 All right. Well, I am at the top of the hour. So let's begin. Let me welcome everyone. Welcome to an experimental issue or edition or version of the Future Transform. I'm delighted to see so many of you here today. We're trying an interesting experiment that I think will be very productive. We'll learn a lot from and build upon it later on. Now let me introduce our unusual project today. Our goal here is to do a work of design. We're going to try to read this. Think about how to redesign higher education for the age of the climate crisis. That is, as global warming continues to have manifold effects, everything for extreme weather that we've been talking about, the economic side effects, political side effects, changes to our biomes and all of that. How can we change higher education? Now, in order to think about this, what I'd like to do is to evoke the idea of solar punk design. Now, let me just explain what that is and then I'll show you what our plans are for today. My goal here is to have us be as creative as we possibly can be. Now, solar punk is an interesting design school. I'm just curious. In the chat, if you could say how many of you have heard of this? How many of you have not heard of this? Just say, yes, I've heard of it. No, I haven't heard of it. Yes, yes, no. It is, of course, very familiar. Elizabeth has read solar punk fiction. Awesome. Well, Elizabeth, we have at least one star of solar punk fiction here in the crowd. No. Thank you, Deborah. Glad to do a little bit of that. John Hardley. Mark, awesome. All right. Excellent. Phoebe Wagner, by the way, is there. And Phoebe is the editor of several collections of solar punk fiction. Well, what is it? Let me explain. Let me explain. What we're going to do here is I'm going to quickly explain this. And then we're going to do a couple of sessions of small group work using Shindig technology to grapple with what it means to redesign higher education in a couple of ways. I'll show you. And then we'll get back together and share what we've learned. Solar punk is a design movement and a storytelling school. It's based on trying to imagine a positive future for the climate crisis. And that is, consider work like this. This is a famous, famous illustration by an artist, Chinese artist called Imperial Boy. And look at the way this whole city looks similar yet different to what we have now. It's brightly lit. You have colorful panels and colorful flags. But you also have a lot of greenery. You have trees, in fact, growing up and down the sides of walls. You can see water throughout, including a canal through this. And the overall feeling, I think, is one of growth, one of comfort, and one of just optimism. Now, the word itself is a fun one. The word solar here suggests renewable energies, obviously like solar power, but also I think a kind of positive, emotionally warm vibe. It also has that punk aspect of rebellion, of descent or a kind of DIY kind of attitude towards making stuff and improvising stuff. Now, some more ideas and themes that come up in this. And if you have things you want to add in the chat, please, please feel free to. One of them is a focus on climate adaptation and mitigation. So the designs, the stories, the games, they try to account for what the world looks like as it changes, as we adapt to climate change, but also as we try and mitigate climate change. It involves technology, but in an interesting way, what people used to call appropriate technology. That is, it's not Luddite nor is it blazingly high-tech, but it uses whatever technology actually fits at the time. And there's a strong emphasis on sustainability, rather than on, say, growth or collapse. There are more themes, too. One of them is the design, the dying principle of biofilia, and that is including as much life as possible and imitating life in ones of design. It's the interior to buildings, having more green, more water, more sounds of animal life, for example. Solar punk is also very global in inspiration. That is, I mean, you can find one of the great collections that comes from Brazil. You can find art from multiple continents, but also it tends to assume a kind of globalized society culturally, where people tend to combine and remix many different influences. There's also a strong theme of social justice and equity, which we'll see in a minute. And there's also an emphasis on preparing nature, that we have the growth of nature, but not the crazed growth of modern economics, but sustainable growth and also making good on previous damages. I just curious, in the chat, does this make sense so far? Does this sound sane, reasonable? Okay, good. Good, good, good. I came to this because some of you know I've been working for several years now on climate change, and on a daily basis that confronts one with grimness, with despair, with horror. And I found that that's not unreasonable, quite the opposite. But that solar punk was a kind of antidote, was a way of thinking creatively and positively. And you can find many examples of this. In fact, let me try something. Let me try something fun here. I'm going to actually share my screen. I'm going to show you a very, very short clip. This was designed as an ad, but it actually gives a really, really interesting take on how this might all work. So here, hang on one second. Let me get this going here. Okay, can you all see this? Oops, oops. I'm not going to play that right now. It's not, my browser is fighting with it, so I'm not going to show