 Let me welcome you welcome everybody to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you here My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the forum's creator. I'm its host I'm its chief cat herder, and I'm hopefully your guide to the next hour of conversation about the future higher education We have a terrific guest this week on a vital topic We in the Future Trends Forum have been exploring what climate change might mean for higher education for a few years And we've been wrapping that up with the intensity as in part the climate crisis ramps up Now we've been doing this from a number of different angles and today There are two angles in particular that I really like to focus in on one of them is what happens to physical campuses How do we rethink everything from our campus buildings and grounds to our planning? And the other is how do we do this for the sense of justice? There's the whole field of climate justice, which is how do we how do we mitigate climate change and how do we? Adapt to it without reproducing all kinds of patterns of injustice and inequity Which brings me to our guest Allison Wilson is a professional architect with Air is St. Gross she's been working with colleges and universities and helping them plan on precisely this issue She is an expert and someone I'm really looking forward to hearing from and I'm really looking forward to the questions that you Can put to her so without any further ado. Let me welcome Allison Wilson Hi there. Hello Greetings. Greetings. How are you? Very well very well. How are you this afternoon? I am doing well. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for joining us I'm really excited to have this conversation with all of you Oh, it's our pleasure. It's our pleasure. Now. You're coming to us from Austin, Texas, right? Yes, I am Where as I noted in the chat broil has been the temperature down here for months, so It'll start to cool down soon. Oh my gosh. Well, there's a there's a near neighbor of yours there I see that. Yes So well, well, we wish you we wish you that wonderful moment in October when a cool breeze Allison we we have a custom here in the forum where we ask people to introduce themselves Not by talking about what they've done, but what you're going to be doing in the next year What are the projects and ideas and just general work that you're looking to for the next 12 months? Yeah, what will I be doing in the next 12 months? So we at Air Synchros work for colleges and universities all over the country And I am privileged to be working on projects that actually do span coast to coast north to southeast to west And so we are working on a variety of higher education buildings specific facilities to support different kinds of pedagogical approaches For you know health sciences and other kinds of programs We're also working on planning for colleges and universities all over the country and then how to integrate Decarbonization into those plans and how to support sort of the achievement of sort of their next level climate goals for these institutions And then what else are we doing? Let's see Finding other collaborators and partners to continue doing this great work with and to kind of continue to help Organizations explore these topics and move them forward into their next generation of planning We say organizations. What's an organization in the sets with up your college? So we we work primarily for mission-driven institutions That's 99% colleges and universities But we also have the privilege of working with people like the Smithsonian bronzu There's sorts of organizations that are really focused on educational missions or education adjacent missions and things like innovation districts Adjacent to college campuses where you sort of have the opportunity to kind of Intersect the higher education sector with private development as well And they kind of incubate some of those technologies and move them forward to market Wow. Wow. Well, this sounds great And when you work with colleges, do you get to travel to them and you know live on campus for a bid or do you work remotely? Yeah, it's a little bit of both And you know, there's no substitute for having the opportunity to really live and experience the culture of our clients There's also no substitute for being able to work from home and work from anywhere So I think for us, we really see everything that we've learned in the past three years Of pandemic and prior to that even It's not a fallback option There are a lot of things about working remotely and engaging remotely that allow us to meet people more equitably when and where they are available And so we think we're going to continue doing all of the hybrid things You know, we want to be on campus We want to see people in their Spaces and how they use them and how they work with them We also know that we can do a lot of good with way less carbon impact and way less time impact by doing some of those things remotely so we're going to continue continue to do both Oh Excellent excellent. Oh I have so many questions Where do you want to start? I'm gonna ask one maybe two questions, but then I want to get out of the way and open the floor for everybody So my my first question is when When I talk to a college or university and I also do work with some cultural heritage organizations That's primarily colleges universities They often ask me about the physical campus in a very Practical material way, but you know, what kind of standards should we think about when we renovate a building? You know, what should we do about the solar power? Should we try to find an outsource power supply, but they rarely ask it ask me about this in terms of justice You know, they'll say well, we're gonna outsource our power to somebody else. Okay, that's great. It's great But I rarely hear it pitched in the sense of of social justice How what have you seen of campus is doing that and and what would you recommend they do to start thinking about climate justice? Yeah As an architect, this is probably a little bit shooting myself in the foot for what I do for a living But why space or why that space? You know colleges and universities have many many buildings that they are operating as existing facilities in any given year Are those facilities being run well? Are they being used to the great extent of their practicality? Is their utilization any good? And at the same time, you know are the programs Evolving are the needs of the students evolving is that are the things we need to be teaching students changing in such a way as to Require different kinds of learning environments different kinds of experiences that we can provide And so does that you know? Demand a different kind of space or a different kind of learning environment And then