The EAO Programme  say:

'Real democracy is not a spectator sport. Do you want to build a well-organized social movement that can challenge the downsizing of democracy and promote the common good? If so, check out our master's program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing--where we train students for activist careers as public interest advocates and grassroots organizers working for ecological sustainability, social justice, and the democratic control of corporations.'

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(7.5% of the purchase price is donated to the EAOP Scholarship Fund at no extra cost to you)

 Dig into five key areas.
Our one-of-a-kind activist training curriculum focuses on ecological literacy; big-picture political analysis, vision, and strategy; social action skills; organizational leadership; and personal transformation and self-renewal.

Become a leader.
You hone your ability to advocate and organize, including managing time, people, and money. You learn how to organize dynamic campaigns that win significant reforms, mobilize increasing numbers of citizens, and build stronger progressive organizations and coalitions.

Practice makes perfect.
Grounded in your substantive knowledge of environmental science and advocacy skills, you participate in an advocacy clinic, which is your chance to provide advocacy research, public policy critiques and analysis, strategic planning, issue and corporate campaign materials, action planning, and communications and membership development plans to real-life clients.

“There are just too few institutions that help inspire, train, and nurture progressive activists. That’s why I’m so excited about Antioch University New England’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program. It’s a graduate program that offers in-depth activist training and even connects its graduates into an ongoing support network. I encourage everyone seeking to work as a public interest advocate or a grassroots organizer to check out Antioch’s advocacy and organizing program.”
— Eli Pariser, Exec. Director, MoveOn.Org

The Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program builds on Antioch University’s long-standing mission to provide transformative education that links the worlds of scholarship and activism. In this program, you will participate in a lively community of learners from around North America to deepen your:

ecological literacy
political education
social action skills
organization development competencies
self-knowledge and life-skills for the long haul
We feel such advanced activist training in grassroots organizing and nonprofit advocacy work is particularly needed now. Pushing the next wave of the environmental movement will require talented, scientifically-grounded, and politically-savvy activists working to tame the global economy; promote democratic reform of our political system; build new coalitions for innovative programs in ecological and community renewal; and create a new moral climate that combines a deep ecological concern with a strong commitment to social justice.

Here, you will learn from activists-in-residence, faculty who are advocacy practitioners, a participatory learning community of students, and individual service learning projects with advocacy groups around the country and world. At the end of two years, you will have earned more than a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies, you will have developed the confidence, connections, skills, and insights, to make a significant long-term contribution to the field of environmental advocacy and organizing.

Eight Key Ideas

The Environmental Advocacy and Organization Program is defined by eight key ideas:

Committed Values
Our program will openly embrace a diversity of perspectives which are grounded in a deep commitment to:
biodiversity and wilderness preservation
occupational and public health
sustainable community economics
popular democracy
social justice
As a Department, we affirm the Principles of Environmental Justice which were adopted at the 1991 National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, DC.

Citizen Action Focus

Our program will place its primary emphasis on training current and future leaders, staffers, and volunteers of grassroots and nonprofit advocacy groups. In particular, we stress the skills of organizing, coalition-building, action research, and popular education as the most direct means of building a globally-oriented, grassroots environmental movement.
Ecological Awareness
Our program seeks to deepen students’ scientific understanding of the earth’s ecological systems, environmental vital signs, natural history, and human ecology. It also aids them in understanding key ecological debates, working with scientists and resource managers as allies in advocacy struggles, and interpreting scientific research for the general public.
Critical Thinking
Our program will look critically at how environmental destruction and social injustice are rooted in cultural patterns of domination and the way we organize and conduct our economic and political lives. It will place particular emphasis on developing a deeper understanding of global political economy, social oppression, and consumer culture.
Becoming Practical Visionaries
Our program will encourage students to envision desirable and sustainable ways of life, grounded in a broad environmental and social ethic, and made practical through programmatic thinking about creative innovations in our underlying social, political, and economic institutions at local, regional, national, and international levels.
Strategic Savvy
Our program will help students deepen their understanding of social action strategies and how to organize powerful grassroots movements that can cooperate effectively on local, regional, national, and transnational levels. Emphasis will be placed on social movement history, the dynamics of social power, and “best practices” for our efforts in coalition-building, citizen lobbying, media work, electoral campaigns, nonviolent direct action, and creating alternative institutions.
Sustained Inspiration
Our program will pay attention to the development of the “whole person” and the affective dimensions of social change and personal growth. Emphasis will be placed on spirit, imagination, celebration, connection to the natural world, emotional and artistic expression, building an affirming community, and sharing reflections on the personal challenges we face as advocates. Such work will help students avoid burn-out and foster ways of connecting more meaningfully with each other--and the sources of their own deepest passions--to help sustain them for the “long haul.”
Empowering Education
Finally, our program will encourage students and teachers to work together as co-creators and interpreters of the knowledge and skills needed for effective environmental advocacy. Emphasis in the program will be placed on honoring multiple learning styles, posing problems of emerging relevance to students, fostering critical thinking and participatory dialogue, encouraging personal reflection and cooperative learning, supporting student learning initiatives, and integrating theory and practice through field experience and experiential education.

