GEO is excited to announce that this year’s Global Leadership Challenge, Achieving Environmental Sustainability Across Sectors, is now open for partner student applications!
Last summer’s Global Leadership Program centered on Pacific Rim Environment, Health and Inequality Challenges. Over 50 students from 13 economies and 28 Universities around the Pacific Rim participated in a two-week interdisciplinary program which was facilitated and staffed by a combination of University of Oregon undergraduates, graduates, faculty, special skills workshops and program coordinators. Over the course of the two weeks, students of varying disciplines, years, English fluency and cultural backgrounds collaborated together to develop an innovative and feasible solution to the presented challenges in small teams. Meanwhile, participants attended skills building workshops on topics such as science communication and design thinking which they could then apply to their problem-solving process. At the end of the two weeks, the participants presented their formal proposals and received feedback and questions from their community partners.
For 2020, this program will focus on the globally critical and increasingly pressing challenge of sustainability. A sustainable future depends on our ability to provide creative solutions locally that transfer globally, across continents. The University of Oregon, the city of Eugene, and the community of for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors throughout western Oregon stand at the intersection of research and environmental science and offer the ideal platform for solving sustainability-related challenges. Participants will work with three groups to help address sustainability-related challenges pertinent to each group’s work. Each community partner will come from a different local sector: for-profit, non-profit and public. There will be 3–4 small student teams per community partner and the student teams will work together to draft a proposal or action plan for a real sustainability goal or challenge that their partner currently faces.
Teams will be given the opportunity to collaborate across their sectors and will be encouraged to develop solutions that address the needs of multiple stakeholders. Student’s solutions will be presented at the end of the program and winning proposals will be selected based on factors such as feasibility, creativity, and cross-sector collaboration. In addition, participants will complete topic-based skills-building workshops that develop cross-cultural collaboration skills, experiential learning, fast-paced research, and applied design thinking and leadership capabilities.
This exciting two-week opportunity will take place in Eugene, Oregon, at the University of Oregon campus from July 19 to August 1, 2020. If you have students who would be interested in participating in this program, please let them know they can find more information and the link to apply here: https://international.uoregon.edu/2020-leadership-challenge. The program is open to any domestic or international student and an institution does not need to be GEO partner currently for students to be eligible. We hope your students will be able to join us!