USU to Host Discussion on Climate Anxiety, Character Education, Resilience

LOGAN — Can one teach character? Resilience? Courage? A series of workshops at Utah State University will center on higher education’s role in preparing students for life in a rapidly changing world.

Funded through a $25,000 grant from the Educating Character Initiative, part of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University, the Climate and Resilience: The Role of Character Education and Peacebuilding event brings together participants from USU’s Heravi Peace Institute and eight other universities across the country to generate ideas for addressing climate anxiety through character education.

USU Distinguished Professor of History Tammy Proctor, one of the event organizers, says that conversations in the past decade have often centered on one concept as an umbrella term for something students supposedly lack: resilience.

“While many employ this term, few define it, and it often appears to be a magical panacea for what is wrong with individuals, institutions and societies,” Proctor said. As she notes, “Faculty often say, ‘If only they — meaning students —were more resilient’ without much thought of how to build such a trait.”

The two-day gathering, made up of faculty, staff and students from North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, Utah and California, will explore the concept of resilience by examining best practices in character education and peacebuilding. Is resilience a character virtue? Does resilience have a role to play in conflict transformation? What does it mean to be a courageous person in our rapidly changing world?

These are big questions, and the national convening at USU will see subject experts discuss resilience in the context of a pressing problem facing many individuals, institutions and communities: climate. As part of this work, undergraduate students enrolled in USU’s “Sociology of Climate Change” course will join the group to explore connections between individual emotional health, community organizing and institutional accountability.

These conversations will include representatives from other institutions facing climate challenges, particularly two North Carolina universities still rebuilding after 2024’s Hurricane Helene, but the center of the conversation will be on the American West, where institutions are faced with severe climate threats, especially around fire and water.

While the events of the two-day workshop are by invitation only, the keynote featuring local leader and educator Darren Parry is open to the public. His lecture on USU’s Logan campus, entitled “The Earth Still Remembers Us: Indigenous Teachings on Hope, Character and Climate Resilience,” will begin at 5 p.m. Dec. 5 in Old Main 115. In his remarks, Parry will use stories from the Shoshone tradition and contemporary examples of land stewardship to illustrate how hope grows out of relationships and active practice.

The Heravi Peace Institute is piloting this regional workshop on behalf of the Educating Character Program.

“We look forward to sparking conversations about how to talk through the challenges that students see in their futures,” said Austin Knuppe, Heravi Peace Institute director. For more information about the Heravi Peace Institute, please visit: https://artsci.usu.edu/peace-institute.