Equity, Advocacy and Partnerships Institute

Description: Building the capacity of groups to dialogue, create, and collaborate is an essential skill in professional settings across our region, nationally, and globally. This course offers a critical introduction to the principles and the role of intergroup dialogue and facilitation in creating transformative spaces for groups to explore differences and commonalities, increase awareness as individuals and as members of various social groups, build authentic relationships and identify actions that foster perspective taking and empathy. Through intergroup dialogue, role-play exercises, and assigned readings, participants will actively learn to engage in courageous conversations and facilitate groups across social divides to work together more effectively, collaboratively and compassionately.

Credits: 2

Format: on-campus 

Professional Development Option: Yes

Description: The goal of persuasive communications is to influence people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. We are exposed to hundreds of messages meant to persuade us daily from organizations and on social media. So what works, and why does it work? In this course we will investigate research on persuasion, receptiveness, and ethical frameworks for this work. Participants will learn techniques for creating, analyzing and critiquing persuasive messages. The course culminates in a final project in which participants create a campaign to change a target audience’s attitudes or behaviors about a subject of the students’ choosing.

Credits: 2        

Format: limited residency    

Professional Development Option: Yes

Description: In this learning experience, teachers will work on building up their “education policy fluency” based on their own school context. Students will read education news from across the country, including Education Week and blogs from a range of teacher and education bloggers with varied perspectives. Then they will dig into deeper understanding through weekly dialogue with each other and article authors and current teacher leader experts in the field. This course aims to help teachers gain an even stronger understanding of the policy world that influences what we do in the classrooms, in both public and private school settings.

Credits: 3

Offered: Spring

Format: dynamic hybrid learning

Offered: Summer

Credits: 2

Description: This course is centered around Domain One of the Teacher Leader Model Standards, with an emphasis on creating cultures in our schools that support educator development and student learning. Modules include defining teacher leadership, exploring formal and informal teacher leadership roles, adult learning theory, facilitation of group learning and discussion, mitigating difficult discussions and building consensus, organizational change and the change process, building trust, and other skills to create inclusive cultures for professional growth (and student learning!).

Restrictions: This course is limited to Mount Holyoke MAT, MAMT and MATL students only

Description: This course integrates Teacher Leader Model Standards for Domains VI and VII: assessing community needs and values, engaging families and colleagues in partnerships, and advocating for students and for the teaching profession. Participants will explore culturally responsive teaching approaches and strategies for collaborating with families to support meaningful and relevant student learning and development. Participants will also learn how to use research, policies, and persuasive communications to help build appropriate programs, interventions, and advocacy efforts that promote positive outcomes for both students and teachers.

Credits: 4

Description: New media technologies such as video-sharing websites, podcasts, and social media have altered how we interact and consume news and information. While activists use these tools to raise awareness, educate citizens and mobilize support, these efforts can be overshadowed by corporations or political action groups with their own agendas and well-funded media campaigns.In this course participants explore how to use new media strategically to address social, economic and environmental issues, how to analyze media representations of these issues, and how to design media campaigns that build communities, organize efforts, and influence policy.

Credits: 2

Format: limited residency  

Professional Development Option: Yes

Description: While storytelling comes in many forms, one of its notable characteristics in any form is the power it has to help ground and orient us. Narrative frames are used not only in entertainment and media, but also in disciplines as wide ranging as psychology, medicine, social change and business. In this course participants will learn how stories are constructed and created, how to assess a story’s strengths, and how to apply the elements of narrative across different media (writing, audio, images and video) to enhance the story you want to tell. This course will prepare participants to work with narrative and storytelling for personal projects, to promote change, and in professional settings.

Credits: 2

Format: limited residency  

Professional Development Option: Yes

Description: Participatory community development (PCD) is an approach to working with local communities, in partnership with government and non-government agencies. The goal of PCD is to empower local community members to be involved in the research, design, implementation, advocacy, monitoring, and evaluation of community projects, including those that generate sustainable sources of new income, food, and services. In this course, participants will explore different benefits and forms of PCD through case studies and methods of facilitating participatory project planning, and develop their ability to anticipate and evaluate the impacts/consequences of the projects.

Credits: 2       

Format: limited residency

Professional Development Option: Yes

Description: Mentorship is a powerful tool for personal and professional growth; it provides support, insights, feedback, and helps people develop their knowledge, networks and capacities. People taking on new challenges can benefit from both formal and informal mentorship. In this social psychology approach to leadership, participants will explore the theories and research on mentorship, investigate different models and strategies for mentorship, and design a mentorship program for a particular organization or context (including businesses, non-profits, volunteer organizations, and community projects).

Credits: 2

Format: limited residency: online with a 3-day campus-based residency  

Professional Development Option: Yes

Description: This course is for people working in both the private and public sector who want to learn how to build and sustain partnerships. Participants learn to: recognize the role and value public-private partnerships can play for both parties, identify the steps for assessing community needs and resources, develop shared goals, establish a strategic framework for action, manage communications and resource sharing, evaluate the initiatives for success, and sustain public-private partnerships over the long term.

Credits: 2

Format: limited residency: online with a 3-day campus-based residency.

Professional Development Option: Yes

Description: In today’s globally interconnected world, organizational success is often dependent on the performance of teams that interact across significant distances and multiple cultural perspectives, internally and with their constituents. This course is designed to increase cultural competency and the success of leaders by combining an exploration of academic research and case studies with opportunities for application. By the end of the course, participants will understand the cultural dimension of managing diverse and dispersed team members, learn to foster positive interactions, facilitate communication, and be able to identify and manage conflict more effectively.

Credits: 2       

Format: limited residency 

Professional Development Option: Yes