Climate Wisdom Lab

Purpose

The Climate Wisdom Lab (“Lab”) is a professional development program designed to help faculty and staff develop curriculum and programs that prepare students for sustainable engagement with climate change, structural oppression and inequality, and other systemic challenges. The program supports awareness of participants’ specific affective experiences, builds understanding of the complex psychosocial dimensions of climate change and other stressors, assesses the hidden affective implications of existing course offerings, and creates a collaborative creative process for developing innovative new offerings and teaching modules that respond to the unique demands of today’s educational environment.

• Are you a professor who is stymied by the impacts of this historic moment on your students, or called to better equip them for an uncertain future?

• Do you work on campus sustainability and feel frustrated by resilience conversations that focus on infrastructure and facilities, rather than people and community? 

• Are you seeking professional development programming that centers the heart in climate justice pedagogy?  

• Are you a college counselor struggling to help students with the existential weight of a climate-changed future? 

• Do you want to support students’ engagement with climate justice through your work in co-curricular spaces on campus?

Academic Departments

• Environmental Studies and Sciences

• Sustainability

• Environmental Justice

• Climate Change

• Conservation Biology / Ecology

• Engineering

• Health Sciences

• Psychology

• Others

Co-Curricular Units

• Sustainability Offices

• Residence Life

• Counseling and Psychology Services

• Centers for Teaching and Learning

• Professional Development

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

• Culture Centers

• Community-Based Learning 

• Career Counseling

• Student Affairs

OBJECTIVES

Participants who complete the Lab will develop: 

• awareness of potentially distressing psychosocial states that might otherwise thwart climate engagement through dissonance, denial, distortion, or apathy;

• greater capacity to create pedagogy and co-curricular offerings that address the hidden emotional distress caused by climate change, structural oppression, and social disruption, without having to ‘become therapists’;

• awareness of affective dimensions of existing course or co-curricular offerings;

• resourcing, connection and community with others educators operating in today’s challenging educational environment; 

• capacity to translate unsettling emotions into generative responsiveness and affects of resilience, including joy, hope, and efficacy; and

• confidence and facility in responding to students’ difficult affective experiences, including climate trauma, eco-anxiety, global dread, and ontological insecurity, among others.

DESCRIPTION

The CWL is a process for integrating emotional-affective learning into new and existing curricula. The basic programming focuses on enabling participants to explore their own affective experience of this moment, to learn new tools for addressing the psycho-social dimensions of climate change and social injustice, and to develop specific, practical ideas for implementing these understandings in their classrooms. This workshop can be adapted to fit any time-frame or context; for the most robust experience, we recommend a day-long, intensive workshop, while we also offer even longer programs that enable even deeper explorations of these issues.

SCHEDULE

The workshops can be held at any time throughout the year, ideally sometime before the beginning of an academic semester or quarter, or whenever professional development programming is typically scheduled at your institution:

• July - September

• November - January

• April - May

“I came away with a clearer and more nuanced understanding of the necessity and opportunity of incorporating work on my students’ climate-related anxieties into my courses – active work, not just compassionate acknowledgement, though that is the first step – and a renewed sense of mission in my teaching.”

“This was a truly transformative experience!”

“Empowering, thought-provoking, necessary, supportive, encouraging, strategic.”

“I am immensely grateful.”

“Thank you for facilitating this session, inviting me to participate, and sharing your wisdom and yourselves. It was a powerful experience, and I'd love to help uplift or even grow this project further so that more folks can experience it.”

“A thoughtful and collective opportunity to engage in conversation about how to support our students and each other.”

PRICING

The CWL is currently offered both in-person and virtually. Pricing is dependent on the nature of the program requested and whether offered in-person or virtually. Inquire below for more details.

Kevin M. Gallagher, J.D.

Kevin is an attorney, author, and the Director of Emergent Resilience. Kevin has a Masters degree in International Affairs with a focus on International Environmental Institutions. He has trained with the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies, the Center for Council, the Work That Reconnects, and the School of Lost Borders. Kevin began his career in climate change working on climate change law and policy issues as an attorney in private practice in Washington D.C. and as a law clerk with U.S. Department of Justice - Environment and Natural Resources Division. He previously worked for the Public International Law & Policy Group, where he advised state and sub-state entities in post-conflict areas on international peace-building and constitutional reform issues. He is the author of the forthcoming Embodied Engagement: How We Heal the Climate Movement and Our World, a guide for responding to the psychosocial dimensions of a climate changed world.

Sarah Jaquette Ray, Ph.D

Sarah chairs the Environmental Studies Department at Cal Poly Humboldt. She received her PhD in Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy, with a focal department of English, at the University of Oregon in 2009. She is author of The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (University of Arizona, 2013) and co-editor of three books, Critical Norths: Space, Nature, Theory (2017), Disability Studies & the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory (2017), and Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial (2019). Her most recent book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (California, 2020) is an existential toolkit for the climate generation. She is also co-lead on a book and website project called “An Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators.” Her work is to help existentially resource people in their efforts to tackle climate injustice.