Since the death of Mahsa Jini Amini in 2022, Iranian women have led a women’s rights movement to advocate for gender equality and the expansion of women’s rights in Iranian society, which has gained global attention for its effective usage of social media.

On Sept. 16, 2022, 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Jina Amini died in the custody of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s morality police. Despite Iranian officials saying she died of preexisting health conditions, her family maintains she was beaten to death by the police during her arrest for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab. 

Hijabs were made mandatory when the Islamic Republic gained control of Iran after the Iranian Revolution.

On April 24, Toomaj Salehi, an Iranian rapper known for his outspoken criticism of the treatment of women and activists and the suppression of dissent by the Islamic Republic, was sentenced to death by hanging.

Salehi was arrested on Oct. 30, 2022, during protests after Amini’s death, according to a report by nonprofit activist group Human Rights Watch. He was beaten in custody and put in solitary confinement for months on end on numerous charges including “corruption on earth.” 

Salehi was released on bail in November before his re-arrest days later after releasing a video speaking about the torture he endured in prison from the government’s intelligence agents.

The power of a platform

According to Yasmine Pahlavi, a prominent advocate for women’s and children’s rights and the wife of Reza Pahlavi, the former Crown Prince of Iran, the visibility of Mahsa Amini’s death struck a chord with an already outraged people.

“One thing that was certain was that her death was a spark for this new women-led revolution in Iran,” Pahlavi said.

According to Pahlavi, after the women’s rights movement was initiated, every Iranian she knew inside and outside of Iran felt compelled to speak up.

“We all did what we could in the positions we had and with the platforms we had to bring the voice of those inside suffering to the outside,” Pahlavi said. 

The comments of Pahlavi’s Instagram posts, along with those of her husband, are flooded with calls for them to return to Iran. 

“Wishing the best for you and the honorable people of Iran. Long live King Reza Pahlavi,” user Amir_shshirazz commented, accompanied by a crown emoji and two blue heart emojis under a recent post by Pahlavi on the Iranian New Year with her, her husband, her daughters and several other members of their family. 

“The real faces of Iranians,” user Pezhvakariamehr wrote, with a red heart emoji under the same post. 

Pahlavi said she does not feel the designation of the ongoing movement in Iran as only a women’s rights movement is as accurate, pointing to the young men who have died in support of the cause and other minority groups also being persecuted.

“That spark that started as a women’s rights movement morphed into what all of Iran and that society really wish for, which is human rights for everybody,” Pahlavi said.

Pahlavi said many of the people wrongfully detained by the Islamic Republic currently waiting in prison, some on death row, are artists who have used their platforms and artistic expression to speak out against the oppressive government, like Toomaj Salehi. 

“They say that in Iran the prisons are like universities,” Pahlavi said. “Basically all of the intelligent, innocent, talented people are in prison.” 

According to Pahlavi, social media has played a major factor in the movement by evading not only censorship by the Islamic Republic but also the editorializing of news often seen in the media. 

Pahlavi added that the visual aspect of social media allows people worldwide to see evidence of what is happening inside of Iran instead of what is selectively shown at the discretion of cable news networks. 

“My hope is that social media will help take the power that professors and the news media and politicians have over information and give it to people who can just for themselves firsthand see events unfold and make their own minds up, instead of being influenced by what someone wants you to think about something,” Pahlavi said.

Social media and raising awareness

Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index ranks Iran as the fourth most information-repressed nation of the 180 countries surveyed. Only Vietnam, China and North Korea are positioned lower.

In the month following her death, #MahsaAmini in Farsi broke records, becoming the first tweet in the history of X, formerly known as Twitter, to have more than 250 million tweets, according to Data-Pop Alliance, a non-profit initiative aimed at analyzing data to address global challenges. 

According to Sid Bedingfield, a professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, the development of social media has, to an extent, democratized media and had profound effects on the reach of social justice movements. 

“In the old days, it was sometimes hard to find people who agreed with you. It was hard for you to understand or realize that there may be many hundreds in your own community or thousands across a region of the country who agree that something is a problem and should be addressed,” Bedingfield said. “Social media has made that happen instantly, across borders.”

While experts initially thought social media was going to equalize access to public discourse, Bedingfield added that with its rise as a tool for connection and information sharing, it became evident to adversaries of social movements that they could use these platforms to undermine them.