Study on 'Activist Training in Academia'

Activist Training In The Academy
Developing a Master’s Program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing by Steve Chase

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Environmental Studies at Antioch New England Graduate School

Abstract

This curriculum action research study begins by raising the question of whether environmental studies programs within higher education should launch activist training programs for public interest advocates and grassroots organizers working for nonprofit organizations focused on environmental protection, corporate accountability, and social justice. Answering that question in the affirmative, the study then focuses on the theoretical issues underlying the creation of activist training programs within the academy and then reports on the case study of the development of a master’s program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing.

The first section on theoretical issues focuses first on the author’s own evolution from a teacher focused primarily on critical pedagogy and citizenship education to one focused on expanding the activist training opportunities at his own graduate school and beyond. It goes on to make both the theoretical and historical case for activist training programs within higher education--including offering past examples from extension, service learning, and professional graduate programs. In the last part of this section, the study identifies 5 core curriculum content areas that are key to teaching environmental advocacy and organizing and then discusses the tradition of popular education as the most appropriate educational methodology for activist training programs.

The second section reports on the case study of an insider action research project to develop and launch a new master’s program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing. This section presents the author’s original proposal to the Faculty of the Department of Environmental Studies at Antioch New England Graduate School, explores their initial reactions, offers answers to key questions raised by the them, and, finally, describes the basic curricular design of the new program that welcomed its first cohort of students in Fall 2002 and has been directed by the author ever since.

The aim of this study is to provide a useful guide for other educators in academia who might be interested in starting similar programs at their own schools, whether in the field of environmental studies or other disciplines. It should also be useful to prospective students of the Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program.

Steve Chase
Director, Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program
Department of Environmental Studies @ Antioch University New England
40 Avon Street, Keene, NH 03431
This Email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 603-357-2336 (office); 603-357-0718 (fax)

The Advocacy Clinic
Making A Difference By Directly Serving Activist Organizations

The Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program’s Advocacy Clinic is part of a faculty-supervised two-semester service-learning course for students where they work on real projects for real organizations.

Clinic participants provide pro bono advocacy work on behalf of Clinic clients—organizations at the local, state, national or international level working for environmental protection, corporate accountability, democratic governance and social justice. We pursue purposeful results for clients that gain access and provide voice in the decision-making process, change power relations and serve the public interest. The Clinic brings the community into the classroom and the classroom into the community.

Grounded in their substantive knowledge of environmental science and advocacy skills gained in their first year at Antioch, Clinic participants provide advocacy research, public policy critiques and analysis, strategic planning, issue and corporate campaign materials, action planning, and communications and membership development plans to Clinic clients.

