The National Socio-environmental Synthesis Center is dedicated to fostering the development of socio-environmental synthesis skills among students and scholars at all stages of their career. SESYNC is committed to supporting activities that contribute to understanding the process of synthesis from pedagogical perspectives. Our current activities include several broad programs.
- Development of socio-environmental synthesis (SES) teaching resources for undergraduate and K-12 students.
- Post-doctoral mentoring program. SESYNC postdocs are the future leaders of the discipline of synthesis science. Our postdoctoral mentoring program will prepare them for the challenges and opportunities that accompany socio-environmental synthesis. We support our post-doctoral fellows through coordination of research, outreach and instructional opportunities and a specialized professional development program for polishing academic, communication and teaching skills. Postdoctoral applications will be accepted two times each year.
- Sabbatical and Visiting Scholar program for local scholars and faculty teaching at minority serving institutions. Synthesis as a practice provides a novel approach to teaching and learning in many related disciplines. These novel approaches may be especially useful in classrooms serving students with different learning skills and challenges. We actively seek proposals from faculty targeting student populations who may benefit from this approach. Successful applicants will work at SESYNC on SES education topics. Application guidelines for the Sabbatical Program and the Visiting Scholar program differ but for both, additional resources are available for scholars from minority serving institutions.
Current initiatives
Working Group on Socio-environmental Synthesis Education. This diverse group of educators and SES researchers has launched an initial effort to identify and describe the key issues for development of education tools and programs to support actionable SES. The group will meet once in January 2012 to develop a detailed agenda to identify plenary speakers and titles of talks for a major workshop on SES education. The working group will also develop a prospectus for manuscripts to be prepared and delivered at the workshop Workshop on Socio-environmental Synthesis Education. This workshop, scheduled for May 2012, will provide the first opportunity to explore the intersection of SES and education and will begin the process of identifying the key skills and attitudes necessary for successful practice of SES and the use of synthesis as a learning tool about SES. Using several case studies that have informed decision making, the working group and members of the broader research and education community will develop a vision of SES and address learning goals for educational efforts to teach SES. Opportunities to apply to participate in the workshop will be announced December 1, 2011. Specific workshop objectives include: identification of key disciplines and research foci central to understanding how learning styles, education context, socio-cultural factors, and pedagogical approaches influence student success in undertaking actionable SES; identify successful cases of SES driving innovation in environmental policy; identify the key skills and knowledge needed to do actionable SES; identify strategies and tools for developing SES learning units (from short modules to multi-course progressions) and integration of SES units into curricula; identify the attributes of SES that facilitate integrated interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the humanities, and the environmental and social sciences; identify strengths of SES in facilitating learning of diverse student populations and challenges for effective SES learning; initiate development of learning tools for use of SES in diverse course types (Environmental policy, Environmental Science, Sustainability) and identify priorities for future work in SES education. Synthesis Teaching Study. The launching education Venture for SESYNC is focused on development of learning modules for the introduction of SES into undergraduate courses. Faculty from a diverse group of universities (University of Maryland, Washington State University-Vancouver, Gallaudet University, Coppin State University) will jointly develop modules and assessment tools for evaluating those modules. The modules will be developed for first implementation in environmental science and environmental policy courses during the 2012-2013 school year at all partner institutions.Upcoming initiatives
- Call for proposals for integration of SES into k-12 classrooms.
- Call for proposals for education-focused sabbaticals and visiting scholars from faculty at Minority Serving Institutions and local universities and colleges.