List of Workshops

Ending Corporate Personhood

This workshop aims to familiarize participants with the role of corporate constitutional rights in creating obstacles to building a sustainable society. It will also outline strategies and tactics designed to bring about a constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations are not people and that money is not speech. Attendees will learn how to use legal, transparent and non-violent actions to re-empower human beings in order to create a sustainable future.

How-To Build Peace on Earthbench - Natural Building and Bottle Brick Demo

Come learn how to transform waste into artistic community space! The Peace On Earthbench Movement (POEM) is inspiring the building of 1000 Bottle Brick Benches for Peace around the world! Last year’s UC Davis earthbench has already inspired the building of an earthbench at Santa Barbara City College this past winter and one at UC San Diego this spring. We will learn how to make a Portable Landfill Device aka bottle brick (plastic bottle stuffed with trash until compressed as a brick) and use natural building materials such as cob to build a beautiful and artistic earthbench. Come get down and dirty with a cob and bottle brick demo and learn how you can join this movement to clean up the world and create a global community gathering space!

Food Systems 101

This workshop will examine the issues and opportunities in the current food system with particular regard to the corporate food industry and the potential university students have to act as change agents through leveraging the capacity of their campus dining halls.

T.G.I.F

This workshop is all about The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF)! Attendees will learn what exactly a Green/ revolving loan fund is and how it can provide for more sustainability on campus. Attendees will also learn, step by step, how to get a green fund on their campus.

AgroEco Coffee — Going beyond Fair Trade and Organic

The intent is to educate students on CAN’s AgroEco model of coffee and action education, how this coffee became available on the UC Santa Cruz campus, and the current campaign to bring AgroEco to Cal Poly SLO and Santa Clara University. The focus of our workshop is to present how we integrate academic research and undergraduate field studies, how we measure social/environmental/economic impact in the farming communities, and how we go beyond fair trade and organic certifications. Our goal is to show students how they can take action locally and on their campus to have a large global impact and change business as usual.

End Coal in CA Higher Education: Leveraging the Power of Your School’s Endowment

The intent of this workshop is to provide an overview of the CSSC’s End Coal in CA Higher Education campaign, a statewide, centrally-supported campaign working in a diverse coalition with nationwide partners. This workshop will give students an overview of divestment and responsible investment as well as provide them with the tools and resources necessary to bring the campaign to their campus and affect revolutionary change in their endowments.

Alternative Fuels Overview

We will explore various alternative fuel sources that have been proposed which are supposedly more sustainable, including Hydrogen, BioDiesel, and Ethanol, as well as hybrid and electric vehicles, and fuels that are not as well publicized. Specifically we will look at how sustainable these fuels actually are and whether or not they could realistically be adopted. We’re always being told what the next big thing is but a lot of these “developments” are nothing more than smoke and mirrors that are at best still decades away. In this workshop we will try to take a realistic and scientific approach to evaluating different alternative fuels.

How to become involved with CSSC!

Attendees will learn how CSSC works at connecting students across the state and how to become more involved with the organization.

The Environmental Justice Movement

This workshop will give a brief history of the environmental justice movement within the United States. It will also highlight the differences and similarities of environmental justice and mainstream environmentalism, and how low income communities and communities of color aren’t often “seen” in regards to environmental issues.

Grow Your Own!

Focuses on using agriculture as a medium for change. We will talk about creating the community garden plots in Poly Canyon Village, as well as scaling up to more large scale situations.

Guateca: Collaborative Appropriate Technology Education in Guatemala

The focus of our presentation will be “Guateca” - a two-month appropriate technology field school in San Pablo Tacana, Guatemala (July 2nd - September 1st) co-created by Cal Poly and San Pablo university students. The 12-unit curriculum studies energy, society and the environment through the creation of sustainable technologies and enterprises and Spanish language, and offers a bilingual teaching opportunity for Liberal Studies students. We intend to inform students about the Guateca and the opportunity to be part of the program this summer. Additionally, we will talk about the philosophy behind designing appropriate technologies, and the lessons we’ve learned through our collaboration with the community of San Pablo.

Moving Beyond Sustainability: Teaching Regenerative Development and Complexity Science

We will discuss the need to move beyond sustainability to advance the cause of a sustainable future, and review the curriculum innovations at Presidio Graduate School where we are moving toward teaching Regenerative Development and Resiliency Studies as new stage alternatives to the generic and increasingly hackneyed language of sustainability. We will also discuss how we are using these curricular threads in our Masters of Public Administration in Sustainable Communities, Masters of Business Administration in Sustainable Enterprise, and our Division of Professional and Continuing Education.

Empowering Women Through Fair Trade

Our mission is to raise awareness not only about Fair Trade and its standards, but about how supporting the cause benefit women globally.

Intro to Safe Cycling, how to commute in a more sustainable manner

The intent of this workshop is to educate students how to ride their bike in any setting, SAFELY. The hope is students will be empowered to ride their bike to work or class instead of driving.

Picking Up Supporters: Improving Your Outreach Skills as an Individual

The purpose of this workshop is to give people the skills and tactics necessary to effectively interact with members of their community, with regards to campaigns and organizational recruitment. The workshop will focus on motivating attendees in finding confidence within themselves when it comes to interacting with others and gaining their trust to join their endeavors.

