SPI 2025

Sharon McKenna

Steven M.R. Covey says that you manage things and lead people. This will be the frame for this course. What are the components of projects that we must manage (schedules, funding, resources) and how do we lead the team to successfully implement the effort?

Using a case study based on actual peacebuilding projects, students will learn about the components of project management and will focus on applying them as the case study evolves throughout the week. 

Gaurav Pathania and Katie Mansfield

Identity, Privilege, and Justice equips practitioners to critically examine privilege and systemic inequality through foundational theories, intersectionality, and real-world examples. Participants will explore how privilege is institutionalized and perpetuates injustice, while learning action-oriented strategies to challenge these systems, fostering self-reflection and transformative change for a more equitable and just society.

Hyojin Chang and Crixell Shell

Traumatic events impact how individuals and groups think, feel, and behave as well as how societies are organized. Unhealed trauma often leads to violence and violence causes more violence as victims act out against others or become self-destructive. Created to help those who work with individuals, groups, or communities suffering from current or historic trauma, the STAR training presents – in both theory and practice – an integrated approach to understanding the trauma, conflict, and violence caused by nature, human beings, and/or structural systems.

STAR is for those who want to bring a trauma-informed perspective to their work. The course brings together learnings from neurobiology, conflict transformation, human security, spirituality, and restorative justice to:

• Increase awareness of the impact of trauma on the body/brain, beliefs, and behavior of individuals, communities, and societies;
• Offer tools and processes for addressing trauma and breaking cycles of violence;
• Explore ways of building individual and collective resilience, including self-care strategies.
• Discuss meta-level trauma awareness as well as personal/societal situations that have caused trauma and how to move forward.

Gloria Rhodes and Joe Cole

Watch a video about this class

Analysis focuses on understanding the factors that cause conflict and violence and those that support peacebuilding. Good conflict analysis skills are a central component of designing effective strategies for transforming conflict and building peace.

Course participants will use lenses including identity (gender, religion, nationality, etc.), human needs, narratives, power, culture, worldview, and others to understand conflict and propose possibilities for change.  Case studies of conflicts at multiple levels will provide content and an opportunity to practice analysis skills individually and in small groups. Participants will become more aware of their own roles and biases in conflicts through self-analysis and will develop their ability to “see” and describe conflict from different perspectives. The class will also focus on research strategies for gathering and organizing data and developing theories of change as an intermediate step from analysis to designing effective social change.

Katie Mansfield & Lisa Collins

During STAR Level II participants are invited to:

• Share STAR experiences from your context with each other.

• Review the core concepts of STAR and the 3-part STAR snail model, using Village STAR, a practical and simply illustrated manual.

• Practice exercises and skills that promote healing and build resilience.

• Plan and receive feedback on how you will engage STAR concepts and tools.

• Reflect on your own position, power, and challenges as a STAR practitioner.

• Envision and understand how to shape structural and organizational change toward trauma-informed, resilient organizations and communities.

The Level II training includes additional content, exercises, and skills for addressing trauma and building resilience to deepen the experiences from STAR I. Participants will create and present action plans about how they will adapt and apply STAR concepts and pedagogy within their work and life contexts. Upon completing STAR II, participants are invited to join the STAR online learning community, a group of STAR Practitioners working in a variety of contexts, sharing their questions, learnings, and experiences.

Joe Cole & Taisa Mattos (in conjunction with GAIA Education)

The short course Design for Sustainability and Regeneration equips participants with systemic thinking skills, practical tools, and the knowledge needed to redesign lives, projects, and ecosystems for sustainability. Based on the Gaia Education 4D Framework, he course explores sustainability and regeneration through four interconnected dimensions: Social, Ecology, Economy, and Worldview. 

Through a combination of theoretical and experiential learning, participants will dive into each of these dimensions with expert facilitators, and engage in a field trip to explore sustainable initiatives in the region. 

Participants will gain practical skills to design regenerative communities, projects, and organizations with stronger social systems, improved efficiency, and healthier environments. The course also emphasizes the importance of community-building, strong local economies, and efficient resource use, helping participants foster a deeper sense of belonging. 

By the end of the course, you will be inspired to apply sustainability principles to any field, while connecting with a global network of change-makers. 

This program, certified by Gaia Education as a Mini-EDE, is a short version of the Ecovillage Design Education Programme (EDE), adapted to the University. 

David Evans & Jonathan McRay

Antiracism shapes social movements and corporate marketing. It permeates the front pages of newspapers and back covers of best-selling books. It also foments the reactions of school book-bans, governmental censures, and right-wing political rallies. Who defines what antiracism means? Who benefits from the popularity of antiracism activity? What world, or worlds, are antiracist educators and organizers imagining and building?

