Most cover letters are boring, formulaic. Applicants are too afraid of offending to risk standing out. And in an era of robot screeners, one can wonder: Do cover letters even matter?

This workshop lays out the roles and goals of a good business letter, and explains why yes, indeed, cover letters do still matter. The session will outline core principles of persuasive writing that will help writers pitch themselves successfully to a range of readers. Through analysis of letters that worked, attendees will come to a new understanding of strategy, and learn to distinguish elegant flourishes from cheap gimmicks. The workshop will demonstrate how applicants can use audience insight to showcase themselves to greatest effect, and offer a framework for taking calculated risks in professional prose.

Presenter:
Edith Updike is managing editor of FundFire, a daily Financial Times publication covering institutional asset management. From 2008 to 2012, she was a full-time lecturer in the master’s degree programs in Strategic Communications and Communications Practice at Columbia University’s School of Continuing Education. She taught business writing, critical thinking, media studies and communications strategy. Updike earned an MS in Journalism at Columbia, and has covered business, politics and social issues for a range of publications from New York Newsday and Business Week to Slate and Travel Journal International. She has served as a consultant on media, communications and management strategy to internet start-ups as well as major companies such as PriceWaterhouse and Honda.

These intensive workshops, reserved for 40 to 48 participants, offer rigorous skill-building in narrative competence. Participants will learn effective techniques for attentive listening, adopting others’ perspectives, accurate representation, and reflective reasoning. Plenary sessions will focus on reconceptualizing empathy, narrative ethics, bearing witness, and illness narratives. Small group seminars will offer firsthand experience in close reading, reflective writing, and autobiographical exercises. Participants will receive a packet of readings prior to the conference that will include seminar articles in the field of narrative medicine by leading educators. You will be working closely and intimately with the founders and leaders in the field of Narrative Medicine and Inter-Professional Education.
For More Information visit:http://narrativemedicine.org

The workshop schedule is as follows:
Friday, February 22, 2012, 2 p.m.-7 p.m.
Saturday, February 23, 2012, 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m.
Sunday, February 24, 2012, 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m.

MY COMA DREAMS tells a true story of love at the dividing line between life and death.  An HIV-positive jazz musician is rushed by his partner to St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. A mild cough has become a massive infection, shutting down every organ in his body. The doctors put him into a medically-induced coma. Over the next two months, he enters a highly personal dream world, full of vivid experiences of confinement and release, of surreal comedy and ineffable beauty. He finds himself in hushed cathedrals; trapped in a cage beside jazz legend Thelonious Monk; careening through the night in a runaway van; dancing the tango in an impossibly luxurious airplane. Meanwhile, his partner fights through panic and despair to try to reach out to him across the gulf of consciousness, while negotiating the real-world complexities of his medical care. MY COMA DREAMS is jazz theater: theater propelled by music, words, song, and images in fluid and ever-changing combinations.

For More Information visit: http://www.mycomadreams.com

There will be two performances of MY COMA DREAMS: times will be announced as soon as they become available.

Narrative Medicine Rounds are lectures, readings, and performances presented by scholars, clinicians, academics, writers, and artists engaged in work at the interface between narrative and health care. Rounds are held on the first Wednesday of each month (September to May) from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm in the Columbia University Medical Center Faculty Club, followed by a reception. Rounds are free and open to the public. Students, staff, faculty, patients, friends, and interested others are warmly welcome to join us.

For More Information visit: http://narrativemedicine.org

You are invited to attend New York City as a Sustainable City, a panel discussion sponsored by the Earth Institute, the Urban and Social Policy Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs, the Master of Public Administration program in Environmental Science and Policy and the M.S. in Sustainability Management, to be held on April 7, 2011, from 5 to 7 pm.

New York City is, to the surprise of many, one of the most energy-efficient places in the United States – the energy consumption and carbon dioxide output of New Yorkers is one-quarter of the national average, and the city is on target to meet a number of sustainability goals in the next 20 years, including planting one million new trees and converting an entire fleet of taxicabs to fuel-efficient vehicles and hybrids. But with close to 20 million people living in the Tri-State area, the continued sustainability of such an environment is still a constant concern.

