Summer 2015 Short Course: Teaching Socio-Environmental Synthesis with Case Studies

Preparing students to tackle urgent and complex environmental problems is a critical challenge. Problems such as global climate change, water resource management, and sustainable development are dynamic, multi-faceted problems that require interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to solve.

Socio-environmental (S-E) synthesis is a problem-solving approach that considers the integrated nature of the environment and human society and combines insights, methods, and data from the natural and social sciences to produce knowledge and inform solutions. The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) is dedicated to educating about this approach and its broad relevance and to teaching the core concepts and competencies necessary to understand, research, and address S-E problems.

About the Short Course

SESYNC invites participants for a four-day short course on Teaching Socio-Environmental Synthesis with Case Studies. The course will be held July 28–31, 2015, at SESYNC in Annapolis, Maryland.

 

The goals of the short course are to:

  •  Introduce participants to socio-environmental (S-E) synthesis as a problem-solving approach.
  •  Engage participants in advancing the teaching of S-E synthesis and related concepts and competencies.
  •  Enable participants to use a powerful and effective teaching approach, the case study method, to teach S-E synthesis.
  •  Support participants in developing their own case study classroom activity that can be used in their classrooms and shared on the SESYNC website.

 

We seek a diverse group of participants, including faculty, postdocs, and graduate students from both the social and natural sciences. Participants should have a strong interest in learning about and teaching S-E synthesis and be willing to commit to writing a case study related to S-E synthesis. We welcome applications from individuals or small teams (2–4 people) that will collaborate on writing a case study. Teams are strongly encouraged, but not required. Please note that completion of the case study will require additional time beyond the duration of the course.

 

Costs

 

Registration fees are $250 for faculty and $100 for graduate students and postdocs. Flights and hotel costs for non-local participants will be pre-paid by SESYNC in accordance with our travel policies. All eligible travel expenses (e.g., meals and ground transportation) will be reimbursed by SESYNC upon receipt of a completed case study that can be shared online.

 

All participants are expected to create and submit a completed case study focused on teaching about S-E synthesis.

 

Apply

 

Visit http://www.sesync.org/opportunities/teaching-se-synthesis-with-case-studies-july-2015 for complete details. Deadline for applications is Monday, March 23, 2015, at 5 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

 

Questions?

 

Please contact Dr. Cynthia Wei at: cwei@sesync.org