Teaching theoretical concepts, such as resilience or complexity theory, provides unique challenges especially in applied disciplines. Current trends such as global change will require natural resource disciplines, such as forestry and agriculture, to expand their scientific basis and possibly shift their dominant paradigms to adopt a broader view of the systems they manage as complex social-ecological systems. This likely will result in borrowing and adapting theories and concepts from other disciplines, such as complexity science. Students in natural resources will need more training in these paradigms and learn to incorporate concepts such as thresholds, uncertainty, and cross-scale interactions as they affect ecosystem dynamics into management or restoration prescriptions. Numerous courses and approaches exist that teach general complexity concepts, including management implications at the governance levels. However, we do not know of any courses where these concepts are specifically applied to practical management challenges. This course aims to overcome this shortcoming by providing field exercises that can are used to link theoretical concepts from complexity science to applied forest management issues regardless of management objectives.