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New Sustainability Leadership Program Aims to Create Visionary and Ethical Leaders

Learn to take a proactive approach to addressing sustainability challenges and create positive impact by promoting sustainable practices.

Climate change and environmental degradation are among the greatest challenges facing our planet. Humanity has solutions in hand to address the impacts of climate change, yet we are not making the necessary adjustments quickly enough. Sustainability leaders can help address these challenges by promoting sustainable practices and developing innovative solutions.

By taking a holistic approach to leadership, sustainability leaders consider the long-term impacts of their decisions on the environment, society, and the economy. They are committed to promoting sustainable practices in their organizations and communities, and they encourage others to do the same.

In partnership with One Earth Leadership, Syracuse University announces a three phase Sustainability Leadership Program. Phase I of the program is a two-part virtual session engaging participants in discussions facilitated by instructors Karin Botto, senior human resources business partner at Syracuse University and Hilary McManus, professor of biological and environmental sciences at Le Moyne College. Phase II is an in-person, on-site retreat hosted at Syracuse University’s Minnowbrook Conference Center in Blue Mountain Lake, NY from June 3-6, 2023. Phase III is an additional virtual session to solidify the key learnings from the program.

Throughout the Sustainability Leadership Program, participants will:

  • Learn about climate change issues by connecting the dots between personal, organizational, and planetary thriving.
  • Deepen self-awareness, personal well-being, and resilience through learning a variety of contemplative practices aimed at mitigating eco-anxiety.
  • Develop and present SMART leadership goals for yourself, your community, and/or your organization.
  • Engage with change management practices to support your leadership goals.
  • Experience a variety of peer coaching methods and professional mentoring.
  • Expand their network of change-makers to enhance community engagement.

Upon successful completion of phases I-III of the program, participants will earn a foundations microcredential. Additionally, participants can continue to earn an impact microcredential by completing a portfolio review.

The registration deadline for the Sustainability Leadership Program is May 5, 2023. Interested participants can register here.

Register Here

About the Instructors

Karin Botto
Senior Human Resources Business Partner at Syracuse University

Karin Botto portrait

Dr. Karin Botto has worked in higher education for more than three decades in areas such as leadership development, human resources, enrollment management, strategic planning, mission integration, and faculty development. She currently serves as Senior HR Business Partner at Syracuse University where she partners with senior leaders to shape, develop, and deliver plans and strategy in line with the needs and priorities of the organization including organizational development, performance management, talent management, professional development, workforce planning, and employee relations. She also teaches Individual & Collective Discernment in the Master of Business Administration program at Le Moyne College.

Botto holds a Master of Science in Training & Organizational Development from Saint Joseph’s University and earned a Doctorate of Education from Creighton University in Interdisciplinary Leadership. Her dissertation research focused on developing the ecological self for sustainability leadership. She was recently interviewed by Jesuit Schools Network about her research for the Ignatian Inquiry Podcast.

In 2015, Botto co-developed a leadership model published in the Journal of Jesuit Business Education (2015). She co-authored a chapter of Success After Tenure (2019) by Stylus Publishing and wrote a chapter of Women Courageous: Leading through the Labyrinth (2021) by Emerald Publishing.

Botto’s specialties include sustainability leadership, group dynamics and decision-making, leadership development, coaching and mentoring, management training, and integrating contemplative practices into one’s life and leadership. Her most important role is mother to Jack, Gwyn, and Gavin.

Hilary McManus
Professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Le Moyne College

Hilary McManus portrait

Hilary McManus is Professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. She teaches about the science of the climate crisis in the classroom and local community and aims to nurture the current and next generations of environmental stewards through hands-on experiences connecting with nature. Hilary co-chairs Le Moyne’s Environmental Sustainability Steering Committee, developing a comprehensive campus-wide framework for a greener campus, and is also a certified executive leadership and career coach.