how do you meet that? Can you meet that with your existing facilities? Can you renovate your existing facilities or change them to meet that need? Or do you truly need a new construction project in order to meet that need? And so I think for me it goes back to why space in the first place if you're gonna start talking about Social justice and social equity and physical space assets Why do you need the space in the first place because it's only there if there's a need? And we should talk about that first to make sure we understand why we're building what we're building And then we can start to manage the impacts of that decision So we start off by thinking about academic buildings and rethinking them And then asking them how they fit into this is great. This is really really powerful How do we how do we connect that kind of thought with town-gown relations? You know with campuses that have physical connections as well social and cultural connections with the immediate community Yeah, I think I mean and right like again, I'm an architect. I'm guilty of this as anybody We tend to draw really nice cute little lines around a campus or around a city or around a state Mother Nature doesn't care, right? Those are all completely arbitrary human-made lines. I don't mean anything to the planet So I think in that way Recognizing that your campus even though those are potentially the properties that you control or the ones that you have Sort of a vested interest in maintaining and operating You are not an island no no college or university is an island Indochina is an island for that matter and and really what happens at those intersections is sometimes where some of the most exciting things can happen Both from sort of an equity perspective as well as just sort of a development You know, you get the sort of intersection of sort of more traditionally 18 to 24 college-age students with People who live and work in the community who you know are really Involved in other kinds of life and I think that that richness is kind of something to get excited about It is it is but at the same time we have all kinds of ways in which we can either produce Injustice and inequity and how we interact with a local community or we can Support and enhance injustice and that's already there a local community and how can we how can we avoid doing that? Yeah, I mean I think it For better and for worse for worse and for better probably It tends to be more symptomatic in urban institutions where you have a really high Wealth disparity potentially between an institution and it's surrounding immediately surrounding context I think in those cases, it's honestly even more important that the college or university isn't an isolated precinct And you know, like the whole big wall with a fence around it kind of thing Just enhances that division and creates a place where you know Someone is an other right? You don't belong here and that has sort of projected in the physical environment And that reinforces I think a lot of the cultural things that we're all hoping to evolve away from So there are some real physical choices that can be made about a campus environment as those choices are being Evolved, you know advancing in campus planning and in physical development I don't if I told you this a certain institution, which I won't name 15 years ago built an elaborate replica of their campus in Second Life and I mean incredibly meticulous down to like, you know bushes and cars did all this and they Carefully did not reproduce the town that they were in at any way I mean it was it was yeah, it was it was very very carefully done All right, I said I would ask questions and get out of the way But with a with a heroic effort I'm gonna turn to everybody else's questions because all your questions are much more interesting here Here here here's a comment and a question from Don Clark, but it's gonna be it's gonna appear in two steps So I'm gonna play once so you can see it and then I'll follow up with the second one He says Enrollments has been falling for over a decade online learning has become a common place remote working board common Occupancy rates in campus buildings are famously low energy crisis and costs are high So we've got that and then he concludes or he then turns that into a question by asking why build any buildings at all They're totally unsustainable pulling them down may be a better sustainability strategy So if you were worried Allison about seeming like a bad architect, you know, here's how I Mean and I think there are a fair number of institutions that we're working with That are seeing those sorts of declining enrollments that are trying to understand what do you reinvest in? What does it look like even if you are increasing enrollment to have no new net assignable square footage on your campus? What does that look like right? What you know, there are institutions or there are programs that are growing at many institutions So you know it just happens in different places, but it is sort of that disparity of some Institutions are shrinking some individual programs are growing even if the individual Enrollment of the institution of the whole is declining And just that sort of you know, it's a dynamic system, right? Like there is no one-size-fits-all answer to that But in that space like you do have to start to ask that question of why are we building in the first place? And is is a building the right solution to our challenge or is it a different kind of relationship with our registrar? Is there a way that you know if we're if if an institution is going to be forced into making a poor financial Decision to face an immediate need is there a way that online? Could bridge a gap for a period of time until a more appropriate financial investment could be made right instead of doing a sort of smaller-scale episodic Interventions that kind of leave fragmented facilities What would happen if you know? We started to think how could you plan for a hybrid for or or online for you know a semester or a year? In order to bridge a gap in order to then comprehensively renovate something and it does that alleviate need for swing space Does that provide a different kind of opportunity? Does it allow Equipment to get to a more reasonable replacement cycle where you're not trying to overcome different kinds of Financial barriers because equipment is at its renewal cycle anyway So I think there are just more dynamic ways of thinking about the questions And you know certainly the last couple years of pandemic I think has increased the toolbox of things that we all have gotten comfortable with How can we use that as we head into this next decade and beyond to help us make better decisions? Both about our physical environments and also recognizing that you