Join us for an engaging webinar where the authors of a recently published paper in Nature Sustainability share their findings on scaling educational innovations in sustainability. While many high-quality educational resources are available, their adoption often remains limited. This session will present the System Dynamics model developed to analyze propagation strategies and highlight the potential of community-based approaches. Learn how mobilizing a network of ambassadors can drive exponential growth in adoption, with actionable insights for implementing these strategies in various contexts, including sustainability-focused initiatives.
Learning Outcomes
Understand the limitations of traditional outreach and word-of-mouth strategies in scaling educational innovations.
Discover the benefits of a community-based propagation model for accelerating adoption.
Explore real-world examples of successful scaling through ambassador networks.
Gain actionable insights on implementing community-based propagation strategies in educational and other settings.
About the Presenters
Juliette Rooney-Varga directs the Climate Change Initiative, co-directs the Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy, and is a professor of Environmental Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She has more than twenty years’ experience as a scientist studying biogeochemistry and microbial ecology. Her current work focuses on translation of science to bridge the gap between scientific and societal understanding of climate change and sustainability. She develops and analyzes the impact of dynamic modeling and interactive simulations that enable people to learn for themselves about the climate and energy systems. These simulations bring current climate change and energy science to students, citizens, and policymakers at all levels and have been shown to motivate science-informed action.
She earned a Ph.D. at the University of New Hampshire, an MS from Cornell University and a BA from Colby College.
Charles Henderson is a Distinguished Professor at Western Michigan University (WMU), with a joint appointment between the Physics Department and the WMU Mallinson Institute for Science Education. He is the Director of the Mallinson Institute and co-Founder and co-Director of the WMU Center for Research on Instructional Change in Postsecondary Education (CRICPE). His research program focuses on understanding and promoting change in higher education, with an emphasis on improving undergraduate STEM instruction. Dr. Henderson’s work has been supported by nearly $11M in external grants and has resulted in many publications. He is a Fulbright Scholar and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Dr. Henderson is the senior editor for the journal Physical Review Physics Education Research and has served on two National Academy of Sciences Committees: Undergraduate Physics Education Research and Implementation, and Developing Indicators for Undergraduate STEM Education.
David Ford serves as the Vecellio Professor of Vecellio Construction Engineering and Management in the Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He joined Virginia Tech in 2022. Ford’s research focuses on the social impacts of natural disaster management in communities. In his current research, he is exploring the quantification of habitation loss using dynamic modeling. He aims to expand the analysis of disaster management projects beyond economics to include their social impacts. Previously, Ford served on the faculties of Texas A&M University and the University of Bergen, Norway. He has over a dozen years of experience in engineering practice.
Florian Kapmeier is Professor of Strategy at ESB Business School at Reutlingen University, Germany. He received his doctorate from the University of Stuttgart on “Interorganizational Learning in Learning Alliances”. He has strengthened his academic profile with research visits at MIT Sloan School of Management (Cambridge, USA), McGill University (Montréal, Canada), University of Lugano (Switzerland), and Emlyon Business School (Lyon, France). For his research and teaching activities, he links the System Dynamics methodology with empirical research on theory development and testing, focusing on organizational aspects of the understanding of complexity, increasingly addressing environmental sustainability issues.