Examples of Clinic work to date include:

bringing the award-winning radio news show “Democracy Now!” to Keene on behalf of a local civic education group and building a sustainable base of support for community radio
providing research and advocacy support for two natural resource extraction corporate shareholder proposals by the New York City Employees Retirement System
Successful advocacy to establish a town conservation commission in Burlington, Connecticut
Building effective grassroots campaigns for passage of legislation supporting New Hampshire’s Land and Community Heritage Program (LCHIP) and a Maine ballot initiative to grant current-use tax status to working waterfronts
Organizing a state-wide strategy meeting for Vermonters working to challenge the harms of genetically modified seeds and foods
Rights-based community organizing and advocacy to challenge a polluting power plant and to strengthen democratic governance in Russell, Massachusetts
developing a media strategy for a Connecticut-based healthy schools grassroots organization
designing/testing a member development strategy for a national campaign finance reform group
completing research on access to municipal water systems on behalf of Public Citizen
developing a template for municipal climate change action plans on behalf of Massachusetts Climate Action Network
Completing research on alternative pest control models for the Boston-based Neighborhood Pesticide Action Committee
providing campaign strategy guidance and a corporate profile to a Massachusetts’ North Shore citizens’ organization seeking better environmental practices by a multinational mining corporation operating in their town
developing a corporate profile of Wal-Mart for national organizations campaigning to pass federal legislation mandating greater transparency of U.S.-based multinationals’ overseas operations.
The Clinic accepts project proposals for multifaceted advocacy in domestic and international settings. The deadline for submissions for the Fall 2007 docket is Thursday, August 17, 2007. For details about how to submit a project proposal, download our Request for Proposals (PDF 26K) or contact:

Abigail Abrash Walton, Clinic Director
Faculty
Department of Environmental Studies
Antioch University New England
40 Avon Street
Keene, NH 03431
Tel: 603.283.2344; Fax: 603/357-0718
E-Mail Abigail

Clinic Clients to Date

ALCRER (Benin)
American Friends Service Committee (New Hampshire)
Americans for Campaign Reform (New Hampshire)
Brattleboro Climate Protection (Vermont)
Canary Committee (Connecticut)
Center for Democracy and the Constitution (Massachusetts)
Coalition for the Health of Aggregate Industries Neighbors (Massachusetts)
Coalition of NH Land Conservation Organizations Advocating for LCHIP Funding
Connecticut Association of Conservation and Inland Wetland Commissions (Connecticut)
Democracy Now! Project of the Monadnock Region (New Hampshire)
Environmental Partnerships (Massachusetts)
International Labor Rights Fund (Washington, D.C.)
League of Pissed Off Voters (New Hampshire)
Maine Congress of Lakes Association (Maine)
Massachusetts Climate Action Network (Massachusetts)
Monadnock Community Radio Project (New Hampshire)
Native Wind Powering America (Vermont)
Neighborhood Pesticide Action Committee (Massachusetts)
Ocean State Clean Cities Coalition (Rhode Island)
PrioritiesNH (New Hampshire)
Public Citizen (Washington, D.C.)
Reclaim Democracy (Massachusetts)
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights (Washington, D.C.)
Save Our Working Waterfront Jobs Coalition (Maine)
The Naked Truth Project (Maine)
Valley Alliance for Smart Growth (Rhode Island)
Watertown Citizens for Environmental Safety (Massachusetts)
Windham County Genetic Engineering Action Group (Vermont)

The Progressive Caucus

This May (2007), Antioch University’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program launched its new congressional fellowship in cooperation with the 72-member US Congressional Progressive Caucus. Antioch’s Fellowship will allow at least one EAOP student to work in Washington DC for the Caucus and its members every summer. “This is the start of a great, mutually beneficial collaboration between the CPC and ANE students and faculty,” CPC Co-Chair U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) noted. “ANE’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program graduate students will help CPC Members address a wide variety of environmental challenges from global warming to environmental justice.”

The first Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program student to be selected by the US Congressional Caucus to serve as a Fellow is Crissy Heide, who will work with Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ, 7th Congressional District), who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources’s Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. Rep. Grijalva also heads the Progressive Caucus’s Environment Task Force and has been recognized as a leader in environmental conservation by the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife. As he said of Crissy, “I am honored to participate with the Congressional Progressive Caucus in Antioch University’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program’s Fellowship, and I welcome this year’s Fellow, Crissy Heide.”

In her journal entries and photos, Crissy will share her summer of learning and legislative activism in our nation’s capitol.