“There is concern that the Iranian women’s movement, facing an entrenched reactionary government that does not want to see this movement spread, finds ways to crack down,” Bedingfield said. “Some in the old-fashioned way, violence, throwing people in prison, killing people, but also in more subtle ways.”

Bedingfield said the spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media are potential ways oppressive governments can harness social media to sow dissent within a social movement, but added that social media still does give more access to information to people living in authoritarian or otherwise restricted societies than ever before. 

“There was a time when authoritarian governments could shut down the flow of information, could control it,” Bedingfield said. “That sort of gradually eroded over time, and then, with the arrival of social media, fell apart.”

According to Bedingfield, the visual evidence of injustices has been critical throughout history in validating claims of social injustice to the public and will continue to be so until the threat of deep-faked images and videos becomes more widely accessible. 

“The battle over public opinion is at the heart of almost all social movements,” Bedingfield said. “Now that battle is far more complicated because there’s so much more media.”

In solidarity with Mahsa Jina Amini and the women’s rights movement’s cause, hundreds of women and other sympathetic people in and out of Iran took to social media to show their support.

Videos of crowds chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom,” or, in Farsi, “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi,” the unofficial slogan of the movement, women cutting off their hair and burning their hijabs, and photos of rallies in support of the movement gained viral popularity in the weeks following Amini’s death.

Though media attention from the Western and global world skyrocketed after Amini’s death, this was not the first time social movements have been seen in Iran, nor did it mark the beginning of women’s rights activism within Iran’s borders. 

The Islamic Republic

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was an uprising that ended the previously standing monarchy, largely due to complaints of political repression and economic inequality, the resistance of Iranian citizens to modernization and perceived Westernization efforts by the former King Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. This resulted in the declaration of Iran as an Islamic Republic, which promptly established a legal code based on Islamic law or sharia. 

There is a debate among historians, activists, journalists and the Iranian public on whether the alleged involvement of foreign powers, including the United States and England, may have played a role in overturning the Pahlavi Dynasty for their own economic interests. 

Harsh restrictions and regulations imposed by the Islamic Republic include the designation of crimes such as same-sex relations, adultery, non-violent drug and alcohol offenses and “insulting the prophet” as punishable by death. There are strict restrictions on freedom of speech for the public and the press. 

Among the chief complaints by numerous human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, is the devaluation of the rights of women, certain ethnic and religious minority groups and LGBTQ+ citizens. 

Women’s rights violations written in law include anti-abortion laws, married women’s legal inability to obtain a passport or to travel outside the country without the explicit permission of their husband and compulsory wearing of the hijab head covering.

A brief timeline of Iranian women’s rights and protests

After the revolution and establishment of the Islamic Republic and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s election as president, the Family Protection Act enacted by the former king was abolished. 

This action eliminated previously protected women’s rights, including the right to divorce their husbands, and lowered the age of legal marriage for women to nine years old.

In the 1980s, Iranian women were barred from serving as judges or running for presidential office and hijabs were officially mandated.

Women who had worn their veils in protest of the previously mandatory unveiling law under the Pahlavi dynasty’s reign began to protest when the law was overturned and the mandatory hijab law was enacted.

From 1989-97, President Rafsanjani’s government eased social restrictions on women, allowing them to initiate divorce proceedings and lifting some workplace restrictions on female employment.

From 1997-2005, President Mohammad Khatami passed laws temporarily easing restrictions for women, specifically improving access to higher education and women’s divorce rights.

From 2005-2013, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revoked many of these rights, restricting female access to higher education and employment.

In 2006, the “One Million Signatures for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws” campaign was launched by women’s rights activists in Iran to protest discriminatory laws against women imposed by the Islamic Republic and advocate for change. Dozens of those who signed this campaign were arrested.

In 2017, young Iranian women started posting anti-government protests on social media under the hashtag #WhiteWednesdays, wearing white scarves before showing themselves unveiling in public.

During 2019-2020, in a period known as “Bloody November,” there was an outbreak of civil protests throughout Iran against the Islamic Republic, initially due to rising fuel prices. This was followed by a six-day-long total shutdown of the internet while the government worked to suppress the movement. According to Reuters, three anonymous interior ministry officials said that the death toll of activists killed during this time was “about 1,500.”