know not everything can be done remotely, right? Like I primarily work remotely, but like I miss people. I'm an extrovert by nature. I miss people I need people, you know, I mean there's a number of my colleagues honestly both from Air St. Gross and beyond They're on this call and I'm seeing them like oh, I miss you guys. I'm like, you know and physically being in the same space There's no substitute for that So I think there's some there's a there's got to be a happy medium there And I think you know obviously the pandemic forced us to swing the pendulum way to one direction And I think the question is what is the right amount to swing it back so that we get the best of all worlds? That's a great great thoughtful answer Also, I like the way that it comes from a planning perspective Friends if you're new to the form that's an example of Question that comes in through the Q&A box Now we have a question coming in from Bart Trudeau who is doing this in video. So let me show you a video question Here we go Hello Bart, how are you doing? Hello? Brian I'll try not to take over the rest of the hour because I feel like I could talk to Allison for all of that And be very quick. First of all Speaking of people that we miss Adam Gross dear friend miss him terribly. I'm not sure if he's retired yet, but Well, please tell him I said hi My I have two questions. I'm gonna do this quick first is we we work in campus living facilities and One of the things that we're Encountering is students that Are just not engaged in the whole concept of Sustainability environmental justice they recognize it as a good value but You know when it comes to making personal sacrifice Turning off lights simple things, you know thermostats Plug-in devices that type of thing really difficult to get people to think about how long their shower is, right? So I would say those are not unique to college students. I would have everybody Totally agree. I totally agree But you know, we are trying to get them in engaged and and thinking about this You know, we just the conscientiousness of it. So be very interested in your thoughts on that second question And I start there before I because otherwise You know I Think about it now of all of the things I do as an adult now That I learned at 18 because I moved into a dorm room and I didn't know any better, right? Like you're you're becoming an adult You're figuring out how to live independent from your parents or at least that's where I was when I started college, right? I'm like, what does this even mean? And I think that provides a really unique opportunity in Student life facilities specifically And so I think it is really really important that student life facilities are high performance buildings that do have, you know Strategies because those are things that you you know, you train somebody at 18 about what this looks like as an adult And they take it with them forever And for us, I know a lot of our projects a high performance building does a lot of things to save energy But people use energy buildings only use them you only use energy to serve whatever Someone has programmed it to do or flip the switch to make it do, right? And so I think for us we like to integrate a lot of that sort of educational Programming into the building as well and Sometimes that's you know engagement with graphic design programs You know, we have an in-house graphic design studio that does a lot of signage and educational sort of like Here's how you're expected to use this building and because you know, if it's very different going from living in your home Or your apartment that you grow up in to all of a sudden living in that kind of a multifamily, you know High-rise building in my case at least was a high-rise building in double occupancy traditional rooms, you know That's a very different thing, right? So like you have to teach somebody how to use the building Otherwise they aren't gonna necessarily leverage all the things it can do or learn all of the lessons that that environment can provide them And then I think beyond that we've actually had a lot of really great opportunities to train RAs so we were doing a sustainability plan with Texas A&M and Their RAs came to us and we're like, you know, I wish I had a set of Guidelines that I knew what to even tell my residents who I am supposed to be teaching and serving and guiding, you know And so one of the outcomes for our planning project with them was actually a series of like 11 by 17 You could print them on, you know, a regular like Copier in somebody's dorm room, right printer in somebody's dorm room if people still have those I have never owned a printer But you but you could just do that, right? And then they could put them up on on the bulletin boards throughout the halls and Regardless of what dorm you lived in at A&M You got the same messaging about what you were supposed to learn And I think that's something too of like the scale of the communications being consistent across an entire campus community Does a lot for teaching trainable repeatable behaviors in that campus community. Those are great ideas Yeah, we just did SUNY's first that zero ready student residents and I'll share some of those ideas with the director of housing out there too because they're looking at, you know, LLCs and such to just Raise the conscientiousness in the students. These are tech students too, which tend to be, you know, least conscientious about energy usage Brian, may I? You may, but my price is a terrible one If there's any story that you can share about that SUNY that SUNY construction Fling it in the chat box when you're done with your question. Oh happy to happy to absolutely Yeah, in fact, we just did a post occupancy evaluation and I'll offer to send that to anyone who's interested We have a whole document about the process and we'll share that with with everyone. Please do. That'd be great Now go ahead ask your second question So I'm having a having a conversation with my nephew who's a marine biologist and professor And and he brought to my attention a young philosopher's name is William mcaskill Okay, interesting article about him published by npr and so he's got this concept of Doing no harm, right? So if we think of architecture and planning design everything in this concept of doing no harm his time frame by the way is do no harm in a trillion years Literally that's his time frame. Okay So big concept, right? How you know, what crazy thoughts would might you have About how a conscientiousness such as that could be incorporated into planning and design Yeah, that's a really what do you even begin? so Not only colleges and universities, but when we like the construction of a building is a radical act, right? You are defining an environment that you are by