Skip to content

Welcome to CALS 501-Leading Climate Action in Society Part 1

Welcome

Welcome to CAL501. This course, and the complimentary course for year 2, CAL 601, weave a coherent thread through the program to optimize the cohort learning. The course includes a 2 week Learning Intensive (May 9th – May 22nd, 2022), and four additional seminar style units that occur in between the other first year courses (check the course schedule for exact dates).

In this course, you will be exploring and examining current a range of topics that provide a foundation for climate action leadership.  Throughout CAL 501, faculty and other knowledge holders from multiple relevant disciplinary areas and with experience and knowledge of indigenous world views will introduce and discuss key theories, debates, policies and contemporary developments in the field in order to help you situate and contextualize your learning and cultivate your perspectives and goals as an emerging climate action leader. The structure of this year-long course begins with a 10-day Learning Intensive focused on introducing Western and Traditional Indigenous Knowledges, theories, and perspectives on leadership, climate change and climate science, resilience, climate action and design thinking.

The Learning Intensive is followed by a series of online units or seminars which build on the program course work done to date. These online units insert between each of the other courses in the program over the course of a week, encouraging your reflection and integration of the ongoing coursework and readings. The open learning outputs of CAL 501/601 over the 2-year program will include your ongoing blog posts, and the possibility of student- produced open-learning resources and reflections (e.g., open-textbook; case studies; adaptation design challenges; tools/measures/frameworks).

The CALS 501 Learning Intensive focuses on a range of topics that include:

Process

  • Program & Competencies Overview and Analysis
  • Cohort & team building
  • Introduction to Faculty

Approaches to learning

  • Open Learning
  • Digital Identity
  • Critical, Academic, and Transdisciplinary Thinking
  • Indigenous and Western Science perspectives
  • Indigenous – embodied, place-based learning

Content

  • Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation: concepts and current challenges
  • Complex adaptive systems
  • Design thinking as an approach to complex challenges
  • The role of policy in change making
  • Psychosocial Resilience

Outcomes

  1. Introducing and support your familiarization with WordPress, Open tools, and Academic Blogging
  2. Providing practice with critical, reflexive, trans-disciplinary, and embodied/holistic thinking
  3. Developing an understanding of critical reflection and personal reflection, and working effectively in teams
  4. Developing some initial comfort applying design thinking to complex challenges
  5. Introduction to climate action competencies and the application of a career-management approach in the program
  6. Initial foundation in core topic areas: climate adaptation and mitigation, complexity science, and the role of policy in affecting climate action

Stay Connected

  • To the program through the MACAL Program website where you will find updates on events, links to careers/job postings, MACAL related webinars and blogs, and program resources.
  • To each other via the course blog and your own WordPress blogs – be sure to set up your Feedly. See here for instructions. You will need to add the OPML files to your Feedly for each course. Remember to use the #RRUMACAL in your blogs to make your blog posts visible and part of the MACAL community.
  • #RRUMACAL on twitter;
  • Subscribe to the Resilience by Design YouTube channel
  • Instructor email addresses can be found in Moodle.