According to Human Rights Watch, the Islamic Republic’s police have raped, tortured and sexually assaulted detainees while repressing the widespread protests following Mahsa Jina Amini’s death.

Article 19, another advocacy group, estimates that during these protests, between 300 to 500 individuals including more than 40 children, lost their lives while thousands more have been detained.

Student perspectives on social media’s role in the women’s rights movement 

An Iranian undergraduate student at the University, who requested anonymity out of fear of the safety of his family still in Iran, said that in order to escape mandatory military service, his family moved first from Iran to Germany and then to the U.S.

He said that while he was living in Iran, social rights were issues going on, but any public dissent was nothing compared to the extent of the protests after Mahsa Jina Amini’s death. Although he and his family have not attended protests or rallies in person, in or out of Iran, he said they have shared social media posts diligently.

“The good thing about social media is you get a lot of information from many different sources,” he said. “It’s not like if you just listen to the news, it’s just one source and they probably will tell you what they want you to hear.” 

According to him, the plethora of Iranian-American celebrities in the U.S. has the potential to make a large impact on the movement’s reach by sharing information and testimonies from family and friends inside of Iran’s borders to their American friends and co-workers to spread awareness.

“Their co-workers and friends may not initially follow the news in Iran, but with someone being there and telling them that they should be aware of that, that can help,” he said.

He said social media has proven invaluable in breaking the recurring pattern where protests and citizen dissent on the streets are met by strict government suppression, only for protests to resurge again, a cycle that has previously stifled burgeoning social movements in Iran.

He added that the visibility of social and general news media has saved lives when people have taken to social media to protest unjust death penalty sentences, but has also done harm to the movement when people and news outlets post footage of protesters without blurring their faces or post graphic visuals of dead bodies.

“Graphic violence might not be suitable for everyone online. I think it’s not good for their families either, imagine a family has just lost their child and the father sees a photo of his child’s body all over the internet,” he said. 

He said that in his opinion, a major difference between movements in the past and protests sparked after Mahsa Jina Amini’s death was the emotion behind them.

“After Mahsa, there was this rage inside, we’re like, ‘Yeah, okay, they’re gonna kill us anyway, so I’m gonna go out there and do my job,’” he said. “It wasn’t a sense of fear anymore after they were suppressed, it was a sense of rage, like people have had enough.”

Reza, an Iranian graduate student at the University, who requested partial anonymity for the safety of himself and his family still in Iran, said he does not feel he has earned the right to call himself an activist, despite his engagement with in-person protests and marches, as well as online information-sharing.

“In Iran, people die to be activists,” Reza said. “So, I’m not.”

Although social media and media attention are useful for spreading awareness, according to Reza, the Islamic Republic is now aware of its power. It has infiltrated social media to monitor what the public is focused on, using that distraction as a cover while morality police are sent to violently suppress protesters.

Reza said an example of this occurred recently when the Islamic Republic took advantage of the media coverage of Iran’s April 13 missile strike to crack down on protesters and other citizens not wearing their hijabs.

“The day after they attacked Israel, everyone started to speak about the attack. So the first thing that our government did was start to attack women in the streets,” Reza said.

According to Reza, another disadvantage of social media is the danger of creating a singular narrative about whose lives are important.

He said that while deaths in urban areas and hubs like Tehran make people such as Mahsa Amini into martyrs, there is little to no coverage of the deaths and crimes committed against activists in the more rural areas of Iran.

“In Tehran, everyone has the internet, everyone has a phone. But for example, in Zahedan or Balochistan, the situation there is really different. They don’t have a voice,” Reza said. “They are alone.”

According to Reza, the media can lack the attention span necessary to bring depth to discussions on social injustice. He said it is very important to not only see martyrs, such as Mahsa Jina Amini, as symbols of the movement but also to recognize them as people who are being mourned by their families and whose absence leaves a loss.

Reza referred to the people who have proudly posted photos with one eye looking at the camera and the other blindfolded after being shot by the morality police as living monuments to the movement.

He said that although the Islamic Republic had ordered its police force to shoot at sensitive areas on protesters as a way of igniting fear, it has had the opposite effect.

“For me, when I was reading these people’s posts on Instagram, it gave me power, to be honest. I wanted to go out again. I wanted to do something,” Reza said.