you that. What I am going to do is offer you some more further visuals. This is here, an example of AI-created art when I asked you to imagine the solar punk campus. And you can see a lot of greenery, a lot of trees, a lot of solar panels, and a lot of open space. This is not your typical campus that we see in higher education view books, for example. Now what I'd like you to think about is the changes in the whole system of a college or university if we take solar punk seriously. I'm just a few details to put up here thinking about food systems, recruitment of students, building design, power supply, governance, research, student life, pedagogy curriculum, preservation of artistic and intellectual materials, public intellectuals, financing, reputation. I think solar punk gives us a way to rethink the whole system. And in order to do that, I want to get you started. So what I'd like you to think about right now altogether is this prompt. And I want you to respond altogether, everybody together at once, use the chat box and also feel free to join me on stage by clicking the raised hand or just type in the question mark. And here's the prompt. At the institution where you currently work, imagine that fossil fuel prices rise by a factor of 10. That is, instead of $4 a gallon, gas is $40 a gallon. The reason for this has to do with a complex series of factors. One is politics and war. Another is politics and local economies and policies where people are imposing a carbon tax. Another is natural disasters. But the net effect is at your college or university and in the surrounding area, the prices of fossil fuels have risen by 10 times. So the question I pose to you is, what solar punk responses do you have access to? How can you respond to this crisis in the solar punk way? Now, throw your thoughts in the chat. Again, there are no wrong answers here. This is a design exercise. I want to make sure that your mind feels free to explore and questions will come up as you think about this. You can put those in there, too. And as you're thinking, if you'd like more, by the way, bottom left of the screen, you see that tan-colored lozenge that says, introduction to the solar punk. It's holding my blog posts. Let me just click on that and then I'll give you some more things to chill on. Okay, so people who've already cut loose in the chat. Vivian Forsman, so good to see you, Vivian. It says, a rapid shift to renewables and electronic vehicles. Very good. Elizabeth Merritt, Elizabeth, so good to see you. She says, pretending that she's at Arizona State University, Phoenix, not actually there. One response is, you've left the schedule. All classes activity are scheduled for the evening and early morning. Midday, building HVAC is allowed to warm. This is very, very smart. You know, taking care of what's available and trying to minimize costs. Charles Finley says, EV transit to campus. Charles, thank you for shuttles, that kind of thing. We have Justin says, public transportation would finally seem reasonable. Yes, yes, that has grown out. I think, good point, good point. And Kenan, Kenan, so Lidero says, we need to focus on localism, making in place communities. Say more about that, Kenan. Do you think that being less travel or more local work? If you could just say a bit more about that. Again, if you want to join us on stage, please just click, you know, click the join button. Right here, let me just quickly fix the screen a bit so you're a bit more welcoming. Mark says, bartering for energy or materials. Yes, now what would the campus have to offer for trade? David Stone says, subsidies for energy conversion within the institution and within the community. Oh, great, great point. I'd love to hear more about that. What a great idea. And then we have still more coming in. People are just on fire with this. Joseph mentions small scale hydropower. Really, really good point. We can have low head hydro in ponds and rivers. Very, very good. We have Shirley Rosengarten. Or sorry, Shelby Rosengarten. Hello, Shelby. Somewhere transport related. I can also see us trying to experiment with teaching food cultivation. Excellent point, excellent point. Mark rushes, he'd like to work more, which he can do. He's close to the campus. But the student population be affected because they all must drive. We have no public transportation. Again, good, good point. That's a challenge. That's a challenge we can respond to. Deborah says that we should use electric vehicles more charging stations on campus. Good idea. Students have been asking for those for more than eight years or so. Good campus for that. Or a good student body. We also have, we have great weather. This is from Lisa Berry. Hello, Lisa. We have great weather. So e-bikes is one solution. Cost of food is more difficult. Yes. And Diane, I don't want to say deutersteb. That's not quite right. Deuterhoft. We could use, wait a second. This chat box is on fire right now. This is great. In fact, this is a lot more than I can repeat back to all of you. Oh, this is fantastic. Central, let's see. Oh my gosh. There's so many comments here. This is more than I can keep up with. Oh, very, very nice. Friends, just a quick, quick question. Would you mind if I blog this with you anonymized? This is so rich. I don't want to lose track of it. I don't want to lose track of it. Food cultivation because resources for shipping are less attainable. Less travel. Velomobiles. Practical pedal cars. Oh, Nicholas. Good call. And