The Boreas Leadership Certificate
Our certificate program offers students the opportunity to delve deeper into the challenging world of leadership and change making. By pursuing the Boreas Leadership Certificate, students build on the skills and networks developed in Boreas programming and practice leadership through a leadership project.
Students completing the requirements receive a printed certificate, are recognized on the Boreas website, and may reference the accomplishment on their resume or CV. Like other Boreas programming, the certificate is offered at no cost.
Requirements
To earn a Boreas Leadership Certificate, students must complete the following requirements:
Skills Workshops
To fulfill the workshop requirement, students must attend and participate in workshops in each of the six main Boreas topic areas:
- Communications and Media (attend three, or attend our Speaking Science conference)
- Building Better Presentations
- Interacting With the Media
- Telling Your Story
- Telling Your Story with Maps
- Your Life Online
- Writing an Op-ed
- Integrative Leadership (attend one)
- Personal & Interpersonal Mastery (attend Emotional Intelligence workshop, plus one other workshop)
- Developing Intercultural Competence
- Emotional Intelligence: Leading with the Heart and Mind*
- The Mindful Leader
- Negotiating Basics
- Public Skills (attend two of the workshops)
- Building Communities and Networks
- Engaging in the Legislative Process
- Meetings that Matter
- Systems Thinking and Tools (attend one)
- Vision & Impact (attend one of the workshops)
- Deep Work (can be substituted for one workshop in the communications and media or public skills categories)
- Designing a Meaningful Career
- Dreaming Into Being: Using Dreams as a Catalyst for Co-Creating the Future
Networking
To fulfill the networking requirement, students must:
- Make an effort to regularly attend Boreas networking events.
- Identify, contact and interact with at least two environmental leaders outside IonE and their home department (ideally outside of their college), including at least one in-person meeting
Project
To earn a Boreas Leadership Certificate, students must also complete a Boreas project. The project must go beyond what is required in your graduate program and should draw on skills learned in Boreas short courses and workshops. Projects must be approved by the Boreas program staff before significant work has begun on the project (see the project approval form below). Group projects are encouraged but not required.
Forms
The following documents and forms will help you complete your Boreas Leadership Certificate:
Certificate Recipients
Congratulations to:
Stephen Brennan is pursuing his Master’s degree in Integrated Behavioral Health. For his certificate project, Stephen facilitated a 12-week trauma skills group for clients with co-current post-traumatic stress and substance use disorders. As a result of the positive feedback received of the initial 12-week pilot program, the host organization has committed to continue to offer this training to their clients (Feb. 2018).
Reba Juetten is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine program. She completed her Boreas certificate project by managing the Boreas Twitter account for a semester and developing a rotating list of hosts from Boreas leaders past and present each of whom hosted the account for a week. She has found the Boreas Graduate Leadership Program to be an immensely enriching experience including its leadership opportunities for members of the advisory team, the practical skills taught in its many workshops, and the networking opportunities with other engaged, inspired, and ambitious students (Dec. 2017).
Diele Lobo is a graduate student in the Conservation Sciences program. She took what she learned from Boreas workshops and presented the Building Better Presentations workshop to 60 graduate students, post-docs and faculty members at two universities in Brazil (Sept. 2017).
Melissa Aho completed her Boreas certificate project entitled, “Making Your Voice Heard”. As part of her project, she published this piece in Minn Post (May 2017).