In 2018, Hilary was selected as a participant in Homeward Bound, a global leadership development initiative for women in STEMM, which culminated in a 3-week voyage to Antarctica with 78 other women from around the world. Currently over 700 women strong, the network continues to grow as an international collaboration of women scientists aiming to lead and influence decision making as it shapes our planet. Hilary is also a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps founded and led by Al Gore. She delivers presentations with interactive components that offer audience members an opportunity to brainstorm climate action items on the individual, community, and policy levels.

Hilary’s time away from Le Moyne is spent with her two sons, hiking, camping, gardening, and sitting zazen.

Ukrainian Student Finds New Opportunities Through English Language Institute

It started with an opportunity. Eduard Gusak sat down with his family and friend as they presented the life altering news to him. Months had passed since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and Gusak was unsure of what his future held, but he knew he had to move forward.

“They told me I had an opportunity to study in the United States,” Gusak says.

With a bachelor’s degree in political science from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Gusak dreamed of continuing his education at Syracuse University. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to attend, but the U.S. government pathway program “Uniting for Ukraine” gave him the chance to see his future clearly.

Read the full story

Executive Director of Online Student Success Joins New York Air National Guard

Liz Green recites the Air National Guard oath to Major Squier.

When Liz Green began her career in higher education, she didn’t expect joining the military to be a part of her journey.

In February 2022, Green found herself spending a significant amount of time at the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base advising members of the 174th Attack Wing. Nearly weekly, the executive director of Online Student Success could be found speaking with prospective military students interested in online programs at Syracuse University’s College of Professional Studies. The more that Green connected with students of various backgrounds and career fields, the more she found herself drawn to the mission and community that surrounded the Air National Guard.

 “Can a civilian just join the military?” Green asked herself.

Although it was a simple question, it felt loaded with opportunity. Just like higher education, a career in the military was all about service. Both required commitment, leadership, and a passion to transform lives. While joining the military was an extension of an existing career built on service, this new career path would cultivate a deeper understanding of what it means to be military-connected in higher education.

But Green didn’t just join on a whim.

“When I had the thought, I laughed it off in my head,” Green said. “But it’s like what we tell our [College of Professional Studies] applicants: don’t self-select out. At least ask the question because you never know what you might learn in the process.”

As a full-time employee, PhD student, and a mom, could Green squeeze in another commitment? A two-hour conversation with a recruiter answered her question, which made her realize it was an oddly perfect fit. Green imagined a Venn diagram of her life and how this opportunity would blend into her other roles.

“It dawned on me that our presence on base was having an impact,” Green said. “I was an accessible person to talk to about degrees and there was a lot of enthusiasm. I want to keep doing what I can for this group of people and also serve the mission that they serve.”

Green began the five-month preparation of paperwork, exams, and medical clearances it would take to officially commission. On Nov. 4, Green was sworn into the New York Air National Guard, three weeks shy of her 40th birthday. Upon completion of officer training school, Green will be a second lieutenant and will be formally assigned to the public affairs career field.

“I didn’t even know this opportunity existed,” Green said. “But I’m so glad it evolved the way it did.”

About the College of Professional Studies

The College of Professional Studies is a global, inclusive and future-facing college, providing access to diverse students and learners seeking a Syracuse University degree, credential, certificate, or education experience.

Nichole Henry, Director of Admissions, to Receive 2023 Unsung Hero Award

Nichole Henry PortraitNichole Henry, director of admissions and recruitment at the College of Professional Studies, has been named a 2023 Unsung Hero Award winner by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration planning committee.

Henry was named alongside Syracuse University students Candice Ogbu and Thomas J. Wilson, and community members, Oceanna Fair (Southside Branch Leader at Families for Lead Freedom), Trinity Brumfield and Camille Ogden, both juniors at West Genesee High School and founding members and co-presidents of Umoja, a student-led group that was created to actively unite students of all races around issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Unsung Hero Award is given to community members, students, faculty and staff who have made a positive impact on the lives of others but are not widely recognized for their contributions. The awards were created to honor Dr. King’s vision of creating positive change in a troubled world.

