Professional
Development
Upcoming Courses
Course Overviews
Institute on Teaching Social Action
August 15 & 16, 2026
CSU Spur Campus
Denver Colorado
$60.00 with conference registration
$100.00 without conference registration
A sustainable future requires social action.
Are your students prepared?
Today, many college courses teach about democracy and change, but few courses provide students the opportunity to learn by doing them. The Colorado '26 Institute meets this need by providing faculty the necessary training to teach social action.
We are inviting you to apply to the Colorado '26 Institute on Teaching Social Action in Denver on August 15-16, 2026. This Institute is hosted by the National Sustainability Society as a pre-conference workshop ahead of its 3rd Annual Conference.
Faculty from all disciplines are encouraged to apply; however, we want to restrict participation to those faculty who are committed to implementing this experiential social action course model in the 18 months following the Institute.
The trainers for the Colorado '26 Institute are:
Dr. Anthony Levenda, Director of Climate Action and Sustainability at Evergreen State University
Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton, Professor Emeritus from San José State University, who developed a social action course in 2006, and has taught it 30 times.
Closing the Gap:
An Experiential Workshop
on the Inner Climate Crisis
August 16, 2026 | 2 - 5 PM
CSU Spur Campus
Denver Colorado
$200.00 with conference registration
$225.00 without conference registration
Learn to tell environmental and social stories that move people
Why does the gap between climate knowledge and action persist, even among those most committed to change? This workshop proposes a radical answer:
We're disrupting two climate systems simultaneously—Earth's ecological systems and our own human adaptive capacity—but we've only been working on one.
Dr. Lisa Graumlich, climate scientist and Episcopal deacon, guides participants through an experiential exploration of the parallel crises disrupting both outer climate systems and inner human capacity. Through a combination of teaching, guided reflection, small group processing, and practical application, participants will:
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Understand the three mechanistic parallels between Earth system disruption and burnout in sustainability professionals
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Name and process the grief, exhaustion, and psychic numbing many carry in silence
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Learn the five forces maintaining the consciousness-action gap (and how to counter them)
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Practice integrating contemplative restoration with prophetic truth-telling
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Develop concrete commitments for sustaining engagement over the long term
This is not another lecture on climate solutions. It's a carefully designed space to address what sustainability work is costing us, to grieve collectively what we're losing, and to find practices that sustain action rooted in connection rather than depletion.
About the Facilitator
University of Washington
Lisa Graumlich is a professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and dean emerita of the College of the Environment at the University of Washington. She has devoted her career to studying the causes and impacts of climate change, with a special focus on using paleoecological records such as tree-rings to understand the magnitude of human impacts. She is passionate about science communication, and she speaks frequently on climate change impacts and adaptation. She has testified on long-term climate variability before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and is the president of the American Geophysical Union as of January 1, 2023.
Lisa served as the inaugural dean of the UW College of the Environment from 2010 to 2021.
Creating Sustainability Content that Inspires Action
August 16, 2026 | 2 - 5 PM
CSU Spur Campus
Denver Colorado
$60.00 with conference registration
$100.00 without conference registration
Learn to tell environmental and social stories that move people
Ready to tell environmental and social stories that move people? In this lively, hands-on workshop, you’ll discover practical, easy-to-implement strategies—and practice them with your peers—so you can rally more people around your causes.
Learn to tell unforgettable sustainability stories at this one-day, in-person workshop.
Guided by Right On agency founder and communications expert Kim Grob, you’ll learn to:
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Avoid common communications pitfalls like jargon, polarizing language, and “stock sustainability” imagery.
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Balance emotional and rational appeals to tell stories that are human, specific, and supported by the right data.
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Discover proven strategies that inspire action, from audience-centric messaging to concrete calls to action.
Equipped with these new insights, and the practical tactics to put them to use, you can make a lasting mark on your audience—building awareness, building loyalty, and building impact.
“Great mix of theory and practical application. The workshop focuses on hard-won lessons that can only come from decades of professional storytelling experience.”
—Joe Staples, Prowess Consulting
About the Facilitator
Kim Grob
MFA, Co-Founder and Creative Services Partner, Right On
Kim guides organizations to their most human, compelling, and effective sustainability stories. As co-founder and creative services partner at Right On, a sustainability content strategy and marketing agency, Kim has led storytelling for clients such as Adobe, Salesforce, ServiceNow, University of Utah, Del Monte, and Tillamook.
Carbon Finance
Bootcamp
August 16, 2026 | 9 AM - 5 PM
CSU Spur Campus
Denver Colorado
$200.00 with conference registration
$225.00 without conference registration
Carbon finance is one of the most complex and consequential intersections of climate, money, and policy today.
NSS is hosting a one-day Carbon Finance Bootcamp designed to give sustainability and climate leaders a serious, practical grounding in:
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GHG accounting & carbon markets
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Offsets, insets & carbon removal
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Science-Based Targets
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Career & investment opportunities
Whether you're a land manager, investor, consultant, or government official, this bootcamp was built for you.
About the Facilitator
Lauren Gifford, Phd.
Senior Advisor, Climate Philanthropy and Investing at Project Drawdown
Lauren Gifford is a climate strategy leader and carbon governance expert working at the intersection of climate science, finance, governance, and justice. As Senior Advisor for Climate Philanthropy and Investing at Project Drawdown, she guides philanthropies, investors, and institutions in aligning capital with science-based, high-integrity, and equitable climate strategies.
A nationally recognized climate communicator, Lauren regularly serves as a subject matter expert in interviews with major media, including the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Washington Post, TIME, the New York Times, and others.
Lauren holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Colorado Boulder, an MA in Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College, and a BA in Communications from American University.