We aim to unsettle the status quo conversations that have captured the liberatory vision of antiracism. Rather than instructors delivering a preplanned outline, we'll make the road by walking together. Participants will build a course curriculum together through emergent strategy and popular education so our questions, challenges, and themes speak to us right now and here. By exploring the collective wisdom in the room, what we talk about will keep us awake and alive.

This isn't a workshop or training. Through roundtable conversations, careful reading, and unsettled silences, we invite movers, shakers, and makers to join us as we engage critical questions at the heart of antiracist struggle for a world where everyone, and every community, can survive and thrive in their full humanity. 

Benjamin Bergey

In this course, we will examine various aspects of the potential application of music in peacebuilding activities. There is significant research showing the benefits of using the arts, and particularly music, in disciplines such as peacebuilding, conflict transformation, healing, and others. Furthermore, the cross-disciplinary synergy of music and peacebuilding, alongside music therapy, ethnomusicology, neuroscience, empathy, diplomacy, protest, community engagement, and social justice to name a few, is significant and growing.

There are vast numbers of organizations actively promoting social justice and various issues in peacebuilding through music, and we will learn how to find and evaluate efficacy through various frameworks. Through this process students will also define their project topics for this course.

We will also engage with various theories to avoid conceptual pitfalls and allow students to catch up with current developments, including ambivalence of music, musicking as action, controversies regarding the universality of music, how to make the extraordinary ordinary through repetition, and the inescapable interference of power relations in musical activities, all the way from the neuroscience of music individually to decolonial thinking and practice.

The course will also spend significant time reading and discussing articles by active researchers in the field. Introductions to training from Musicians without Borders and Deep Listening will supplement the practical learning, with each student having the opportunity to practice musical facilitation in class. No music experience is required for this course.

Ram Bhagat & Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Gun violence is an on-going inter-generational public health crisis and social justice issue in the United States. The increase in mass shootings across the country is almost a daily occurrence. Movie theaters, playgrounds, grocery stores, night clubs, concerts, churches, graduations, and even Super Bowl parades are susceptible to massive loss of life caused by this epidemic. School and community shootings continue to cause deep and far-reaching harm. This course will explore the individual and collective impact of gun violence related trauma.

Black and Brown bodies are disproportionately injured and killed from gun related incidents in the US context. We will examine the intersectionality of race and gun violence, as well as the root causes of firearm fatalities and injuries among young people and the LGBTQ+ community.  An Afro-Indigenous value system, centered around the principles of Sankofa, Ubuntu, Sawubona, and Uhuru is the cultural framework for this course: Gun Violence, Restorative Justice, and Community Healing. This five-day experiential workshop integrates a culturally responsive healing circle process with ritual poetic drama, in order to provide participants with a sacred safe space to build community and establish trust.

Through the transformative power of story, participants will be invited to engage in the development of a vision for healing the traumatic effects of gun violence in their chosen community. We will utilize drumming, dramatization, and dance to generate open and honest dialogue. Paulo Freire – renowned Brazilian Educator – stated “the community must be uplifted… through a process of self-healing.” Our aspiration is to tap into communal intuition and channel the wisdom of our collective consciousness.

The flow of this course will include exploring the impact of gun violence trauma on individuals and communities, examining the intersectionality of race and gun violence from an Afro-Indigenous perspective, and engaging in the creation of a vision for reducing gun violence in the US. We encourage you to join us on this journey!

Shannon Alabanza

This practice-based course offers an in-depth introduction to the art of mediation. Through a combination of lectures, discussions, case studies, small group activities, and practice mediation sessions, students will discover and deepen their understanding of conflict resolution and the mediation process. Topics include communication skills, negotiation strategies, active listening, ethical considerations and how to manage emotions and power dynamics during conflict resolution. Students will apply this learning by exploring the varying contexts in which these processes take place and the variety of perspectives and worldviews that parties bring to conflict resolution processes. By the end of this course, students will be equipped with the foundational knowledge and practical tools necessary to apply mediation techniques in real-world situations and contribute to peaceful conflict resolution in their personal and professional lives.

Gloria Rhodes

As individuals working for peace, social justice, and the reduction of violence, we are the instrument of the work. Therefore, we need to cultivate our ability to engage conflict and injustice with wisdom, compassion, and clarity.

Participants will strengthen their abilities to understand and manage self and to attend to self-care, to listen and communicate, create and maintain healthy boundaries, recognize and promote diversity, lead from their vision and values, and engage people in dialogue and decision-making. The course will survey leadership roles, key skills, systematic processes, and varied contexts within the broad field of peacebuilding and conflict resolution/transformation. Contemporary strategies for structuring conversations and decision-making, including arts-based approaches, will be explored along with traditional processes of negotiation, mediation, and facilitation.  

Course participants will gain a holistic understanding of self as person, practitioner, and leader, with emphasis on the importance of intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being and growth.