definitions is saying is going to be unsustainable because it is going to live forever Whatever forever means certainly probably not the trillion years But you know when you can go back millennia and still find Pyramids and adobe brick, you know foundations for buildings and things like what we do is humans is build structures that last a really long time And that are meant to have that kind of longevity, right? That's inherently unsustainable Um, I think at some point you start to think about what does it mean to design for deconstruction? What does it mean to be able to disassemble something? And that gets back to sort of ideas about a monstrous hybrid of how do you stop building monstrous hybrids where you can't disconnect the components? In such a way to get useful materials back out Um, that's a harder question But I think that's really where the the state of the industry is right now is really how do we How do we get to a point where it's not just about construction waste to minimization and construction waste diversion? And you know crumbling up old bricks to become aggregate and whatever new thing or whatnot But how do we really think about like what does it look like for you know? colleges and universities that have relatively specific building stocks of We build classical georgian brick buildings. We build out of this particular kind of granite that is you know from our region Whatever, what does it mean to deconstruct a building when it is? No longer Suiting its purpose and it's no longer serving the institution. And what does it look like to stockpile that? What does it look like to put that material away? I mean many institutions struggle not only with the construction material side of it But even with like the physical assets of not every college or university has a surplus property office You know on the same day at some institutions you can watch new whiteboards coming in and old whiteboards getting sent to the landfill That's that's weird, right? so I think there are all kinds of pieces for for that sort of durable goods both durable construction goods and durable assets, you know furniture, etc that It's about designing the systems that are going to allow that material to process more circularly Circularly yeah through our Through our economies and through our environments. Yeah Are you? Is it a shout out to the circular economy idea? That is a definitely a hashtag circular economy make that happen Before they show us really correctly Bart that's a great question. We're gonna need to bring you we need to have other people with questions But we're I need to yes, absolutely Brian you've been very generous Allison. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bart If friends if you're new to the forum now, that's an example of a video question So again, if you want to join us and ask a question like Bart just did click the raise hand button If you want to ask a q&a box question like Donald Clark just did just click that You know that question mark button then you'll be able to and you can tell Allison is extremely kind As well as visionary We have also we have several questions already in the in the queue and I want to give people a chance to to ask them This is one from Himesh and let me bring it up On a general campus scale, how do you divide and conquer? I think he is within the sustainable side to design the campus What does the process look like individual roles and what's your role in everything? Oh boy, so Himesh used to work with me. Um, so hi and thank you for throwing me a good one Um You know, I think it is The job of the architect and the planner to go back and forth between scales I actually think that's one of the reasons I have always worked at my firm is that we have both planners and architects Um and people who work at kind of that macro scale of thinking and that micro scale I think it comes nobody can know it all and nobody can solve any of these questions alone And so I think for me it comes down to building a team of diverse thinkers Who recognize, you know, you may have your specialists who think very precisely at a micro scale And have that kind of expertise of knowing, you know, an inch wide but a mile deep on science labs, right specific Or an inch deep and a mile wide on athletics facilities Awesome And then you also need the people who are really really good generalists who can understand how to weave together the threads of that specialized expertise to Come to develop that comprehensive piece that allows you to have both the depth and breadth Of response to the kinds of challenges that we're being asked to solve Um, as far as what my role in that is, um, I'm a really good generalist. Um, I do have Specialized expertise is related to sustainability. I am licensed as an architect. So I do have, you know, some amount of Expertise in that as a silo, you know in in its own right um, but more than anything, I think my my superpower if I can speak for myself is Being able to thread all of those together and being able to be a really good listener of what does everybody else know? And how do we get all of those different pieces to sing together? In one song as opposed to sort of all of this discordant music that doesn't really Result in something that is comprehensive and that can be um visionary, you know, I mean Especially at a planning scale You're trying to you're trying to make something that's implementable and actionable But you're also trying to make something that outlives the administration that wrote it, right? One of the biggest ways an institution can struggle is that A lot of energy and effort goes into the production of a something doesn't matter what? I don't care if it's a sustainability plan a physical campus master plan a strategic plan whatever But you spend a lot of energy and effort and you get a lot of momentum built up behind something and then It doesn't have the buy-in or it hasn't had the engagement and you lose some critical player or players And that document just dies on the vine and that work dies on the vine And it doesn't result in that kind of implementation and actionable progress And then you go back to the drawing board and you do the whole process over again And nobody likes that, right? Everybody wants to kind of feel like you're making Headway that you're getting progress somewhere. So I think for me, that's the biggest piece that my role is is really helping helping different people with different priorities across the campus Understand where the intersections of the things they care about are And helping them understand how they can get further faster building those kinds of collaborative coalitions to move things forward As opposed to sort of working in their own little bubble And then letting somebody else work