A Potluck of Learning

January 5, 2024

I always say my favourite food is potlucks. I love potlucks because there is such a variety of food, and usually everyone brings a favourite dish they’ve prepared with love. You get the best of so many cuisines and cooks in one meal. Often the magic of that meal can’t be re-created because you’ll likely never have everyone in the same room with the exact same dishes again. The same way that each iteration of an academic program will never be exactly the same: students, instructors, courses, and the world around the university change over time.

Think of this blog post as a potluck of learning: each reflection I list below is a tasty “course” (pardon the pun) that was presumably created by our instructors with love. I decided to return to my notes from each course over the past three years, to share the best learning I received from each (in chronological order). I hope you’re hungry!

Appetizers: whetting the appetite

SPCC 614: Science and Impacts of Climate Change: For the first time, I understood how climate scientists speak to one another. I learned how to think and speak in terms of future projections and climate scenarios.

CALS 501: Leading Climate Action in Society Part 1: This learning intensive took place during the heat dome in 2021. I physically felt the impacts of climate change as I sat sweltering in my apartment. This was the first time I had applied the theory of change to citizen engagement and climate change. Before, I had only used the theory of change for small projects.

Main course: a well-balanced meal

CALS 502: Communication for Climate Action: Taught me how to sit still and challenged me to speak up in public forums. I am most proud of my blog post where I publicly called out Alberta’s then-Minister of Energy Sonya Savage for spreading disinformation.

CALS 503: Climate Risk Management: Taught me how to prioritize climate work and understand relative risk. I’m directly applying this learning to my work at Bow Valley College where I am about to embark on a College-level climate risk assessment.

CALS 504: Modelling the Business Case for Climate Action: This course had a tremendous impact on me. I now understand financial terms like “net present value” and “discounting” and have used these concepts when building business cases at work. Most importantly, I learned how to articulate and calculate the costs of inaction.

CALS 505: Leading Change in Organizations and Communities: This course focused heavily on traditional leadership practices within organizations, which was a bit of a miss for me. I learned that we need more holistic and community-based models for leadership. We need to think outside traditional organizational structures.

CALS 603: Planning Approaches for Climate Resilience: This course tickled my brain with the various understandings of resilience. It taught me to apply a somewhat nebulous concept to a real-life situation. In our final team assignment, we explored the concept of climate resilience for the outdoor recreation industry.

CALS 691: Designing a Practitioner Portfolio: I learned that I value my portfolio in terms of the reputation and relationships that I build. It isn’t important to me to project a record of my career or achievements to a public audience. But my reputation as a compassionate, collaborative problem solver within my network means a lot to me.

CALS 601: Leading Climate Action in Society Part 2: I applied everything I learned above to a problem in my work: how to decarbonize heat in downtown Calgary. Learn more here.

Dessert: guilt-free calories

ENVR 571: Legal Aspects of Environmental Management: I learned in-depth about provincial and federal jurisdiction, the Canadian Constitution, and how to read legislation. When I read headlines like Liberals will amend Impact Assessment Act after Supreme Court found it unconstitutional (Thurton, 2023), I now understand the nuance and impacts of these legal decisions.

SPCC 615: Climate Policy and Governance: The term “polycentricity” will stick with me for a long time (thank you Dr. Elinor Ostrom, 2009). I understand that leadership and policy happens at all levels, from the local all the way up to the international.

HUMS 653: Environmental and Resource-Based Conflict Management: I learned that conflict is inevitable, but not always destructive or negative. This course made me appreciate all the conflict management professionals out there, because the work they do is not the work I want to do.

My head feels full at the end of this long meal, and I am excited to apply all that I have learned to my career. I am grateful for the many friends and colleagues I have met along the way.

Stay hungry!

References

Ostrom, E. (2009). A polycentric approach for coping with climate change. The World Bank. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/480171468315567893/pdf/WPS5095.pdf

Thurton, D. (2023, October 26). Liberals will amend impact assessment act after supreme court found it unconstitutional. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/impact-assessment-act-guilbeault-1.7008932