An Iranian doctorate student at the University, who has requested anonymity for the safety of herself and her family in Iran, said the power of social media is in giving women, especially from rural areas, a platform to utilize their voices in a society that otherwise diminishes them.

“It’s really important because, for the first time, women are at the center of everything,” she said. 

According to her, social media helps build momentum for activists, citing the global solidarity found online due to viral clips motivating activists to keep fighting for equality.

“Sometimes there is just a very short Tweet or an image or a small part of a video that goes viral, and this shows people solidarity and passion and desire for equity and justice in this society,” she said.

She said while it is easy for global news audiences to remove themselves from the victims of crimes across the world, sharing the life stories of these victims on social media helps to humanize them, making it difficult for audiences to detach themselves. 

On living in Iran, she said whether on the streets or in an academic setting, she notices a very prominent distinction in how she is treated compared to her male counterparts.

“Living as a woman in Iran is very hard because you feel that you are a secondary citizen, a secondary person,” she said. “That was one of the hardest parts of the story of my life in Iran, because I usually felt that I was not equal with men.”

Because of the societal restrictions on women, she said the act of living her life and pursuing academic advancement as a woman is both a protest against the Islamic Republic and a way for her to take back her autonomy.

She added that activities that may seem mundane to the Western world, such as driving a car, are a symbol of protest and empowerment for women in Iran. 

She said although women are legally allowed to drive in Iran, women who choose to drive are greeted with harsh opposition from religious conservatives.

“Our activism is not departed or differentiated from our life. Our lives are connected to our activism,” she said. “Our life is part of our activism.”

The University of Minnesota Police Department’s Community Engagement Team (CET) is composed of civilians, sworn officers and student interns intending to foster a positive relationship between the University community and the University of Minnesota Police Department (UMPD). 

Founded in 2015 with the arrival of UMPD Chief Matt Clark, the team expanded beyond the initial three sworn-in officers in 2017 and now includes a civilian community liaison, two graduate student interns, a UMPD officer and a UMPD sergeant, according to Nicholas Juarez, director of community engagement and diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Our primary goal is to establish relationships with everybody that comes to the university, whether it’s faculty, staff, students or visitors,” Juarez said.

The team hosts several community-building events and workshops throughout the year open to students and faculty such as tailgates, lunches and “Coffee with a Cop,” all posted on UMPD’s website.

“When Chief Clark came, he created the community engagement team because he saw a need for more outreach and to coordinate all the safety resources that we have here at the department,” Juarez said. “When he created the community engagement team, the idea was, ‘How do we engage and build relationships with the students, faculty, and staff, besides just the patrol officers that we have?’” 

Dillon Gherna, CET’s community engagement liaison, said one of the team’s priorities is maintaining an open avenue of communication between students, community members and UMPD, with the hope of assuring students that they can turn to the police for assistance whenever necessary.

“Sometimes I think people don’t feel comfortable necessarily approaching law enforcement with questions, so we have a unique team where we’re able to engage in an educational manner to answer those questions and provide resources,” Gherna said. 

Educational efforts by CET include self-defense workshops aimed at empowering students to take agency over their safety, campus safety resource presentations at parent and student orientations and by-request presentations covering topics such as active threat training, crime prevention and personal safety, according to their website.

In an attempt to address the concerns of student populations whose unique needs often go unaddressed in general public safety presentations, this semester CET added an international graduate student intern to their team in partnership with International Student and Scholar Services.

Nithya Murikinati, an international graduate student from India, was hired by CET to be an ambassador for the safety concerns and needs of the University’s international student population.

According to Murikinati, international students often have different safety concerns and relationships to law enforcement than students from the United States, many of which can be unintentionally overlooked during safety presentations aimed at incoming first-year or transfer students.

Murikinati said one major area of safety concerns CET is hoping to address for international students is confusion around U.S. rules and regulations on driving. 

“I didn’t know how to read half of the signs here,” Murikinati said on the difficulties of learning to drive in the U.S. coming from India.

Although she joked about the lighthearted confusions that come with the territory of being an international student studying in a new country, Murikinati pointed out that sometimes misconceptions can lead to potentially harmful misunderstandings.

“I’ve heard stories where some international students didn’t know that you have to stay in the car and wait for the police officer to reach you,” Murikinati said. “So they get out and it gets a little bit uncomfortable because they didn’t know.”