Learn more about Crissy Heide
Crissy came to Antioch’s EAOP after two years of working in the field of environmental education in rural New Jersey. During her graduate studies, she has organized Keene’s Earth Day Festival, the recent Step It Up Congress Rally in Keene, worked on Sierra Club’s Cool Cities Campaign, chaired Antioch’s Student Alliance, and has worked with Rhode Island’s Valley Alliance for Smart Growth to ensure wetlands protection on lands slated for big-box-store development. Crissy was raised in Indiana, where she graduated from Lafayette Jefferson High School and received a BS in Wildlife Science from Purdue University.

The Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program sounds great, but how do I know if I’m really cut out to be a “professional activist” and if this program would make sense for me?

If this is a question for you, you probably need to do two things. One is to get a better sense of the nature of the public interest advocacy field as well as the work opportunities within it. If you like, we could send you a copy of our own internal report on “Advocacy Job Opportunities and Salary Levels.” Furthermore, it might be helpful to read Harley Jebens’ book called 100 Jobs in Social Change. Secondly, you need to assess whether this kind of long-term engagement in the world of social activism is the contribution you most want to make in life. We are all citizens and should be active on that level, but that doesn’t mean that all of us are best suited to be paid advocates and organizers working for grassroots organizations and nonprofit public interest groups. To help you reflect on whether such a calling is really right for you, I encourage you to read Paul Rogat Loeb’s The Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. It is a great book that may help you with any soul searching you need to do about whether this program is the right next step for you.

Courses include

ES 518
Advocacy Clinic I
Competency Area: EAO - Required; CB, EE, Cert, IND & RMA/RMC - Elective
Required of Environmental Advocacy & Organizing students.

Do you want to take sustained, effective action on an issue you care about and achieve purposeful results? Are you looking for an opportunity to develop and hone your advocacy skills and to strengthen your effectiveness as a social change agent? This course offers participants the opportunity to engage in supervised practical advocacy work on behalf of clinic ‘clients’ - organizations at the local, state, national or international level working for environmental protection, corporate accountability, democratic governance and social justice. Students will design, conduct and evaluate advocacy projects for actual organizations under the supervision of the instructor. The goal of the course is to provide students with a strong supervised experiential learning opportunity in the field with more group support, attention to theory, and supervision than an individual practicum placement usually allows. Course elements include campaign and project planning & management, research & lobbying skills, effective communication (e.g., media releases, briefing papers), and project evaluation. The course will combine theory with practical supervised experience and direct interaction with on-the-ground advocates.

Section A: Abigail Abrash Walton
Times: Thursdays, 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Maximum 10
Credits: 3

ESAM 516
Building Sustainable Organizations
Competency Areas: RMC - Required; IND, CB, EAO, EE & Cert - Elective
Priority to RMC students.

BSO surveys the landscape of sustainability theory and literature by considering organizational purpose, design and behavior through the lenses of ecology, management, economics and social justice. This course prepares students to analyze organizations from the perspective of sustainable practices, and to develop an understanding of the importance of self-knowledge and personal sustainability. BSO is designed to serve as a gateway for further study. The course relies on heavily active participation by all class members, drawing from each participant's previous organizational and managerial experiences.

Section A: Jim Gruber
Time: Thursdays, 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Maximum: 16
Credits: 3

ESE 513
Environmental Education Methods: Educating for Sustainability
Competency Areas: EE - Required alternate; Cert, EAO, CB, IND & RMC - Elective
Priority to ES Environmental Education students who entered Fall 06.

Pamela Mang writes that sustainability is the ability of the human species to stay around for the long haul? What does this mean? How do you define sustainability? What does it require? How can it be? What is the role of education in that process? What would people know and be able to do if they were educated for a sustainable future? What can we, as educators, do to cultivate the necessary knowledge, skills, and habits of mind in our students so that they may enact sustainable lifestyles? This course provides an introduction to educating for sustainability (EFS). We will explore the concept of sustainability and the meanings of EFS as we identify and clarify how these may be incorporated into our work as environmental educators. With the goal of increasing awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the core content, competencies, and habits of mind which characterize EFS, we will consider its philosophical foundations and historical context and engage in activities focused on integrating core content in our work, including systems thinking, sustainable economics, the role of social equity in sustainable communities, place as curriculum, and the science of sustainability. From habits of mind to regenerative resource management, we will study the emerging field of EFS to broaden our expertise as environmental educators.

