evaluate their own understandings and recognize the merits of competing ideas. This critical thinking and reflexive self-awareness is the “magic sauce” that – at least in my distorted view of the world – will enable our students to be effective change agents.