One of the ways CET has addressed this safety information gap, according to Murikinati, is by adding a driving safety presentation to the canvas module offered to international students coming to the University. 

While community outreach efforts serve to bridge gaps between law enforcement and the public, in some instances individuals may feel underserved or misunderstood, particularly concerning sensitive topics such as mental health. 

Student interactions with law enforcement are not always positive. , Leah Meyer, a University first-year student, recently faced challenges when seeking support from law enforcement during a mental health crisis.

In the fall semester, when her roommate was experiencing a mental health crisis, Meyer said she felt compelled to contact outside help and called 911. 

In response to this call, two UMPD officers were sent to the scene, according to Meyer. After calling for backup in the form of three additional officers, her roommate ended up in handcuffs. 

“I don’t know why there wasn’t some sort of person who was trained in mental health and not just police,” Meyer said. “When I imagine a mental health crisis, I imagine a medical professional being the person to begin that interaction and not a police officer.”

Meyer added there is a need for increased funding for mental health resources outside of police. She said improving police training in that area or allocating more funds to ensure people receive the support they need is essential and should be prioritized. 

“Knowing what police are trained to do, it is to handle the aftermath of crimes,” Meyer said. “I think that when they entered the space, that is the headspace that they went in with. Instead of saying, ‘This person needs our help and we are going to help her,’ they went in with the mindset of, ‘This is a criminal and we need to detain her.’”

According to Meyer, the most important step forward in improving law enforcement’s approach to similar scenarios would be having trained personnel available to address mental health crises within the University setting. She said that in a hypothetical situation where she needed to call 911 again for someone experiencing a mental health crisis, responders should be trained to prioritize assistance over treating the situation as a crime scene.

Although after this incident Meyer said she does not feel she will ever be able to fully trust law enforcement again, positive community outreach such as CET’s self-defense workshops and prioritization of mental health sensitivity training would make strides towards regaining trust that may have been lost during negative experiences.

“If focusing on community engagement doesn’t take away from other resources, I think it’s a positive thing to talk face-to-face with [law enforcement] not in a high-stress environment, it can be positive,” Meyer said.

For some students and their parents, CET is a welcome point of contact to address seemingly unheard complaints. 

Two years ago, Erin Brumm, a parent of a University student and a board member of the Campus Safety Coalition, co-founded the organization with five others. The board now includes three additional parents of University students, a graduate student and a professor.

According to Brumm, several of the now-board members met at a University parent safety meeting. After realizing all of them felt like their safety concerns were not being taken seriously by UMPD, they decided to start a 501(c)(3) organization to give legitimacy to their concerns.

“All of us were feeling like we weren’t heard,” Brumm said. “When you have a big enough group of people that aren’t being heard, obviously you have to mobilize to make one voice.”

Brumm said CET is working to form and maintain relationships with not only University students but also other community members.

“They’re working with the students at the U and the leadership at the U, but they are out in the community having those discussions as well,” Brumm said.

According to Brumm, community outreach provides students easier access to safety procedures and information, which benefits everyone in the University community.

“If you have engaged students, informed students, that benefits the community, 100%,” Brumm said.

The University of Minnesota’s boot camps, offered through the College of Continuing and Professional Studies (CCAPS) in partnership with the online learning platform edX, started a new session of classes on Monday.

The boot camp programs were launched at the University with a general web development program in 2017. In Fall 2021, the program expanded to include five different specialized programs including a digital marketing boot camp. 

The digital marketing boot camp is an 18-week part-time program that aims to equip students with fundamental industry skills and a professional certification, according to its website. 

In a 2021 study, Gallup found one year after graduation, the median salary for the 4,000 edX boot camp graduates surveyed was $11,000 higher than when they were attending boot camp. Of the graduates employed full-time both years, median salaries rose from approximately $59,000 during the boot camp to $70,000 after boot camp. 

“In the face of a global tech talent shortage, edX boot camps bring great non-profit universities and employers to the table to give thousands of working adults from all over the world the skills and tools they need to succeed in the digital economy,” an edX 2U spokesperson said in an email statement to The Minnesota Daily. 

CCAPS director Ryan Torma said while digital marketing is an expanding field with many degree and certification programs, the University’s boot camps distinguish themselves by prioritizing a balance between affordability, time and skill expansion.