travel by train, renewable energy, solar lights, solar panels, bikes in clothes for making energy. Mark wants to transfer resources to finishing Arcosanti in Arizona. Very nice. Mike offers us the point of people are stationary. Knowledge is portable. Elizabeth wants more construction underground using the thermal insulation of earth and rock. Ruben wants us to modify existing buildings to incorporate living walls that reduce our limit they need for AC. Good point. Good point. Kathleen agrees with food cultivation. Organic gardens in the campus. And says kinetic energy. Using less energy. Good point. John wants the whole house model. John, can you throw in a link for that quickly? That's a really, really good one. Mark Rush says there's a problem. Many small liberal arts colleges are far from public transportation or airports. How to address the cost of attendance? Maybe online is the answer there. Paris Lopez has asked students to help design. Yes. Excellent. Excellent idea. Okay. This is fantastic. It sounds like we've tapped into a major, major issue with lots and lots of interest. Terry B says that you can't find Wesson. Sorry, Terry. Quickly refresh this page. See if that makes a difference. And let me know when you come back. And then Mark Rush asks a really good point. Let me put this on the window for everyone to see. Would folk advocate for more local regional recruitment to decrease the cost of recruiting in attendance? And is diversity sustainable? Powerful question, sir. This is a man who has experience of being a dean. Very, very good. International programs are distinctive for us, says a person at Dickinson College. We'll have to return to full year and reduce the short term abroad programs. We have a carbon neutral cable car. Kathleen, where is that on campus? Cable car into the buses. Elizabeth recommends gyms or workout rooms. Oh, this is great. This is great. Okay. Let me pause this for one second because this is fantastic. There's actually more. John, thanks for saying that link. And Nicholas, thanks for the vellumobiles link. Oh, and Kathleen, in British Columbia, that would be awesome to see. I know how many hills that town has. Ruben mentions, as institutions, we should be investing in helping all citizens understand what climate change means to them, the impact and to engage with them. Robin, I'm going to come back to you in just a couple of minutes because I think we've got something good here. You're onto something very, very important. All right. What I'd like you to do now is we're going to try something a little different. We're going to try something that we haven't done before. And this is, we're going to ask you to break into groups. And the idea here is to get you to think about first what your campus would look like, your physical campus as it's redesigned along these solar punk lines. So here, let me just make sure that this is bigger so you can see it all. Think about the whole physical range of your campus, everything from food systems to offices to campus IT to the physical grounds to transportation. And what I'd like you to do is talk with each other for five minutes. And in those five minutes, come up with some ideas as to how you could redesign that campus for the climate crisis. Again, for those physical aspects of the building, the campus itself. Now, let's fire up the groups and let's see how this can play out. I'm going to put you into groups of about four people each. Make that five people each. And you will be able to talk with each other and you will be able to come up with some ideas. And then in five minutes, we'll come back and we'll get a chance to compare notes. Let's go. So let's quickly go around and let's hear from different people. Let's hear from different groups. What did you find? What are some of the ideas that you came up with as you got a chance to talk? So in order to do that, just one of you in your group, just click the raised hand button and I can beam you up on stage so we can all talk. Roxanne, I'm glad to hear it. I'm glad to hear it. Well, any group with you is definitely a fun group. Okay. We have Mathieu Ploet. Let me bring Mathieu up on stage. Bonjour, mon ami. Bonjour. Why not? I'm going to bring the ice. So basically some of the things that we talked about, we talked about using solar panels to create shaded areas like on top of parking lots or whatever, try as much as possible to generate power and also create shade in certain areas. Nice. One of the other things that I talked about was the idea of putting those solar panels or whatever to create shade on top of the wet lens. If you have like some sort of little creek or whatever on campus or something, you don't want that water to evaporate. You want to be able to conserve water so that could have the double effect of generating power and conserving water in some ways. Some of the other things we talked about was the idea that, of course, remote becomes the standard. You don't want like Wendy was talking about her experience in Toronto when students are coming from 200 kilometers on both sides and that just imposing that the commute to students doesn't make any sense at all. And since lodging is so expensive in some of these metro areas, there's got to be a way to actually create lodging for students. Either closer to campus or go fully remote or find hybrid solutions or whatever. Some of the other things were I was thinking of building in the ground. We have a lot of tunnels so we could build underground