in their own little bubble because they're not necessarily capitalizing on the synergies They might realize together Wow, what a great answer Alison, I love the way that you gave such a very thoughtful political in a very practical sense Response Himesh Patel. Thank you for the great great question Um, we have more questions. They're just coming at us. So I'm like Usually I have to encourage people in here. They're just coming out of the woodwork. This is great Um, so this is coming to us right here, uh from Bill Heinrich and and bill asks Oops, excuse me. Hang on one second. Let me press the correct button Bill says how much do you get to advise on physical designs for pedagogies that are equity enhancing like high impact practices And the learning needs flexibility and to do so at scale Yeah, uh, it depends Which I know is an unsatisfying response But um, I think some college and university communities are more receptive to change than others I mean, that's every community, right regardless of whether you're higher ed or not I believe she's on the phone. If you haven't met Shannon Dowling yet, go meet Shannon Dowling Shannon really, um in our firm is that deep-seated expertise related to learning environments. Um, and she Um helps people to sort of explore the range of what's possible Um, and I think that's sort of starting with that that big lens of knowing what's out there And then sort of what kinds of hybrids could be built out of what's out there Um, then let's you at least start from a place where all of the options are on the table And then you can start thinking about what's practical or what's actionable in a particular college or university environment Um, but I think you have to sort of you have to start with a full set of possibilities A full range of possibilities instead of sort of a priori deciding like it has to be this It has to be that Um, which I will say I think, um gets back a little bit to how does an institution write an rfp for something Right. So like, you know, we don't just like go get I mean sometimes we just get hired, right? But that's something that's unique to private institutions. Um, and even then most private institutions will put something out to an rfp Um, if an institution's rfp has already defined thou shalt develop acts Um, a lot of decisions have already been made, right? And if you're coming in as the architect You're trying to respond to the question that has been posed by your owner If you're at a planning scale, it's actually I think it's actually a little bit more fun because you're you're trying to to frame what those projects Future projects could be And so I think it's important in that planning stage to to think about that, you know to think through What does it look like not only to develop what we think we want today? But what we could imagine Would be useful tomorrow or in the decade to come, you know, I mean if you're going to construct a building It's god willing going to be here for the next hundred or more years, right? Like that's a lot to try to think about when the pace of change is as rapid as it is in today's world Wow, what a fantastic answer Um, thank you. Thank you, Alison. Uh bill were a really good question We have we have more questions coming up, and I want to make sure that we uh, actually, uh bill actually, um Okay, he raised his hand and came back. Uh, we have one That comes a full a similar line. I think from uh from david hul and uh, let me bring this up david asks For your work and within the western and male dominated field of architecture What can be learned from architecture of the global south and other marginalized cultures that can be used in this work? um I'm thinking about this because I I have some hesitation so architecture and and construction cultures that have developed in other parts of the world Are unique to those parts of the world, and it's certainly not that we shouldn't Learn from them and borrow from them. We absolutely should we also should be very careful not to exploit the things that have worked in other cultures And assume that they will work in our own because The context of that bill environment may or may not actually have alignment with the people who are going to use the facilities We construct So that's a first piece of it. Um that said I think there's a lot to be learned from Uh, not necessarily the you know global south or marginalized communities um Like by that definition, but by under resource communities If you are under resource you are inherently forced to be sustainable because you don't have anything to waste Right the most sustainable person. I know is my grandmother who lives in rural west virginia By the fact that there is not stuff to waste in rural west virginia You make it work, right with what you have and you get inventive and you get creative because of that um, and I think Learning from that aspect of it of what if you you know, what if it wasn't a problem You could throw more money at what if it wasn't something that you know What if the the answer wasn't just make it bigger better faster stronger? What if it was thinking about the the problem a little bit more? A little bit more of the why right and that goes back to like the why build in the first place Why are we doing this? um, and so I think thinking through those sorts of efficiencies and that sort of material conservation from kind of the outset Is potentially one of the biggest translatable lessons from Less developed building cultures Is really about that efficiency and that that regional contextuality that um, you know The privilege of having mechanical systems and the privilege of having access to cheap energy and cheap water in many places Let's us get away from um, but what happens when that stops what happens when we are More resource poor than we are today. What happens with that? How are we resilient to those changes? I was wondering if you're gonna if you're gonna hit that point I I that's a that's a really really important one when Uh, you know, you think about just one of the many many side effects of the climate crisis is a An economy that takes a hit and maybe because of of transformed economies You know due to decarbonization or due to weather damage or due to a social decision to say Growth or degrowth or other side effects including, you know, a political chaos or uncertainty, but Having to learn how to make do with less What a what a great question and all of a sudden what a wouldn't epic answer Yeah, and and I would say like I don't think that inherently means like scarcity and deprivation. I think it means just Shifts in cultural attitude toward what does richness look like, you know I mean like really and truly the only thing you can't get back is your time So how are we investing our own