UO Sustainability Leadership Academy Seminar April 22, 2005

Bob Doppelt, Instructor and Academic Coordinator for the UO Sustainability Leadership Academy, will share principals and practices from his internationally ranked book at the Systems Thinking for High Performance Organizations one-day seminar on Friday, April 22 at the Downtown Baker Center, 975 High Street, Eugene.

Eighteen months after publication, Doppelt's book, Leading Change Toward Sustainability: A Change Management Guide for Business, Government, and Civil Society (Greenleaf Publications, 2003) was ranked as one of the nine best books, journals and reports on sustainable development in the latest worldwide survey by GlobeScan.

As well as being an author, instructor, and academic coordinator, Bob Doppelt is the Director of Resource Innovations (formerly Program for Watershed and Community Health), a sustainability research and technical assistance program at the University of Oregon. Mr. Doppelt is also a Courtesy Associate Professor in the Department of Planning Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon.

This Systems Thinking seminar focuses on the theory and practice of how to use systems thinking to best understand and resolve sustainability problems in private and public organizations and community settings. Systems Thinking was ranked the highest compared to other seminar topics found helpful to business, nonprofit, and government leaders in a survey conducted by the University of Oregon Sustainability Leadership Academy.

Many sustainability programs within private companies, public institutions, and communities begin by focusing on operational changes. However, ample evidence suggests that meaningful changes in operations will be difficult to initiate, plateau soon after they begin, or fail outright without a sound understanding of the systemic forces within and outside of the organization that drive unsustainable behavior. Thus, a clear understanding of the tools and techniques of systems thinking provides the basic foundation for the successful introduction of sustainability measures.

The UO Sustainability Leadership Academy is one of the leading professional development sustainability education and training programs in the nation. For more information, contact Program Coordinator, Shanda LeVan at (541) 346-4231, [email protected] or browsesustain.uoregon.edu