The challenges facing society today and in the near future are inherently complex systems problems. For example, improving transportation in cities or managing the growth of an international company both involve complex systems. The ability to recognize interactions and optimize connections between components in a system is called systems thinking. This type of thinking is vital for innovation and necessary for humanity’s longer-term survival. However, systems thinking is not intuitive for many people, and it can require significant mental effort. Most engineers benefit from the formal instruction provided in their undergraduate program. There are numerous methods to teach students about systems thinking but, unfortunately, assessing the effectiveness of these methods is a challenge. Assessment typically focuses on what students are able to produce rather than the mental effort required to produce it. Measuring mental effort is important because if mental effort can be measured and minimized, systems thinking is more likely to be adopted by students when they experience a real-world context. This research will test an approach to help students--more quickly and with less mental effort--solve complex systems problems using systems thinking. The research tests the effectiveness of priming students to think about the connections and interactions between components in a system using concept maps, a type of conceptual diagram to depict relationships within a system. This project t