individual time and is it in things that we? See value in you know, um, how are we how are we doing that? So I think it's a translation and I think generally as well There are variations in that right like there is absolutely the class of Higher education professionals and professionals in all disciplines, right? Like higher ed is not unique in that We're having the corner office with the two windows is like you have arrived. You have made it, right? Um, I could care less if I have an office and I would argue that many of my peers of my generation feel similarly Like I don't care. I want my freedom and I want my autonomy to be and do what I want to do when I want to do it That's a different that that has a different kind of built implication than the arrival being I have an office with two corner windows, right? Um, and there are different kind of resource consumption pieces that go with that so I think it's something too where You know, those are sort of two kind of different ends of the spectrum and certainly not, you know, total generalizations of an entire generation, but um, there are outliers everywhere, right, but um, you know How might that continue to evolve? I mean the question was brought up earlier about how do you engage College students who may or may not care in these sorts of resource conservation behaviors? um Again that happens in all generations. Um, but also, uh, how is that likely to continue to evolve? You know, how do you help some of those students who have had kind of a rough couple of years going through some of these major life milestones And not having a lot of the traditional experiences that go with coming of age How do you help them feel less despair more hopeful that that there's something out there waiting for them? You know, we hear about declining birth rates and whatnot like yeah, I'd be scared too, man Like, you know, if you don't know that the world that your children are going to be born into is going to exist for the entirety of their lifetime Like that's a scary proposition So it's it's definitely one to think through Uh, to sort of more, you know, both both sort of generally and specifically What does that mean in in various communities and how does that impact our built environments and our built cultures? Well, I congratulate you on that rich answer and also handling the delicate politics very carefully um In the in the chat the chat's been on fire We've we've had quite a few comments and uh don clark mentioned colonial academics Have helped ruin the european higher education by bringing lots and lots of lecture classes there We have another Braised hand and this is bill hindrick who I think wants to follow up on where he was before So let's bill bring up. Let's bring bill up rather Hello bill Hello, brian. I Hi, alison. Alison. I was going to ask if you had any of those training guides that you Produced for the ras if you have those for faculty you want to use those new classrooms that you built Yeah, um, I'd be happy to point you to um Yeah, I'd be happy to point you to to sort of the the models we but I mean We built them very specifically for a and m so like But but they're a good model I think to look at for just like how might you use some of that kind of information and make it I think it does need to be institutionally specific like um I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve a little bit for a and i'm here, but uh A and m has a very strong culture like they know exactly who they are And and you know, that's a big part of the identity And so a lot of our communications with them related to sustainability. We're helping to align how those How like a sustainability focused ethos and who Aggies are to begin with are one in the same, right? And I would say it could be the same at any institution like what are those critical defining factors of what it means to be You know for me, I graduated from the university of Maryland. What does it mean to be a tarp? What are those defining characteristics that make me part of that community and how can I Find that uh embed in that alignment between, you know Conservation behaviors and sort of the things that are kind of culturally there anyway And how do you kind of get that one diagram to work? Thank you. Yeah, I'd be happy to share Bill thank you, uh, this sound great and uh, I just love this idea of building in climate justice and climate sensitivity into a campus identity And we have some campuses that have done that for a bit, but to see that go widespread I think would be very very important. We have a question from uh, chris moret And and chris asks whoops, I'm sorry Let me actually ask the question movie uh our design and construction decisions that create unnecessary emissions based on indifference or lack of awareness And then how might that guide or approach to carbon reduction? Yeah, um Good question. I don't think it's indifference. I think it and I don't think it's Maybe it's lack of awareness in some populations. I have a hard time You know, I was I was listening to the radio and I was hearing somebody talk about carbon neutrality And it was just like a regular like top 40 radio station Um, and so I was like rock on like we have made it guys Um, so I have a hard time believing it's lack of awareness because it feels like these topics show up a lot of places Um, even though I I know I run in kind of specific circles where it's more common. Um, but um I think it's just sort of a I don't think it's that people don't care. I think it's that they care about something else more Or there's something else that is more critically tied to their accountability and reporting structures That they feel more beholden to so as a case in point, um, is any college or university administrator faculty member, etc Accountable to the carbon emissions associated with their facility. Is that something that the dean is responsible to as a factor? Probably not at like most institutions if not all Um, but if it's not part of your accountability structure, what is your drive to do it other than the fact that you know Your institution may or may not have A directive that says we're going to achieve carbon neutrality What is your drive to do it other than? In the goodness of your heart, you know, it's the right thing to be doing. Um That's hard, right? What do you do when you know a former? When an alumni comes to you and says I want to donate x number of millions of dollars And it has to go to this because I want my name on a building Okay, that's a lot of relationships to manage and to navigate So I don't think it's indifference. I don't think it's lack of awareness I think it's the reality that any of these kinds of decisions related to the built environment are It is a political act to build something It