Environmental Leadership

Overview

What does it mean to be an environmental leader? How can we inspire others to achieve common goals to combat challenges like climate change? This short course provides an entry-level overview of timeless and timely leadership principles and how to apply them to environmental contexts in your own life. No matter your interests, age, career, or goals, you can make a difference. No prerequisites are needed for this course. To combat climate change, protect our environment, and develop sustainable communities, we must all engage in environmental leadership. Addressing today’s complex environmental issues requires us to view leadership less as a responsibility associated with any one position or person, and rather a call for collective action. Through this course, you will learn how to develop competencies and relationships that will help you work with others to understand the interconnectedness of systems and accomplish goals across boundaries. All kinds of leaders are needed to tackle the environmental and climate challenges that we face as a global society. By the end of the course, you will explore concepts of environmental leadership and how you might apply them in your own community or organization. By growing your leadership skills, you will be more fully equipped to work with others to pave the way to a just and sustainable future.

Syllabus

Foundations of Environmental Leadership and Design Thinking

Welcome to the course! We’ll begin by providing some introductory materials to set you up for success in the course. Then, we’ll define environmental leadership and explain why it’s important. We’ll explore the values and ethics that guide environmental leadership, including from specific examples. You’ll also begin to learn about design thinking through these examples, which will prepare you to dive deeper into this concept in the coming weeks. You’ll have the opportunity to test your knowledge through discussions with your peers and a graded quiz.

Integrating Environmental Leadership and Design Thinking

You will build on what you learned in Module 1 by thinking about how you can model environmental leadership for others and craft a vision statement. We’ll then dive more deeply into design thinking, with a focus on how to apply this framework to environmental challenges.

Empowering Environmental Innovation and Collaboration

We will look closer at the design process to understand how to identify what is working and what is not. You should start thinking about novel ideas and approaches and how you might suggest these types of ideas. We’ll also discuss how you can empower your team members to work in environmental initiatives.

Ethical Leadership and Reflection on Environmental Impact

We’ll take a look at how to apply what you’ve learned to real-world scenarios that require you to face ethical dilemmas while making environmental decisions. To conclude the course, you’ll consider how you want to apply environmental leadership to your own personal or professional life and set goals for how you can continue to develop after this course.