and bunkerize the campus so that it's isolated from what's happening outside as much as possible. So if there's a reason for that, then bringing back the idea of the space for students since there's like a office space like debacle, it seems like a lot of office spaces are getting vacated by big companies and there's going to be a crisis there so that could be reassigned as lodging or temporary lodging for people to live closer to whatever the cluster for learning is and that could be temporary or that could be full-time lodging or whatever. Anyway, I don't know if I missed anything. I didn't take any notes but we were talking and it's just yeah that's what you want. For five minutes you guys were a dynamo of energy. Who was your group with you? Hold on, well I don't see the names anymore but I don't even remember. We didn't even take the time to introduce ourselves to be honest. Well that's a design issue and I wanted this to be quick and I didn't and so maybe I should add more time for that. Well here's the stage for a second, I want to bring we have other people who have their hands raised and one of them is the always we have, whoops, actually there were several oh great and let me bring up Ashley Shantz. Hello. Hello, good afternoon. I was in a group with Mark from CSU and I'm joining you from Hopkins. We started with this question of why are we redesigning the same campus? Because the campus are so expansive, they take up so much space and by nature is not sustainable. So then we started playing around with what could they look like and in five minutes went to a vision of well we have these intentional communities that have modeled some ways of living for us and what if we integrate the ways of living through intentional communities with how we learn and with our educational systems and then that way they are they can be smaller, they can be redesigned with natural materials and then become a part of the learning curriculum because everyone has a responsibility to contribute to the community and sustain it in some way and then that way we know our students are getting some tangible skills that they are developing and able to graduate and go often build more sustainable spaces and more sustainable lives after graduation. Oh wow, that's fantastic. Another really really rich discussion from your group. Thank you, thank you and you're outside right now which I think is completely appropriate. I'll keep you on stage for a minute more and is it chance or chance? Chance, you are right. Very good, very good. I said with a French accent which is totally wrong. Here let me bring in another person. We have Terry B coming to us from Calgary. Terry are you are you all okay with the fires? Yeah here in Calgary it's on the other side of the mountains for the most part so we're doing fine although we do see some of the smoke so much destruction though everywhere all over the world. It's all just gone mad. Hi I'm Terry Balser from University of Calgary Treaty 7 territory. What really struck me about the conversation we had was actually not just thinking about the physical infrastructure and the physical plant but the idea of solar punking the governance of the university so that we could get decisions made in a different way and actually move forward on some things where the trustees could not be listening to what the campus community wants that really struck me as important and interesting what would solar punking the governance look like? What a great phrase because solar punking campus governance I don't think I've ever heard anyone put those words together in that order that's brilliant. It just occurred to me in that way of thinking about the idea that you said a punk and slightly rebellious and that maybe was a listenary. Indeed, indeed I mean I think that's part of the appeal of the term. Terry this is great can I keep the three of you on stage for another minute? Because we have another group that has raised we have more people with their hands up and one of them is actually in Malta. Let me make sure that I get Philip before he has to go to sleep. Hello Philip Hello sir. He might be having bandwidth issues. Philip can you hear us? The audio has gone rather quiet coming from your end. You might want to just reload your screener. Okay I can hear that clearly, thanks. Our group reflected on the fact that the exception of one member whose college has actually decided to do away with sustainability which I think is a uniquely American problem that there are people who still think that this isn't a problem but I think the thing which really came over to us is that the opportunities exist already for us to certainly sort out the way that students travel, the way we travel and the way that we use our buildings in energy efficient ways and that the thought I really wanted to share was that as colleges we're sorting these things out internally when actually we have a great opportunity Phil I think your audio just hung up. Phil you're having some connection issues let me see if I can get you if I can use to reload the screen and come on back but this is an important point Phil makes about getting off campus participation which I think is something that people are all very keen on and we have one more this is our good friend Roxanne Riskin Roxanne what did your group come up with? Well I had a wonderful discussion with Matt with Ed and Krista and basically what Matt said and Terry and Krista we were kind of like agreeing with decentralizing