is a cultural act to build something and the management of all of those competing factors Is really hard. Um, and even people who are trying to do their best in this space Trip up, you know, because it it's very difficult to find that needle in the haystack Of making the best decision that keeps everybody happy and achieving what they What they perceive they want Sounds like the best outcome would be everybody being kind of dissatisfied and compromised Yeah, I mean Yeah, I don't know. I like I hate compromise too and just in that sense because like you said, right like nobody's happy, you know um, and it seems like there's got to be a better way, but I think it really does start with with, um Slowing down and more conversation. Um, you know, that gets back to some environmental justice topics as well Who wins when we rush, right? There's a clear somebody wins when we rush and it's usually not people who are marginalized And it's usually not people who are under resourced. It's usually people who have time who have flexibility who have money um and so if if there's a way to Decelerate some of the things that we're doing I would hazard a guess we could probably make a lot better decisions because we would be a little bit more thoughtful about them Um, we would be a little bit more mindful of the full suite of the consequences and impacts of our choices Wow, that's uh It sounds like you're you're sketching out a kind of cultural critique and local critique along with this Um along those lines. Let me let me bring up our good friend. Uh, tom hams. He has a he has a question And then bring up on stage here Tom you're back in houston back in the blue room Yeah back in the blue room wore the blue shirt and just and just all right all right. Well, yeah the occasion so, um The one thing I think you know when we talk about sustainability and access and all of these things they all come together around How can we lower barriers to access to educational institutions? um, and I've done a lot of work on on, uh, different approaches to integrating technology with with physical learning spaces as a way of of Making that easier But I wanted to know if you had thoughts about How you approach, you know, what we call blended learning the idea that We meet the students where they are when they need to meet remotely we meet remotely We meet when we need to meet on a physical space that we need to be meet in a physical space The importance of informal learning and support structures, especially for those students who are first-time college students and who don't know the game And or adapting to that and are often excluded because they can't adapt to that and they end up getting churn chewed up and spit out the other side um But i'm wondering how do you do is how do you how do you approach this from a design perspective? yeah, um I'd say so this is probably going to be a dissatisfying answer I approached it less from a design side and more from a life decision side I honestly like if we expect students to have To succeed when they get to higher education. It's not about getting in. It's about graduating, right? You know, there are many many many students who matriculate and then Whether their first generation students or not then don't finish and then the value of that investment isn't fully realized for the rest of their professional endeavors Right, so that's problem number one, which systemically you could start to change if you started to think about different kinds of learning modalities in not in like a Not all learning requires a four-year commitment to achieve a certain level of mastery, right? And I know there are many places where you have associate's degrees. That's a two-year commitment Okay, again, not everybody has a two-year commitment. Like what does it look like to sort of chunk it up differently, right? I think the other question though becomes more and this gets back to brian What you were saying about like that town gown relationship like What does it look like for? higher ed to partner more closely with k through 12 as well so that the student pool period is More readily prepared for what's going to be available to them In college, whether that's community colleges, you know, four-year institutions, you know, elite institutions, whatever And so I think for me, that's where like mentorship programs in High school become really important and even earlier than that one of the programs that I will absolutely shout out and pitch for Is the ace mentor program? This is a you know, becoming an architect becoming an engineer becoming a contractor like a professional contractor These are all really time intensive money intensive endeavors And one of the things that ace does is help high school students explore these careers and understand In working with professionals, whether these are things they actually want to spend their time energy talent money investing in learning more of and becoming in the professional world And so I think there's something to be that too of you know for For for students that we believe are college bound or higher education bound or Future training bound right even if that's trade school and other sorts of things Like there are other ways to make a difference in this world And to get the information you need to apply that productively like what does it look like to reach back so that you know The honest doesn't become on colleges and universities to solve every possible problem or every possible Social ill that that a more diverse student body Is could be bringing with them, you know from from all the different walks of life How might it be more of that town-gown relationship where Colleges and universities are an embedded part of this larger educational model that includes other kinds of academic institutions as well Whether they're you know trade programs and other things so that sort of students go through school recognizing how to obtain the skill sets necessary To solve the kinds of problems we need to solve in the world today Um, so I think it's a little bit of a both and and that but like yes There's kind of a design solution for it, but it's also sort of more systemically thinking about how do we Engage up and down the spectrum Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that so but I mean in terms of how would you design a physical campus To support those kinds of activities that you just described. I mean you can you can use space to Constrain structures although structures can create space, but you can use space to to help shape the conversations around Uh, the larger structures to create opportunities for changes, you know, if you build a bunch of classrooms You're you're going to get a lot of you know, if you build a bunch of lecture halls You're going to get