The program is continuously expanding, according to Torma. It doubled in size from 50 graduating students in the 2021-22 academic year to 105 the following year. 

According to Torma, course instructors are typically working professionals with extensive experience in the field.

“We’re really focused on people who have real-world experience in the space,” Torma said.

In an email statement to The Daily, CCAPS said students are encouraged to take advantage of work opportunities by participating in paid micro-internships, either during the program or shortly after graduation.

According to CCAPS, these micro-internships offer students and recent graduates an opportunity to apply their learning, showcase their skills to potential employers and enhance their project portfolios.

Lori Shannon, a digital marketing boot camp instructor, said having over 20 years of experience as a professional in digital marketing helps her keep up with emerging trends in the field, benefitting her students.

“That’s the thing with digital marketing, it is always changing,” Shannon said.” Just because you know how to do something at Google or Facebook now, six months from now, they’re going to make it all different.” 

Although the program does not have time to dive into specialized areas of digital marketing, Shannon said it focuses on providing students with a broad understanding and introductory exposure to a variety of components.

Shannon said the boot camp emphasizes developing skills in website design using platforms like WordPress, ad creation through Google ads and social media marketing strategies.

Each boot camp cohort has its own instructor and TA, according to Shannon. When a section begins, the cohort of students works through a series of online modules guided by an instructor.

Although students in the program come from various backgrounds and experience levels in marketing, Shannon said it is structured to accommodate even those without experience.

“What I really appreciate about these kinds of cohorts is that everybody comes with their own skills and experience,” Shannon said. “It’s so important to learn from each other, I find it really valuable.”

The University of Minnesota is preparing to launch a 12-credit graduate-level certificate program in Sustainable Environmental, Social and Governance (SESG) Leadership next fall to keep up with growing demands for education in sustainability best practices in corporations.

An interdisciplinary program, the certificate was created to ensure students are well-versed in a variety of topics concerning sustainability and climate change. The program was developed in collaboration with the Carlson School of Management, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the Institute on the Environment.

Philip Miller, the assistant dean for the Masters of Business Administration & Master of Science Programs at Carlson, said the SESG certification program’s interdisciplinary University sponsors are key to its success, allowing students to effectively engage with both private and public industries.

“We thought something offered by just the business school or just the public policy school would be missing an important part of the equation,” Miller said. 

According to Miller, the program comes with strong student approval, reflecting the increasing interest in graduate-level courses in sustainability.

Along with the interest expressed by current students, Miller said the certification program is hoping to address the growing demand for professionals to have a comprehensive understanding of environmental issues as they relate to their current profession and career.

The program offers a significant amount of flexibility with both online and in-person courses, according to Miller. The program also allows individuals to customize their learning paths based on their interests, whether in management, finance or public policy, which makes it desirable to professionals already in the workforce.

Jessica Hellmann, executive director of the University’s Institute on the Environment, said the shift in prioritizing sustainability expertise within the workforce mirrors the growing public appreciation for sustainability skills and the heightened significance of environmental concerns.

According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study on the public perception of climate issues, 52% of American adults believe large businesses and corporations can have a significant impact on reducing the effects of climate change.

“It used to be, even like five or 10 years ago, that this kind of activity was limited to the chief sustainability officer or the sustainability part of a company,” Hellmann said. “Now, more and more companies are including sustainability in their human resources because their employees care about sustainability practices of the companies they work for.” 

Because the certificate is targeted at working professionals, the program provides a unique opportunity for the immediate application of sustainability principles in the workplace, according to Hellman.

“What’s really amazing about a program like this is that people can come and gain new knowledge, and because they’re already in the workforce, they can apply that knowledge right away and make a difference,” Hellmann said.

Hellmann’s future aspirations include potentially expanding the certificate program into a master’s program to position the University as a leading institution for sustainability education.

According to Steve Kelley, the director of the Humphrey School’s Master of Public Affairs program, leaders of the SESG program are striving to integrate practical application of skills and knowledge. This includes both hypothetical experiential scenarios and real-world engagement with specific clients.

Students are required to enroll in the introductory course alongside the Change Leadership for Environmental, Social, and Governance Action course, which are both offered at the Humphrey School, according to Kelley. Afterward, students select one of two courses at the Carlson School: Sustainable Supply Chain or Financial Reporting on Sustainability. 