The award winners will be recognized at the 38th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. Additionally, the 2021 and 2022 Unsung Heroes will be recognized this year since they were unable to be applauded in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2023 celebration will be held on Sunday, Jan. 22, with dinner at 5 p.m. and the event at 7 p.m. featuring keynote speaker Rev. Phil Turner. Tickets for the celebration are available at mlk.syr.edu.

Read more about the 2023 Unsung Hero awardees.

Vision Me This: Continuing Education Circa 2028

By Michael Frasciello, Dean of the College of Professional Studies

Reposted from Evolllution

“Step right up and don’t be shy, because you will not believe your eyes.”

~ John Waldo “Fee” Waybill

Welcome to Cirque de l’Enseignement Supérieur, a place of wonder and exploration. Walk with me for a while and see sights unseen; peer, albeit briefly, into the near future of Continuing Education.

There on the right is the Tent of Amazing Strength and Unimaginable Resilience, where inside you will find a myriad of rooms, chambers, dungeons and cubicles filled with diverse and brilliant professional staff who effortlessly lift and carry entire universities on their backs. They are quiet and unassuming, but don’t let that mask their strikingly sharp focus and implacable pragmatism. If you look long and intently enough, you may even see one or two of them lithely leap in a single bound over senseless procedures and questionable directives, never losing sight of the students and faculties they tirelessly serve.

Over here is the House of Sagacity. Inside you’ll find a cabal of faculty—some silent and erudite, many vociferous and passionate—all singularly focused on carrying out the missions of the public and private universities where they work. Be careful to not hold their eye directly, as you will immediately be hypnotized by otherworldly stories of fantastical research and implausible teaching, transported to a distant realm where knowledge is only ever used to improve the world by transforming people’s lives through education. Truly inconceivable!

Ah, I see you’ve noticed that wee little nondescript hovel there on the edge of the grounds—the one that looks conspicuously out of place amid the mystique and grandeur of the circus. Yes, this is what you’ve come to see: an enigmatic venue that holds the most fascinating and variegated individuals found anywhere in higher education. We call it the Tower of Practicality and Illumination, but you know it by its quotidian name: Continuing Education.

What’s that? You’re curious about the future of Continuing Education? Well, I just happen to have here a crystal ball of destiny. For an inconsequential fee, it will be my delight to conjure a five-year vision of Continuing Education that will not require you to suspend your disbelief longer than it takes to finish a bag of popcorn.

Voila! Look closely as the crystal ball replays for us the immediate past. See how from their typically ordinary position within the university, Continuing Education units were left to watch (often with awe and a sprinkle of wonder) how higher education managed, mismanaged and otherwise muddled through so much of the disruption experienced since 2020. But then look here at how, out of necessity, Continuing Education units aggressively leaned into the disruption to capitalize on market conditions and create growth opportunities where other areas of their universities experienced contraction, atrophy or failure.

Now the vision shifts forward—yes a five-year view forward—where we can see abundant opportunity and change realized by making only a few modest assumptions. What’s this blurry image here coming into focus? It looks like a seismic shift to the traditional core of higher education. Indeed, higher education was already pulling at so many Continuing Education threads prior to the catastrophic disruption caused by the COVID pandemic beginning in spring 2020. And yes, of course, the pandemic did simply magnify those threads and necessitate that some universities weave Continuing Education programming, services and practices into their academic core. But see where the vision reveals how the expertise, innovation, agility and entrepreneurialism found within Continuing Education units were precisely what universities needed to stay solvent, open, operational and relevant throughout the pandemic? The crystal ball reveals that this meshing with the traditional core will continue for future-focused universities over the next five years. The vision shows us Continuing Education units designing, delivering and supporting increasingly larger portions of their university’s residential and online programs portfolios. Much clearer now, the crystal ball reveals a dramatically different but realistic future in which universities adopt Continuation Education’s alternative models of faculty governance that accommodate rapid program ideation and deployment; new (radical?) definitions of faculty; and an acceptance of the rich and unchartered space between educational perennialism and essentialist curricula in which scalable and purposeful lifelong learning programs are forged. With their Continuing Education units firmly supported and funded, universities find in this future state that they can compete in the credit and degree market in ways previously hidden behind their rigid adherence to dated assumptions about price, quality and brand. What the vision shows is Continuing Education units moving their universities into the vanguard of higher education innovation and differentiation.

