Summer Institutes

The Importance of Global Workforce Skills 

Dates: June 10-11, 2024

Time: 9:00 am-4:00 pm IN PERSON, University of Minnesota West Bank

CEUs: 14 hours

Cost institute: free 

Register here 

In order to graduate prepared for success and employment in a global economy, career and technical education students must have the workforce readiness skills enabling them to work with people from diverse backgrounds, for foreign-owned companies, and on global issues and challenges affecting their pathway (such as supply chain issues and international standards and regulations). This workshop will help educators understand global workforce readiness skills, how they link to career pathways, and how to integrate global skills and content into what is already being taught in the classroom. Faculty will leave this hands-on, interactive workshop with a syllabus infused with new content to more deeply engage their students while meeting required standards and objectives. 

Co sponsored by the Institute for Global Studies and the African Studies Iniative, Title VI National Resource Centers at the University of Minnesota.

Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Africa 

Dates: June 16-17, 2024

Time: IN PERSON

Cost institute only: free

Registration coming soon 

Schools for the Planet Toward Universal Climate Literacy with Children’s Literature and Media Summer Institute for Educators

Dates: June 25-27, 2024

Time: 9:00 am-1:30 pm IN PERSON

CEUs: 13.5  hours

Cost institute only: $free but does not include parking or lunch 

Register here 

We are a climate illiterate civilization that has sleepwalked into climate breakdown, biodiversity crash, and unprecedented social inequalities that exacerbate planetary ecocide. To turn this around, we need to transform our wealth-based, extractive civilization into a sustainable and equitable ecological civilization. This transition requires that we build universal climate literacy. It makes our classrooms ground zero for this effort. 

In this three-day summer school, literacy educators Nick Kleese, Jana Lo Bello Miller, and Stephanie Rollag Yoon will guide you to engage with pedagogical practices of envisioning, embodying, and enacting climate literacy education in your classroom. You will learn why traditional climate change education (CCE), focused on scientific and environmental facts, is inadequate to address the social, racial, and political dimensions of climate change. You will explore climate literacy as a broader competence that includes climate science but focuses primarily on developing attitudes and values aligned with how we should live to respect our planetary home. You will learn why stories for young people—in books, films, games, and other narrative media—are the best technology for the social transformation that ensures everyone’s future: a technology that makes climate literacy accessible to every student everywhere and our students are eager to engage in action around climate change.

This summer school will be offered in person from 9:00 am-1:30 pm. Participants will receive 13.5 CEUs, a picturebook, resource kit, and more. This course is appropriate for teachers across grade levels and subject areas, and is offered in collaboration with the Minnesota Writing Project and the Institute for Global Studies.

Educators who attend this institute AND the Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Africa, June 17-18, 2024 (an African Studies Initiative institute) will receive an additional three books such as Every Leaf a Hallelujah, Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted a Million Trees, and We Are Water Protectors. 

Becoming a Woman in Africa

Date: June 16-18, 2024 

Registration coming soon

Sponsored by the African Studies Initiative at the University of Minnesota

Building Bridges of Understanding, Practical Approaches to Genocide Education 

 Dates: August 5-8, 2024

Where: In person, University of Minnesota West Bank, Minneapolis MN

Sponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education at the University of Minnesota

See more here