Students will then complete six elective credits, choosing between classes available at the Humphrey School, the Carlson School and one offered through the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering.

The program’s goal is to teach students essential background knowledge on fundamental aspects of sustainable practices, such as carbon accounting and industry standards, and emerging topics that are expected to become more relevant to the industry, like a circular economy.

“The most forward-looking organizations have reached the conclusion that they need to build sustainability into everything they do and that everybody is going to be on the sustainability mission as part of doing their job,” Kelley said. “The opportunity and challenge for the University as a whole is to think about how we can expand sustainability across the whole range of educational opportunities that we provide to students.”

The Plant Growth Facilities on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus encompasses greenhouses, classrooms and labs, provides a venue for research, and serves as the primary classroom space for students in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS).

The University’s horticulture building and greenhouse were built in 1899, making their department one of the first horticulture programs in the United States. Since then, the facilities have expanded with the St. Paul campus now providing over 75,000 square feet of greenhouse space, according to the University’s Department of Horticulture website.

Greenhouse space is available for rent by square foot for University programs, faculty and graduate students, according to Neil Anderson, interim department head and professor of horticultural science. Users pay a fee for access to services such as regular watering, maintenance and utilization of the greenhouse space, Anderson said.

Anderson directs a research program called the Herbaceous Ornamental Breeding Program and teaches three undergraduate horticulture classes. A great advantage for students at the University is to be working and learning alongside researchers in state-of-the-art facilities, Anderson said. 

“There’s always an opportunity that comes along, either working in the facilities that we have, or new improvements that come along,” Anderson said. “Innovations provide endless opportunities for plant science research.”

Occasionally, the research Anderson does overlaps with material in one of his classes, which allows his students to see the intersection between innovation and practical application in real time.

“Students really love hands-on things that are relevant to the profession, especially if it’s something that hasn’t been done before, because that element of discovery makes it really exciting,” Anderson said.

Abby Maatz, a first-year student majoring in plant science, said hands-on experience in the lab portion of her plant propagation class has helped her not only familiarize herself with the profession, but also gain skills useful both in and out of the classroom setting. 

“I have a lot of plants in my dorm room right now, I’ve had a lot of cuttings accidentally come off of them whether I accidentally bump them or something,” Maatz said. “It’s been really nice to actually learn really good propagation techniques because even though I don’t have perlite, I have water.” 

Maatz added that the ability to apply the material learned in the lecture portion of her class to her lab has cultivated her love for the major and solidified her plans for the future.

“My lab, along with my other horticulture class, have helped me figure out what I want to do, and for my career, I’m still unsure obviously, but now I know for sure I want to do something within greenhouse productions or management,” Maatz said.

Classes with a lab component are not the only way undergraduate students can get applied experience in the greenhouses. Leila, a first-year plant science major referenced by her first name for safety reasons, works as a lab technician in the Cereal Disease Laboratory (CDL), which is based in the University’s Plant Growth Facilities.

Coming to the University without having prior experience in research, Leila said she has gained a much deeper understanding of the bigger picture of research from working in the CDL.

“Seeing how [the CDL] interacts with larger research conglomerates in the world versus in the greenhouses is really informative. It helps me understand how research methods are done,” Leila said. 

According to Leila, the involved and collaborative environment of the facility has led to learning opportunities that expand far beyond what she is doing in the lab.

“I just like being able to have a professor or a researcher pop in every once in a while and give an explanation on what you’re doing while you’re doing it,” Leila said. “Hands-on learning is like the most helpful thing, and so it’s a really enjoyable way to learn in comparison to intensive classrooms.”

Ben Clasen, one of the Plant Growth Facilities’ managers, said for students, learning how to navigate the workflow of a large-scale greenhouse facility is as important as learning how to operate equipment.

“You go to the garden center and you see a plant on the shelf that you buy,” Clasen said. “Here students get a chance to see where the soil comes from, the container comes from, and the work that goes into putting that plant on the shelf or putting that plant into the field.”

Clasen added new improvements to the facilities are constantly being made, and there are always upgrades on the horizon to ensure the facilities are as environmentally conscious and updated as they can be.