Now, watch the image morph. The crystal ball is telling us something vaguely familiar but excitingly new. Ah! I see: It’s the reemergence of the extension campus. More than an homage to the past, it seems that over the next five years, Continuing Education units will define for their universities a modern version of extended learning that recalls through a digital lens the ways in which countless nontraditional students transformed their lives in an earlier age of analog. This vision of 2028 reveals how Continuing Education units are reconfigured within their universities’ governance and organizational structures to function (in many cases unencumbered) as affiliated extension campuses to expand continuing and professional education beyond current parochial models. We know, of course, that nowhere within the university has learning been more agile than through extended learning. The crystal ball shows earlier success of holistic lifelong learning that integrated traditional and progressive teaching methods into accessible programs on extension campuses everywhere in the world, now transformed into multimodal learning uniquely oriented toward developing human potential in nontraditional contexts and environments. Focus here. See how in this near-future, Continuing Education units are the engine behind dramatically expanded access to nontraditional students and learners seeking degrees, credentials, certificates and personal humanistic learning experiences beyond residential full-time study. Look how through this reimagined vehicle of the extension campus, Continuing Education units are expeditiously developing innovative market-sensitive educational opportunities, swiftly improving and promptly diversifying revenues to create sustainable support, innovation and reinvestment!

What’s this?! The vision fogs. Hmmm, I see the most relevant and perhaps urgent unrealized opportunity within higher education over the next five years. Yes, there it is: alternative academic credentials and micro-credentialing designed and delivered by Continuing Education units within traditional and progressive universities. The vision illustrates how learning’s currency has changed dramatically—a transformation that Continuing Education units have been shaping and informing for nearly a decade. Watch how universities look more to their Continuing Education units to engage employers who are increasingly less reliant on a college degree. Yes, that’s correct: Continuing Education units are best positioned to involve industry in defining competencies and educational needs. As the modern workforce changes and new forms of jobs are created, higher education will need to produce and deliver nimble, agile and market-reflexive learning opportunities to help people upskill and reskill throughout their lives. Look closer now. There, watch how over the next five years traditional degree programs are dwarfed by alternative credentials and credentialing that include (but are not limited to) professional boot camps, on-demand learning programs, microlearning programs, digital badges, verified certificates and micro-degrees. Most telling, the vision shows how Continuing Education units serve to connect alternative credentials among the schools and colleges within their universities. By 2028, Continuing Education units are ushering the valuable and scarce capability and capacity to adapt and cultivate alternative credentials to meet the needs of labor and industry—credentials that leverage the disciplinary expertise of faculties across their universities, building new currencies of learning.

Alas, the crystal ball is dimming. Shake it a bit; it’s a dated model and the budget office has yet to approve an upgrade. No, it looks like you’ll have to wait until the next fiscal year to peer further into the future of Continuing Education. Now about that fee…

Author’s Note: While no conjurer can truly know the future, those of us who dwell within the domain of Continuing Education recognize that higher education must embrace the nontraditional if it is to remain relevant. This is the space in which we are most adept; responsive to economic and demographic exigencies; deliverers of exceptional support and services to diverse student populations; innovators of market-sensitive professional degrees, non-credit programs and alternative credentials; and connectors and catalysts for excellence within their universities.