Kathleen Falk is using content from Empowered: One Planet at a Time in a master’s course she is teaching this summer at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She shared with Author Patty Dreier: “In your book I especially appreciate the stress you place on giving people confidence that they can be leaders, that they can take action, that they can make a difference. I find my students lacking in that confidence and I spend considerable effort in each course giving them skills to overcome that lack of confidence! As I also mentioned, I find my students think it is ‘too late’ to fix all the problems and so I spend a lot of time undermining that fallacy! One of the points I make in my course is that for anyone to try to get others to change their views is to figure out ‘why’ that person thinks as they do….”

An exercise from Empowered: One Planet at a Time will be used to help students in Falk’s course figure out the “why” of their own values—a first step in understanding the “why” of others’ values.

The Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies is “Training Tomorrow’s Environmental Leaders” by confronting global environmental challenges through imaginative research that transcends disciplinary boundaries, hands-on education that bridges classrooms and communities, and public programs that foster environmental conversations among people from business, government, academia, and advocacy.

Kathleen Falk and Patty Dreier both served in elected office as County Executives in Wisconsin representing the citizens of their counties, Dane and Portage Counties respectively. Besides them, only three other women have been elected to the office of County Executive in Wisconsin’s history.