Do you want to be more effective at navigating cultural differences at home or abroad? This workshop is designed to give you an overview on strategies not only to successfully overcome sticky cultural barriers and misunderstandings, but to understand and maximize the benefits of working across cultures. Participants will engage in activities to enhance their self-knowledge through the application of real-life scenarios. This event is for graduate students and post-docs only. Interested participants must apply to be considered for the workshop.…

Participation on both days is required for this 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. This experience is not for spectators! 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…

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. Margaret Kelliher, former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, teaches this workshop. She’s negotiated state budget deals and taught negotiation at the Humphrey School. Now she’s…

Participation on both days is required for this 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. This experience is not for spectators! 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…

You’ve almost certainly sat through a bad meeting. But have you ever been part of a meeting that feels transformational? Or at least productive? Done right, meetings facilitate great work. And you can learn to better facilitate meetings that matter. In this workshop, you will learn and practice a strategy to become a master of meetings. Try out some meeting games (yes, games at meetings!). Get ready to harness the contributions of colleagues and collaborators. Earn gratitude for not wasting…

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…

In case you haven’t heard, IonE has a pretty famous presentation expert who’s been helping to raise the quality of presentations at the University for years. Now you, too, can benefit from the insight and coaching of IonE communications director Todd Reubold. Learn presentation design and delivery best practices. Explore presenting to scientific vs. general audiences. Improve one of your own presentations. You’ll have to deliver presentations in graduate school and beyond, no question. If you get good at it,…

Participation on both days is required for this workshop. The complexity of the social, biological, and physical systems often defies human intuition. Few people are prepared to work through the complexities within a discipline, much less problems that transcend disciplines. Systems thinking is a set of approaches used to describe and simulate the interactions among components of complex systems. Systems thinking can provide insights into the functioning of systems and contribute to solutions for today’s difficult challenges. This event is for graduate…