The Leadership for Sustainability Education (LSE) program leads to a master's degree in Educational Leadership and Policy. This program fosters skills in sustainability education and collaborative emergent leadership. Learn to design and implement sustainable solutions in a variety of settings including schools, nonprofit organizations, local governments, and businesses.
We see sustainability education as: leading and teaching in ways that are inclusive, collaborative, holistic, and critical of injustice and oppression. In LSE we learn how to work effectively and emergently with others to challenge dominant systems and create just and regenerative communities and ecosystems. We believe this requires a shift in our way of being and knowing, a deep acknowledgement of our inherent interconnectedness. This also requires a deep ethical understanding of living within the limits of the earth's natural systems, as well as personal and communal shifts to ways of being and acting that create healthy and balanced solutions to interconnected problems that face our bioregions. Sustainability education and leadership involves shifting to holistic, systemic, ecological, relational and spiritual ways of teaching and leading.
We believe that sustainability education should be embodied in all of our classes and activities. In LSE, students and instructors take on the roles of both teachers and learners, and we strive to model education that is inclusive, participatory, experiential, thematic, critically questioning, place-based and transformative.
The LSE program provides opportunities to address real sustainability issues through a theory to practice curriculum that includes ongoing community-based learning. You'll create a network of relationships with your program colleagues and mentors, faculty, and community leaders, and will have the opportunity to apply your learning through numerous individual and group projects.
Working closely with a faculty advisor, LSE students will develop a program of study that is tailored to personal and professional goals. Some examples of ways to focus your study include: garden-based education, non-profit leadership, service-learning, entrepreneurial pursuits, sustainability education in higher education, community or governmental organizations, or in schools.
About LSE Graduate Program
| Program Coordinator | Admissions Advisor |
|---|---|
| Healther Burns [email protected] 503-725-4619 |
Stefanie Randol *You can text me! |
LSE mission and guiding principles
Mission
LSE prepares graduates for careers as leaders in sustainability education through the study of sustainability leadership and pedagogy that emphasizes interconnectedness, social and ecological justice, relationship-building, and skills for sustainable change.
The following values guide the LSE program:
- A commitment to inclusion, equity, and social, ecological, and economic justice
- The fostering of interbeing and earth-connection
- The development of wise and compassionate leaders
- The empowerment of collaborative leaders and educators
- The fostering of holistic, participatory, inclusive, and transformative learning
- Integration of embodied and spiritual learning
- The integration of indigenous knowledge and whole systems design
- The promotion of applied, experiential, and community-based learning
- The integration of theory, research, and practice
- The development of reflective practitioners and critical thinkers with strong communication skills
- A commitment to multiple and non-dominant perspectives including multicultural, interdisciplinary, intergenerational, indigenous, and local perspectives
- The fostering of critical hope and resiliency through networks and relationships