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Take the first steps toward climate leadership!

Sem02 (2024-2025) Climate Repair*

The aim of this course is to help you take the first steps toward climate leadership. This is done by providing scientific knowledge about the climate crisis, inspirational masterclasses of climate leaders in their own field, and reflecting on leadership in interactive seminars. Moreover, you will also be challenged to enact climate leadership yourself in this course by working on a group project.

Climate or sustainability leadership is a type of leadership that aims to strive for (organizational) change whilst taking into account planetary and societal boundaries. Sustainability leadership is based on dialogue, inclusion, collaboration, and participation. This type of leadership requires particular skills and these include:

  • Systems thinking. Addressing climate issues requires understanding complex structures and seeing the interconnections between social and natural systems.
  • Collaboration. To effectively work on complex issues you need others to determine an effective approach. Sustainability leaders guide others in navigating this complexity by facilitating dialogue and collaborative sensemaking and decision-making processes.
  • Self-reflection. Sustainability leaders are self-reflective professionals, who are aware of the values that drive them and align their work with these values.

This course has three types of meetings. These are Lectures, Masterclasses, and Seminars. The lectures aim to teach you the basics of the climate crisis, leadership, and social systems change. During the masterclasses, we will invite climate leaders from society and invite a scientific leader to provide a scientific perspective. The masterclasses cover a wide range of areas in which climate leadership can be expressed. This includes Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), Start-ups, Law, Activism, Geo-engineering, Art, and Government. The seminars will have a more open format in which we will reflect on the masterclasses and work on the group assignment.

Course details

  • Practical information

    Academic year
    2024-2025

    Semester
    2

    Period
    4

    Day(s)
    Tuesdays and Thursdays

    Time
    19:00 – 21:00

    Number of meetings
    14, partly masterclasses

    Dates of all meetings
    4, 6, 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27 February 2025
    4, 6, 11, 13, 18, 20 March 2025

    Masterclasses will be held between the 18th of February and the 13th of March 2025. The specific dates will depend on the availability of the experts.

    Location
    Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam
    Some masterclasses on external locations

    Room
    Tbd

    Credits
    6

    Coordinator & Lecturers

    • MSc. Ivar Maas, (Co-coordinator and lecturer)
    • Prof. Dr. Philipp Pattberg (Co-coordinator and lecturer)
    • Guest lectures from sustainability professionals and researchers with different scientific backgrounds
  • Learning objectives

    The aim of this course is to help you take the first steps toward climate leadership.

    • Increase self-awareness through self-reflection
    • Broadening scientific knowledge regarding the climate crisis
    • Developing climate leadership competencies
    • Develop multi-disciplinary skills by collaborating in group assignments with fellow students from different disciplines
    • Exploring creativeness combined with climate leadership
  • Working formats & structure

    Do you want to develop your climate leadership? Are you ready to learn new transferrable skills to address the climate crisis? Do you want to learn from practitioners how to put climate action into practice? In this course this is done by providing scientific knowledge about the climate crisis, inspirational masterclasses of climate leaders in their field, and reflecting on leadership in interactive seminars. Moreover, you will also be challenged to enact climate leadership yourself by working on a group project.

  • Assessment methods

    Students will be evaluated through self-reflection in an essay or different (50%), a group project (50%) and pass/fail for class participation.

  • Study materials

    Downloadable journal articles, reports and papers such as:

    • Ferdig, Mary. (2007). Sustainability Leadership: Co-creating a Sustainable Future. Journal of Change Management. 7. 25-35. 10.1080/14697010701233809.
    • Geels, F. W. (2011). The multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions: responses to seven criticisms. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions1(1):24-40. .org/10.1016/j.eist.2011.02.002

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