the campus and having more of that hybrid high flex learning environment my idea was also looking at the freshman and the senior class what can they do in the solar punk kind of style to maybe not live on campus and have a different cyber punk experience that isn't on campus at all so we're sustaining their lives and they're bringing it into their community where they may not live they may live off campus at their university or college also I mentioned cyber punking in your own office in your own place and space what would you do? You started with something something simple keep it simple start with yourself what can you do right now name three things you could bring plants and you could bring a little waterfall and you could just have that well-being in your own mental and physical environment and I also was thinking that mentioned at his university this is on campus get rid of the bookstore put in a consignment shop and have clothing and used items that students either borrow or share and Matt Ed Web already mentioned that his campus does that and it started with the LGBT community doing it and promoting it first and it was sustainable there recycling items recycling assets and clothing and what else did we talk about I don't know and I think I don't know that was it that's a lot you kind of touched on the rest of it for us thank you so much well thank you Roxanne and thank you everybody just if I could just ask you really really quickly were you able to get talking with each other and your ribs okay? okay very very good and Roxanne your point about having biophilia in one's office clearly where I am right now is the anti-example of that we want to be like where Ashley is right now I think as much as possible well thank you all for reporting back thank you all for all this group work let me just give you a break for a second and say that was the first step thinking about all of this in terms of the physical campus now I want to come back to a point that a couple of you have already touched on and this is the second one I would like you to think more about the campus think of it as a campus software think about the campus as an institution not the physical aspect and again I have another schematic here designed not a literal map but this is one designed just to help spur you thinking a bit and a few of you have already hit on this already some of you have mentioned town-gown relations but think about the research enterprise think about both pedagogy and curriculum for teaching think about the staff the different populations on campus students, staff, faculty think about all the different ways that you can redesign the institution as it functions if we are just talking about hardware before think about the software now how can we redesign this in a kind of center-punk way what I mentioned the first prompt about prices going up 10 times think about what other impacts that climate brings think about how it changes the flora and fauna around you think about what this does in terms of the politics around your area think about the susceptibility to natural disasters but also about your institution's role in the larger world if you happen to be in a safe location from disasters what role do you play with everybody else so what I would like you to do oh gosh, we'll do this in five minutes now you all know each other you've been in these groups take five minutes and think about how you redesign in a solar-punk way your campus's operations your day-to-day living your institution itself the software if you will not the hardware I'll leave this on screen for inspiration and I'll try and pop between different groups to say hi five minutes we're back everybody I got to check in on one group that was brilliant but let's start reporting back raise your hand click the raise hand button if you'd like to join us on stage and tell us what your group came up with as you thought about the institution and how to rethink that and how to rethink the software if you will about how a campus works again we have this kind of schematic map here you're thinking about what changes happen with different populations different organizations different ways that the institution operates and to lead things off oops, hang on a second we're actually risking jumps right in I did I'm sorry that's great I don't know if I did or not well now you have to I do we were talking about having it top down and starting with the administration first and then making a collective agreement with different maybe departments and faculty and bringing students up or maybe having that interaction with students and faculty having I don't know we called it a strike or having some kind of really empowering movement in a positive way that would shift it forward and really make a significant impact we talked about that 10 times being important and just an incremental step I see maybe putting like a thermometer on the campus and just showing having a visual of what we're doing and where we're doing it nice that sounds great what a good group you have thank you stay with us stay with us on stage for a minute more let's hear from everybody else we have Robyn let me see if I can pull up Robyn and yeah hi hello I'm joining from the unceded territories of the Coastal Salish Peoples here in Victoria in Canada and I guess a lot of our conversation is centered on for one our universities or colleges or anything position to they are inherently hierarchical they're inherently patriarchal they're inherently