a lot of people teaching lectures just because that's what you got right So how do you build a campus that? Encourages a more blended learning a more systemic a more flexible fluid And approachable and diverse approach to our students more individualized. How do you build for that? I mean, I think that becomes about partnerships and centralization, right? I mean, there are some institutions where Uh space is more universally owned by a centralized body that then has the ability to Disperse it in the ways that are you know necessary both for classes as well as for sort of community uses, right? But then if if for example like the the dean like underneath the college or whatever Right, like if it's college by college that they are each build for their space individually What is the impetus to to share to get some of those partnerships to happen to to build those relationships if You as an individual dean are you know because of the way the system is built penalized for having done that, right? So I think there are ways that you you don't necessarily change the space But you change the way the space is managed That would allow the partnerships and those relationships and the activities that we hope could happen on college campuses To be done more seamlessly to to remove some of the barriers to getting those to happen Well tom that's a that was a great pair of questions. Thank you so much and thank you Well, welcome back home. Please say hi to your family for me Alison we're somehow almost at the end of the hour and we've got one question here, which I think is a great one to end on This is from John Hollenbeck and he asks What's we are like he really he says we need a good narrative with a happy ending about this So let me let me turn that into a question. What would be the the optimistic Positive story about climate justice on campus in terms of architecture in the built environment What's what's the rather than just saying we need to buckle down or we need to eat our spinach and be healthier What's what's the most positive story that we can tell that will mobilize people and activities? There are institutions that have done it You know, there are colleges and universities in the united states and beyond that do operate in a way that's carbon neutral I appreciate that's not the same as environmental justice, you know, but There are examples out there of what it looks like to succeed and those may not be universally translatable across all institutions But it does say that success is possible And it does say that progress is possible and that we can get somewhere and and if there's anything to have faith in It's that colleges and universities How's arguably some of the smartest people in the world, right? With all different kinds of expertise and if we could continue these conversations and continue listening with one another I have to believe That the combination of all of that knowledge and all of that expertise and all of the assets that many colleges and universities have To bring to bear to these kinds of problems Will result in the kinds of solutions we want to see. Um, it's it's why I've been working with colleges and universities my entire career because you you know When you care about sustainability and climate change and environmental justice You want owners to have long term assets that they are going to own and operate And that are uniquely motivated to ensure that those operations are efficient And so this is an incredible group of clients to get to serve and to collaborate with in achieving those outcomes And you know colleges and universities do have a role and a responsibility to serve as a model for every other sort of of land owner and land user And you know more than anything else like we can do this. We've shown that we can do this We know how to solve, you know an individual building scale We know how to make a net zero building. We know how to make a building that doesn't combust fossil fuels We know how to do these and solve these problems on smaller scales Now we're just at the really fun exciting part of like, okay, cool Let's do it for all 150 of your buildings across your campus. What does that look like? That's such a possibility, right? And once you've gotten to that 150 buildings on your campus, why stop there? Why not then, you know, keep going like figuring out those town-gown relationships? How how is your institution of power plant for your entire city? I don't know But let's figure those out Let's ask the questions and and explore them and figure it out because I do think there's a lot of rich opportunity there Alison, that's a fantastic answer. Thank you. Thank you I think we're all going to be working on developing the story and doing it by the actual practice of doing this actual work What's the best way to keep up with you and your own work Alison? Should we just go to the the website? I'll put my email address in the chat And Sorry, I always misspell this. Okay That's me. Please stay in touch. You know, there are I'm happy to be a resource for anyone Whether, you know, it's an individual issue that you're thinking about on your campus Whether you want to get your students fired up about something like this and you just want somebody to talk about it I'm happy to engage and really participate and and problems all alongside with all of you I think that's really this sort of intersection of different disciplines and ideas is how we're all going to move forward together Well, I really hope so. Um, I I have to run myself. We're past into the hour. Alison. Thank you so much Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. We'll bring you back. Take care. Take care Don't leave yet. Uh, I know this is a rich topic and as uh Bart just said in the in chat, we could talk about this for quite some time. Um, please do Uh, use the hashtag ftte if you want to keep talking about this on twitter or tweet at me or at shindig events I've been blogging about this topic at bryanallexander.org. Please, please head over there We'd love to keep talking about this if you want to look at our previous sessions Go to time url.com slash f t f archive for those If you'd like to look ahead to our upcoming sessions, just go to forum that future of education that us If you'd like to share your own work, like for example, Bart mentioned that story about that SUNY polytechnic school Please just shoot me a note and I'd be glad to share that with anybody else In the meantime, thank you all for coming together and thinking about these incredibly important conversations Thank you for your questions for your thoughts Please keep up this kind of thinking of work in the meantime Take care everybody as summer starts to come to an end. Be safe. Be cool and we'll see you next time online Bye. Bye