Collaboration, Communication, and Impact
–By Rebecca Jordan, Carrie Ferraro, and Kirsten Rowell
Denver, CO – October 28–29, 2025 — Thirty-four graduate students and sustainability educators convened at Colorado State University’s Spur campus for an immersive leadership workshop designed to strengthen the skills essential for collaborative, engaged, and impactful sustainability work.
Hosted by a coalition of 14 universities from across the United States — each contributing expertise in graduate leadership development — the workshop was grounded in the ANGLES Network’s framework of seven core leadership aptitudes. Drawing on insights from the previous year’s pilot program, this year’s program focus centered on three aptitudes especially critical for sustainability leaders:
- Collaborating across teams and disciplines – Working in teams is essential when the urgencies and complexities of problems transcend any one discipline and demand novel integration of approaches.
- Communicating with clarity and purpose – Listening, questioning, and sharing are important for giving to and fostering exchanges between the wide array of perspectives, positions, and priorities for sustainability issues.
- Making work matter in a shifting world- Cultivating relationships and mutual understanding will help push towards solutions requiring buy-in from diverse stakeholders and decision-makers.
Through interactive sessions, hands-on practice, and peer learning, participants explored these skills in depth. The workshop included collaborative exercises and discussions that fostered cross-institutional connections and shared learning within the growing ANGLES network — a national initiative addressing leadership gaps in sustainability graduate education.
As ANGLES expands, it aims to broaden leadership training access, enhance programs, and support university leaders through train-the-trainer workshops. Plans for 2026 include scaling participation and securing permanent funding for a national fellowship to make these experiences more widely available.