The panel, moderated by Steve Cohen, Executive Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University and Director, M.S. Sustainability Management, will feature David Bragdon, Director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability for the New York City Mayor’s Office; Cas Holloway, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection; Bill Solecki, Director of the CUNY Institute of Sustainable Cities; and Ester Fuchs, Founder of the Center for Urban Research and Policy and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Participants will discuss both signs of progress and deficiencies in the effort to make New York City a sustainable city, touching on government initiatives in this area as well as the role of the private sector. Though issues of sustainability are being recognized on an increasingly global scale, it is local actions that will likely provide many of the solutions to these large-scale problems. Find out from the panel’s speakers, decision-makers and experts in urban sustainability, how New York City can play a large leadership role in this transformation.

If you have questions about the panel or would like to RSVP, please contact Andrea Schecter at aschecter@ei.columbia.edu or 212-851-0772.

Watch a video of the March 7 panel discussion, Bringing Sustainability into Routine Management Decisions.

This event will be comprised of two panels, a keynote presentation and a cocktail reception. Panels will focus on leadership and innovative sustainability techniques and strategies for solving global issues. The symposium will help sustainability practitioners share best practices and next practices. This forum is also an opportunity to connect current experts with Columbia’s emerging leaders.

Eric Corey Freed, Principal and Founder of OrganicArchitec, is the keynote speaker. He is a renowned architect and author with over 20 years experience in green building. He is considered by many to be a leader in the field of sustainability and speaks nationally about key sustainability issues.

Confirmed panelists include Sarah King, Principal at Green Order; Sam Harrington, Head of Marketing and Communications for Ecovative Design LLC; Greg Hale, Senior Policy Analyst for Market Innovation at the NRDC; Mark Dorfman, Green Chemistry Naturalist and member, Biomimicry Guild Speakers Bureau and Sascha Simon, Head of Advanced Product Planning for Mercedes-Benz USA.

This event is sponsored by the Columbia University Sustainability Management Graduate Student Association, The Earth Institute and The School of Continuing Education.

Tickets are free but space is limited so please register in advance.

The Earth Institute will host a panel discussion on Wednesday, March 23rd in celebration of the publication of Professor Ion Bogdan Vasi’s book Winds of Change: The Environmental Movement and the Global Development of the Wind Energy Industry. Professor Vasi’s research outlines the development of the global wind industry and explains how the environmental movement can help bring about growth in the wind energy field.

Professor Vasi will moderate a panel discussion of his book. Discussants on the panel will be: Albert Bressand, Executive Director of Columbia's Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy, Debra Minkoff, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Barnard College, and Scott Barrett, Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics.

RSVP to Mariel Kessel at msk2156@columbia.edu or 212-854-3142.

Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the Master of Science program in Sustainability Management will host a panel, Bringing Sustainability into Routine Management Decisions, on March 2, 2011.

With the recent focus on the “greening” of the economy and promoting environmentally-friendly business practices, organizations today face sustainability challenges on all fronts. Managers of organizations in both the public and private sector are looking to improve efficiency, use fewer resources and less energy, and produce less waste, all while keeping the bottom line in mind. A balance must be struck between the long-term benefits of developing sustainable business practices and the current mindset of short-term management – managing on a quarterly or annual basis, at best.

The panel, which will feature speakers from both the private and public sectors, will be moderated by Steve Cohen, Executive Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University and Director, M.S. Sustainability Management. The panel’s participants will discuss the current role of sustainability initiatives in business, which range from issues of public perception and preferences to financial issues that require large up-front capital for long-term gain. Learn from experts in a wide range of fields about concepts like green accounting and other ways in which everyday production, operation, and communication within organizations are affected by a transition to sustainable business. While it is easy to imagine that science and technology will engineer solutions to many sustainability problems, it is harder to believe that organizations and businesses can evolve this way as well. How can we facilitate this process?

If you have questions or would like to RSVP, please contact Andrea Schecter at aschecter@ei.columbia.edu or 212-851-0772.