Faculty Development Series
Climate Wisdom Lab - EMERGENT RESILIENCE
As part of the Faculty Development Series “Equity, Social Justice and the Sustainability Imperative", the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is pleased to host Emergent Resilience’s Climate Wisdom Lab. This program is designed for faculty and staff to address the psychosocial impacts of climate change and other structural stressors on our students and ourselves. By centering awareness on our affective experiences, we will build our understanding of these complex psychosocial dimensions and begin to honestly assess the hidden affective implications of our existing courses, programs, and services. The intention is to create a collaborative creative process for developing innovative new offerings that are responsive to students.
“Future-Scaping”, Tuesday May 17, 2022, 10:00 AM-Noon
The stories we live in shape our energy, agency, and purpose. This session combats powerlessness and despair by identifying assumptions about social change, and fostering new personal and collective stories that can support active engagement and thriving in times of rapid social and ecological change.
“Change-Vision-Action”, Tuesday May 17, 2022, 2:00-4:00 PM
An open-ended workshop to surface essential challenges, prioritize breakthrough leverage points, cultivate a desire for the future, and create a personal (or collective, depending on the setting) plan of action.
“Engaging Climate Emotions”, Monday, January 10, 2022
This session focuses on the role of emotions in how we act and behave in response to crisis, exhaustion, relationships, and trauma. We will discuss why awareness of emotions is integral to systems change work and environmental advocacy via neuroscience, polyvagal theory, and trauma theory.
“Navigating Burnout”, Tuesday, January 11, 2022
This session explores the neuroscience of overwhelm, the common assumptions behind the experience, and the role of trauma and empathic distress in depleting our energy and motivation. Importantly, we will look at learning strategies for cultivating a discipline of resourcedness and rest.
“Emotion Audit”, Thursday, January 13, 2022
In this session, we move into course and program design, and apply insights to existing syllabi, curricula, or workshops. We will examine the emotional subtext that is the “hidden curriculum” of the artifact with the goal of integrating emotions into the desired outcomes.
The Climate Wisdom Lab’s facilitators, Kevin Gallagher, JD, and Sarah Ray, PhD, will guide participants through this process in an interactive and supportive way. The workshops will build on each other, so attending all sessions will yield a richer experience. That said, we want to be as flexible as possible, so there may be opportunities to attend individual sessions, if space allows.
Dr. Ray presented a keynote address at May 2020’s UVM Pivotal Pedagogy conference, What the Climate Crisis has Taught Me about Teaching During a Global Pandemic. She also participated in the CTL book group focusing on her publication, Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (2020).
For session information and registration, please visit the CTL's Climate Wisdom Lab's web page.
Equitable Climate Action: Guiding Principles for a Just Transition - March 30, 2022, 4:00-5:30 PM (via Microsoft Teams)
UVM Professor, Vermont State Climatologist, and Vermont Climate Council (VCC) member, Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux will facilitate a panel of the Council’s Just Transition Subcommittee members (Chris Company, Beverly Littlethunder, Sue Minter, and Kashka Orlow) focusing on their work creating the VT Climate Action Plan’s “Guiding Principles for a Just Transition.” These principles provide a framework for the VCC to evaluate, adjust, and prioritize recommendations based on how they will impact Vermont’s frontline and vulnerable communities, including those who are highly exposed to climate risks; experience oppression and racism, have less resources to adapt to climate and economic change; bear the brunt of pollution, and are more likely to experience a job transition as Vermont addresses climate change.
Please join us to hear what they’ve learned about creating the Just Transition framework, its relevance to our campus, and implications for teaching about climate change.
For session information and registration, please visit the Division of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion’s Inclusive Excellence Symposium website.
"Optimizing Inclusive and Culturally Responsive Mentoring” - Tuesday, February 1, 2022
An introductory seminar and an interactive workshop designed to introduce evidence-based approaches, including the NAS Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM report, to broaden participation of culturally diverse groups in STEMM fields. Overall, participants will gain confidence in working with mentees from diverse backgrounds, add new strategies to their mentoring toolbox, and gain access to available resources to support quality mentorship at their home institutions.
Facilitated by Kelly Diggs-Andrews, PhD
- Seminar: 11:00 AM-Noon, Livak Ballroom, Davis Center, room 417/419
- Workshop: 1:30-3:00 PM, Livak Ballroom, Davis Center, room 417/419
- Workshop recording (NetID and password required to access)
- Resource Guide and Selected Citations
- “One Mentoring Action” exercise responses
Documentary Film Screening. "A Reckoning In Boston" - Tuesday, January 26, 2022, 4:30 PM Livak Ballroom
- Followed by a Live Q&A with the film's producers at 6:00 PM
- Also available to view On Demand from 8:00 AM-8:00 PM, Wednesday 26, via this streaming link
SYNOPSIS: In a tuition-free night course in their Boston neighborhood, Kafi Dixon and Carl Chandler are transformed by the lessons of history and philosophy. But is their new sense of agency strong enough to deflect the inequities of a rapidly gentrifying city? In a prosperous and progressive city, why is the divide between white and Black, rich and poor, so glaringly wide?. The Boston Globe calls it "...an absolute must see."
Sponsoored by UVM's Faculty Development Series, “Equity, Social Justice and Sustainability Imperative” and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration. For more information, please visit go.uvm.edu/mlk22
Fifth Annual Campus Wide Faculty Event - Monday, August 23, 2021