Eco-Positive Periods

Menstruation is a topic that is rarely discussed amongst womyn and men. In the mainstream culture, menstruation is disgusting, discreet, disposable, disturbing, etc. I will engage a discussion on the negative energy that the media drives in on menstruation and culture. How do we get our ideas of pms? Is pms real?
With the discussion of a more positive focus of the natural monthly cycle, I will talk about reusable products! Cups, sponges, and pads, I will have samples to go around, and brochures, to let people know about these healthy, and environmental alternatives. I will talk about the environmental damages that are caused by disposable pads and tampons, and the major health risks that are involved as well.

Green Chef

Green Chef is a fun, sustainable, student cooking competition featuring a fresh, local, secret ingredient. Attend this workshop to learn more about how to plan a similar engaging event on your campus!

Becoming an Ally for Justice, Transforming White Privilege

How do we build a movement that is inclusive, and is in it to win it big for all people regardless of race, age, gender, sexual orientation and class? We’ll give real life examples of how people of European origin can build ally relationships to form coalitions that are ethnically and racially diverse. The intent of this interactive and participatory workshop is to create a safe environment where students can engage with questions of white privilege and explore what it means to be an ally sharing the power and leadership of the only movement that can win the victories we want, one that is truly diverse in membership, content and leadership.

Urban Agriculture: An Approach to Mending Our Broken Food System and Alleviating Urban Blight

I will start with a brief background on the way our current food systems work in North America and I will focus on urban agriculture as a means to alleviate urban blight and implement more local food systems. I will highlight case studies, such as in the Rust Belt, where communities are taking the opportunity to revitalize rundown areas. I will go over some of the benefits that this approach has to a community’s appearance, social setting and equity, community pride, food education, local food sources, and why these and more are important to address different urban challenges. I will also address some of the challenges in implementing such programs and give suggestions/solutions of how communities can better plan for urban agriculture and gardens.

Secular Morality

Humanity’s future success necessitates a morality based in science and reason, as opposed to religion, in order to unite global nations and cultures, to erode the divisive ignorance religion propagates. 

Stephen Jay Gould said “Since evolution made us the only earthly creatures with advanced consciousness, what responsibilities are so entailed for our relations with other species?” We know that utilizing the resources of our environment without any thought for replenishment is a bad thing. We are running out of resources to maintain our current consumption. We destroy the habitats of other species, often keystone species. Thus, we are making it difficult for our own species to survive and thrive in our environment. So how can we make preserving it a part of our moral compass?

I want to ask these questions and spread these radical notions to other young people who obviously have a great deal of compassion to their fellow beings in hopes that it will carry on.

 

Making Medicine from the Plants Around You!

To show students how they can make their own homemade medicines from plants they can collect in the wild or easily grow at home. Our workshop will teach the basic processes of crafting herbal medicine, from harvesting the plants to bottling the medicine.

Living In the Shadow

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, storing over 2,000 metric tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, is sited just 10 miles from Cal Poly. It is built on the intersection of several earthquake faults, and the plant’s aging components are worn and brittle.Why is Pacific Gas and Electric still allowed to operated this potentially lethal power plant? 

The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, legal intervenors against the operation of Diablo Canyon since 1973, are working to stop the relicensing of the plant for another 20 years. If a disaster similar to Fukushima occurred at Diablo, it would affect every student at Cal Poly, as well as all the land, the water, aquatic life, agriculture, and the health of the future generations. Radiation is invisible, and its effects are generational.

This workshop will give its participants tools to help shut down both nuclear power plants in California, San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, and to replace them with reliable and sustainable forms of energy.

 

Leafulls

In the workshop, I will teach peers and students how easy it is to grow leaf lettuce and other edible herbs in a small container to where they can have subsequent harvesting creating a sustainable leaf lettuce source.

Permaculture: A Tool for Student Change-Makers

Do you want to be a change-maker and reach a broad range of student from various disciplines and unify them under one idea? Then come learn about permaculture and holistic design for sustainable communities. We’ll talk about how permaculture can change people’s perspectives and unify diverse goals into one initiative. In addition, leaders from Poly Permaculture will give you tips and trick to how you can establish permaculture as the new rage on your campus and create new opportunities for abundance in your own life. And of course we’ll have a fun activity where you get to be a permaculture designer and bring all of the pieces together into a unified whole!

Passivhaus: Energy Efficient Buildings

I will define the need for energy efficient buildings, introduce concept of Passivhaus energy efficient buildings, describe techniques and methods for constructing a Passivhaus, as well as comparing the total cost of the Passivhaus vs. a regular home. This workshop will take place in Cal Poly’s very own Solar Decathlon house, a Net Zero energy building built on the principles of Passivhaus design. This will reinforce my lecture as well as give a hands on experience to the attendees.

Aquaponics

So what is a cooperative anyway?

The workshop will provide an overview of cooperatives, their role in creating a more just economy and why you should care. Governments, workers and consumers the world over are searching for institutional and economic solutions to the institutional problems exposed by the global economic melt down. Cooperatives provide a just and equitable alternative to traditional share-holder driven corporations that are accessible, democratic and market-driven.

Organizing multi-media educational campaigns for eco-justice in frontline communities threatened by climate change

Project Green Challenge

Organic Farm Tour