many things that are not going to address this issue and we need a transformative pedagogy and as other members in the group said we have models for that transformative pedagogy having learning in community and having extension learning and really saying how we are doing things is not actually you can't I go back to the feminist trope you can't solve the problem with the same tools that created the problem and we keep trying to do that incremental change okay that's great why not do that but if we keep looking to that kind of incremental change to address as much deeper larger issue and so we talked about I'm not probably capturing everything the group talked about and somebody else from the group jump in here but I think this transformative pedagogy that really up ends what these institutions are so that sounds fantastic on the pedagogical side and also the revolutionary side it sounds like both Robin and Roxanne that both of your groups were all about radically redesigning higher education excellent excellent we have more raised hands if I could ask you Robin to stay with us for a minute on stage we have John Hollenbeck coming to us John I hope you're in safe air conditioning oh we're fine they actually essentially turn our air conditioning down here in the progressive Midwest so I'm fine we agree totally with what Robin was saying about solving the problem with current tools I introduced one of my talking points what would education look like if we developed it from scratch with today's tools we're not dealing with a problem of information scarcity we're not dealing with a problem of information exclusivity and so I think it's not a radical redesign it's a complete rethinking of education we get that from the so called splitter groups like feminism and equity and all that but in reality it's a need that everyone has the other thing we just touched on briefly is talking about do we should we go to like mega institutions that people would log into directly and I pointed out there was a shirt of a small series of campuses that was closed artificially it actually took education into the community and it was too expensive and so they were closed and merged with local universities and that did not work very well so I think that whole problem of size the amount of online learning and all that but to me it just keeps coming back to what's the local need and how can we rethink our university to the realities we're in right now and the challenges we're in right now wow wow so for all three of your groups again this this prompt gives you radical answers of really rethinking and either just massively overhauling or starting from scratch well I call this the future transform right that's that's what we call ourselves this is fantastic friends the only fear I have is that we are almost out of time so we have busted through this hour really really quickly first of all John, Robin, Roxanne thank you for representing your groups everybody else if you want to share some of your thoughts about your group in the chat please feel free to so we're going to capture that and use that in a blog post after this let me put this here just really really quickly trying to wrap all of this up this is almost too much to summarize right now it's going to take me some time to go through all of our discussion and to try to write a good report about this Diane, yes, I'm going to share the chat I'm going to anonymize it and do a little bit of editing to organize it and to pull out major major themes that come from it but also going to try and summarize everything that came from our video discussions just really quickly how did this work for you as an experiment was this a good way to think together and to brainstorm and to pull out ideas is there anything you'd like to do differently or do this again? good change of pace, thank you very useful, yes Shelby I'm glad your mic got working again that's very good I'm really glad you like this thank you Elizabeth says creating a way to give it authority and recognition to non-economic support for advancing sustainability yeah, Elizabeth that's only we need to do a lot more of and oh I'm glad I'm glad this is really positive I'm glad this worked for everybody I'm especially grateful that all of you took the time to contribute so much in a risky hour of putting yourselves out there and trying something brand new in the interest of time and respecting everybody's schedules thank you all every session I end by wrapping up by pointing to where we're headed next and one of them is if you want to keep talking about this not using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house can solar punk help with this and so on just hit us up on twitter or master done use the hashtag FTE we're glad to hear more from you about this if you want to pilfer and explore our previous discussions about these issues you can find our entire archive at just go to tinyurl.com slash FTF archive if you'd like to look at our sessions coming up just go to the Future Transforms website and we have some links coming up there if you'd like to look at the AI angle which has come a couple of times you can find my sub stack AI and academia that's substack.com thank you all avail very very much for this I'm going to write this up and share it I think this has been an absolute delight the way this points to an optimistic productive really really rewarding way forward hope everyone stays well and we'll see you next time online thank you again bye bye