Section A: Sue Gentile
Times: Thursdays, 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Maximum: 16
(1 seat reserved for Science Education student)
Credits: 3

ES 516
Nonprofit Leadership and Management
(formerly Organizational Leadership in the Nonprofit World)
Competency Areas: EAO - Required; CB, EE, Cert, IND & RMC - Elective
Required of and Priority to Environmental Advocacy and Organizing students.

Just as the human body requires healthy organs to function well, a social movement requires well-run organizations. To become effective organizational leaders, people need to develop self-awareness, a healthy and balanced approach to life and work, good listening and communication skills, a keen understanding of group dynamics, and the ability to facilitate productive meetings. Organizational leaders also need to be visionaries who can manage time, money, emotions, and other people competently. This course will focus on such skills and explore how they can be combined to improve our personal effectiveness in creating growing, healthy, and successful organizations. This class will largely be an online reading/discussion course with an intensive weekend workshop or two as well as some weekly student support group meetings.

Section A: Abigail Abrash Walton
Time: Wednesdays, September 5 - December 12, 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Maximum: 16
Credits: 3

ES 515
Organizing Social Movements & Campaigns
Competency Areas EAO - Required; CB, EE, Cert, IND, & RMC - Elective
Required of and Priority to Environmental Advocacy & Organizing students.

Want to learn how to be an effective citizen activist? This class will look at the best strategies and tactics of progressive social movements and campaigns in the United States as well as consider case studies of movements from around the world. Attention will be given to exploring theories of social power, stages of movement mobilization, action strategies, advocacy roles, power-holder responses, and the mechanisms and levels of social movement success. The goal of the course will be to help students see themselves as part of a long activist tradition and reflect on how best to build powerful social movements, win the active support of key sectors of the populace, and achieve campaign objectives even in the face of power-holder opposition. The course will include 20 hours fieldwork and a group strategy-planning project designing a local campaign around a group chosen global climate stabilization objective.

Section A: Steve Chase
Time: Thursdays, 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Maximum: 16
Credits: 3

ESP 524
Patterns of Environmental Activism
Competency Area: Civic Ecology
Priority to ES students entering Fall 07:
First Priority to Environmental Advocacy & Organizing students.

Environmentalism is a very broad and diverse social movement, with many different streams and tributaries -- some mainstream, some radical, some progressive, and some reactionary. In this course, we will not only explore the diversity of the last four decades of environmental thought and activism in the United States, but also the thoughts and actions of earlier advocates of preserving wildlands, protecting public health, and promoting more sustainable approaches to living on the earth. The goals of the course are to 1) explore the diversity of response thoughtful people have had to the negative environmental consequences of our urban, industrial capitalist society; 2) develop a more critical understanding of the forces arrayed against moving our societies in the direction of greater justice, democracy, environmental protection, public health, and long term sustainability; and 3) identify what each of us can contribute to the future of a renewed environmental movement as professionals, consumers, and citizens.

Section A: Steve Chase
Time: Thursdays, 8:30 - 11:00 am
Maximum: 16
(4 seats saved for 2nd year ES students)
Credits: 3

ESACO 503
Proposal Writing and the Grants Process
Competency Areas: RMC - Required alternate to GIS; EE - EE Methods Required alternate; EAO, CB, Cert & IND - Elective
Priority to RMC students who entered Fall 06 and did not take GIS.

This course will focus on gaining competency in the three phases of the grants process: planning, research, and writing. Students will research and explore public and private funding sources appropriate to the human services and environmental fields. The criteria for selecting potential funding sources, the basic elements of a proposal, and developing successful collaborative efforts will be emphasized. Students will interactively engage in each phase of the process and will demonstrate their learning through submission of a proposal abstract and evidence of research in the public and private sectors.

Section A: Don Woodhouse
Time: Thursdays, September 6 - October 25,
5:00 - 8:00 pm
Maximum: 16
Credits: 2