Recent additions to the facilities include automated irrigation systems to 70% of the facility’s bench space, which reduces time and labor efforts, Clasen said. The facilities replaced 60,000 square feet of acrylic roof that was damaged by hail storms, and a portion of the greenhouses received an upgrade in their climate control software last year.

According to Clasen, future improvements include replacing inefficient lighting in the greenhouses with energy-saving LEDs and continuing to update the climate control system throughout the facilities.

Clasen said the inherent positivity of those involved in horticulture is a big contributor to a positive working environment.

“Plant people are usually happy people,” Clasen said. “When you’re walking around this facility, there’s a lot of engagement, there’s a lot of optimism and there’s a lot of smiles. The work that’s done here is to improve our environment, it’s to improve nutrition for people, that really creates a positive learning environment.” 

Select incoming first-year College of Liberal Arts students at the University of Minnesota are offered a unique opportunity to get first-hand research experience through the Dean’s First-Year Research and Creative Scholars Program (DFRACS).

Students in the DFRACS program are paired with a mentor whose research matches the student’s interests during their first semester. During their second semester, students collaborate with their mentor and occasionally other program members to get first-hand research experience. 

Students work six to 10 hours per week on average, according to the CLA website. Participants receive a $2,000 scholarship and college credit.

According to Jadah Green, the coordinator of DFRACS, the program began in 2008 intending to introduce first-year students to the research community.

The invitation-only program started with 39 student participants during the 2008-09 academic year and grew to 154 student participants during the 2018-19 academic year. There are currently 111 student participants in DFRACS.

Research that participating students can engage in takes on a variety of forms, Green said. Students admitted to the program are often unsure about the nature of the work they will be doing. 

“It doesn’t have to be someone in a lab coat with beakers and explosions,” Green said. “They come in and they think that they’re going to be doing this really rigorous stuff, and it’s sort of like, no, they just need someone to transcribe files, or they need someone to organize data.”

Green added that the more tedious aspects of research are important. 

“Research is consistent details over time. It’s the observation of all of these things over time, and so that can feel like busy work, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not really valuable,” Green said. 

Even students who had not previously considered research, or who changed their career trajectory after the program, can find value in the experience, according to Valeria Lopez, a second-year student studying elementary education at the University.

Lopez was enrolled in the program during her first year at the University. At the time, she was interested in journalism and worked alongside professor Christopher Terry to research Spanish-language political radio ads. 

“I thought that I might need a master’s or to work towards my Ph.D. [to participate in research], but the fact that I could do it as soon as I got to college was really appealing,” Lopez said. “It opened my eyes to the endless opportunities that not only the program offered but opportunities within the University itself.”

Some students in the program have the opportunity to conduct research beyond campus. Cindy Garcia, interim director of dance and an associate professor in theater arts, extended an invitation to her DFRACS mentee to join her and her team on an eight-day residency in Cuba during the 2022-23 academic year. 

During this residency, they conducted research on doll makers specializing in black dolls as part of a broader multimedia collective project titled “Contours,” which explored art and activism in Cuba. 

“In some ways, I forget that they are the students,” Garcia said. “We are all there working together, we can share what our obstacles are. We’ve created this whole social network so that the students feel that they are able to ask, not just me, but the other people that we’re working with, questions.”

Garcia took on another mentee through DFRACS for the 2023-24 academic year to work on the same project. She said a great advantage of the program is the ability for faculty to build relationships with students in their first year, which leads to expanded opportunities for their students’  futures in research.

“The work that I do really asks students to fully immerse themselves in my research and create these relationships, many transnational relationships,” Garcia said. “They now have this multigenerational network of people to connect with.”

Daniel Griffin, an associate professor in geography, was a mentor to three students through the DFRACS program during the 2022-23 academic year. His mentees joined his lab group in developing tree ring data sets, using them to study environmental and climate processes and history.

“I think research engagement and involvement is a really big opportunity that is on the menu for undergraduates at a place like the University of Minnesota,” Griffin said.

While acknowledging that students entering his lab typically have little to no prior experience in the field, he said they can develop a deeper understanding of the scientific process and still enjoy themselves. 

“It’s just really cool to see these students who may not have cared at all really, who didn’t know about what we were doing, to see them learning the process and learning it well enough that they were able to successfully check each other’s work,” Griffin said. “It’s why we work in any context.”