Site Purpose
Here you will find detailed steps to bring the Boreas curriculum to your institution or organization. We have designed the workshop materials so that they can be replicated step-by-step.
- User Guide
- Boreas Learning Outcomes
- A Primer on Workshop Design
What are Boreas workshops?
The Boreas Leadership Program trains and develops the next generation of world changers to catalyze social and environmental solutions. As a co-curricular program designed and developed for graduate students, workshops are a foundational aspect of Boreas programming and outreach. Our workshops develop a range of leadership skills and perspectives, and they can be offered individually or as a complete series.
Boreas offers 13 workshops in the areas of communications & media, public skills, integrative leadership, and systems thinking & tools.
The Curriculum |
Boreas communications and media workshops help prepare participants to communicate complex interdisciplinary issues using experiential activities.
Workshops
IonE communications director Todd Reubold has been helping raise the quality of presentations at the University for years. Now you, too, can benefit from his insights and coaching. Learn presentation design and delivery best practices. Explore presenting to scientific and general audiences. Improve one of your own presentations.
Click here for the Building Better Presentations curriculum.
It’s easier than ever to enter the public conversation through a variety of forums such as Facebook, tweets and tirades at your local bar. Still, a well-crafted opinion piece holds sway. If you have the skills, discipline, rigor and leadership to put your ideas out into this more formal public conversation, you can share your viewpoint with thousands or even millions of influential people. This workshop will introduce you to the art of the op-ed, get you started on your very own op-ed and offer ideas on where you can pitch your finished piece. We bring in experts, including editors from major Twin Cities media, to help.
Click here for the In My Opinion curriculum.
You have interesting stories to share — stories that can help make the world a better place. And journalists can help you share your story, especially if you help them do their jobs. In this popular Boreas workshop, you’ll get to meet, conduct mock interviews with and learn from local reporters. Learn how to pitch stories and give a great interview.
Click here for the Interacting with the Media curriculum.
Storytelling is an important leadership skill if you’re interested in science, policy and having an impact. This workshop will help you understand others’ stories and get better at telling your own. You’ll be able to answer the questions: Why do you do what you do? Why does your work matter? You’ll even gain a few ideas about how you can practice telling your story and so grow your leadership.
Click here for the Telling Your Story curriculum.
What is the world is finding out about you online? How can you be more strategic about that? How can the internet help you advance your career? This workshop will help you think broadly about your online presence and the world of social media.
Click here for the Your Life Online curriculum.
Boreas public skills workshops prepare students to contribute to policy-making and collaborate with others as both colleagues and citizens.
Workshops
Mentors, collaborators, colleagues, teams, networks. Leaders, by definition, don’t work alone. Collaborating with others helps us get things done. This workshop will focus on why networks matter, why communities matter and why mentors matter. You’ll acquire new tools to help you think through your own relationships and how to make them better.
Click here for the Building Communities & Networks curriculum.
The legislative process is meant to facilitate public conversations about issues. But it’s pretty confusing. This workshop will help you better understand the legislative process and develop strategies for getting involved. Learn about your legislators and discover tools to help you follow the action. Think through how to do more than write a letter to your elected officials. The workshop focuses on the Minnesota legislative process and is led by a former state legislator.
Click here for the Engaging with the Legislative Process curriculum.
You’ve almost certainly sat through a bad meeting. But have you ever been part of a meeting that feels transformational? Done right, meetings facilitate great work. In this workshop, you will learn and practice new strategies to become a master of meetings. Try out some meeting games, and get ready to harness the contributions of colleagues and collaborators while earning gratitude for not wasting time with bad meetings.
Click here for the Meetings that Matter curriculum.
The integrative leadership workshop empowers participants to work across diverse and conflicting disciplines to effectively address environmental challenges.
2-Day Workshop
Solving environmental challenges requires the best efforts of teams of people with diverse skills and perspectives. The Boreas integrative leadership workshop empowers participants with integrative leadership skills for making meaningful progress on tough problems.
The workshop takes place over two days. Participants learn about leadership practices and then practice and apply them in an experiential, learning lab format. Participants sharpen their abilities to address common challenges in leading diverse groups working on wicked environmental problems, practice conflict management and polarity mapping tools for engaging in thorny environmental dilemmas, learn from examples of successful integrative leadership, and build networks among participants with differing perspectives and skills.
Click here for the Integrative Leadership curriculum.
The systems thinking and tools workshop develops participants’ ability to deconstruct, describe and address environmental problems using systems tools.
2-Day Workshop
The complexity of the social, biological and physical worlds often defies human intuition. Few people are prepared to work through the complexity within a discipline, much less through problems that transcend disciplines.
Systems thinking is a set of approaches and modeling tools used to describe and simulate the interactions among components of complex systems. With these tools, systems thinking provides insights into the functioning of systems and solutions to today’s difficult problems. This two-day workshop introduces the vocabulary and skills needed to think about, unravel and build models of real-world problems.
Participants will learn to fend off simplistic and static thinking with tools as diverse as causal loop diagrams, stocks, flows, time lags and simple computer modeling. Connections with leadership challenges will also be part of the mix.
Click here for the Systems Thinking & Tools curriculum.
Having the self-awareness and other-awareness is the foundation of effective leadership. Our personal and interpersonal mastery workshops will help you cultivate greater understanding about yourself and how to work and lead with others.
Cultivating emotional intelligence is critically important to the quality and success of our relationships in work and in life. According to the Center for Creative Leadership, 75% of careers are derailed due to lack of emotional competence leading to issues such as: unsatisfactory team leadership, inability to adapt to change or being able to elicit trust. Unlike IQ, emotional intelligence is less static and can therefore be cultivated and areas of growth can be targeted. Learn how to enhance your performance, better interact with others and maximize your leadership potential.
Click here for the Emotional Intelligence curriculum
Navigating and addressing complex issues requires empathy, connection and practices that help us connect to the present moment and in turn, the future. In this Boreas workshop, you will learn practical tools to become a more effective and present leader. Find your focus, clarity and develop practices to convert stress into fuel for your dreams, goals and ambitions.
Click here for the Mindful Leader curriculum
In this workshop, we focus on how intercultural competence can be used first, as a starting point for self-awareness, and then from there, how this understanding can funnel out through the lens of intercultural competence with other cultural contexts.
Click here for the Developing Intercultural Competence curriculum.
We don’t always agree, especially on really important matters. But we still need to make decisions and figure out how to move forward collectively. Strong negotiation skills will help you facilitate decision-making and make you a better leader. This workshop introduces participants to basic principles of negotiation and provides the opportunity for practice.
Click here for the Negotiating Basics curriculum.
At Boreas, we believe in living lives full of meaning and impact by design. Our vision and impact workshops help cultivate vision and ways of being that begin by first, transforming ourselves, so we in turn can transform the world as change agents
In our digital age, most of us struggle with carving out time to do the work that matters most. Shallow pursuits such as social media, the constant pinging of text notifications, and emails can lead us astray from doing the deep work required to enrich our relationships, communities, and even the world. In this session, you will map out a plan for creating a more meaningful and rewarding life based on the book Deep Work by Cal Newport and by utilizing examples from prolific thought leaders and scientists.
Click here for the Deep Work curriculum.
We invest much of our time, talents and passion into our work. And, many of us are looking for deeper meaning and purpose in this area of our lives. This workshop will help you work out what you want, and develop a plan for how to get it so that you can have the kinds of impact that originally led you to pursuing an advanced degree in the first place.
Click here for the Designing a Meaningful Career curriculum.
