Abstract:

What happens when a public university decides to construct a cross-disciplinary, cross-functional initiative to explore the future, build capacity to be more “future ready” and resilient, and serve as a resource for the university and broader community to help them do the same? This article presents a case study of a “Futures Collaboratory” launched at a Pacific Northwest public, urban university in the 2019 to 2020 academic year. The three intersecting goals of the effort were to: explore and cultivate interest and capacity among interested individuals across campus; develop institution-wide “foresightfulness” as a collective; and end the year in a position to make thoughtful, creative, and well-reasoned recommendations about being more future-facing as a university. The dual pandemics of Covid-19 and white supremacy proved to deepen the commitment to learn and practice futures thinking. A primary goal was to ensure that the university would benefit from efforts to democratize foresight activities while taking practical steps to navigate our own systemic volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. This article discusses the effort, early work, disruptions, and risks during the Collaboratory’s first year, as well as the emergent reflections, opportunities, and recommendations prepared for university leadership. Special attention is paid to the consideration of equity and social justice in the future of higher education and the tools and resources needed by the sector to build liberatory futures.

Keywords: futurism, foresight, university, systems change, planning

Abstract: The  following  is  a  review,  participant-voiced  poetic  inquiry,  and  commentary on  the  article,  “Art  and  Documentaries  in  Climate  Communication:  Experiencing  the Reality  of  Climate  Change  and  Leading  the  Way  to  Change.”  Liselotte  Roosen  and Christian  Klockner  (2020)  published  this  case  study  as  part  of  a  more  extensive research  project,  Climart,  funded  by  the  Norwegian  Research  Council.  In  this  review,  I consider  the  relationships  between  artworks,  researchers,  and  audience  participants.  I offer a participant-voiced poetic inquiry of the arts-based research project. I address the project’s  goals  for  social/political/cultural  change,  its  local  and  global  contexts,  and future implications. 

Abstract to dissertation:

Our institutional approaches to problems in the changing global landscape of internationalized higher education are being challenged, and many scholars call for new approaches for understanding and addressing the complex problems we face (e.g., Patel, 2016; la paperson, 2017; Lee, 2021; Stein, 2019; Stein, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the need to make changes in how we approach our evolving problems and possibilities for human-centric transformation. This multi-paper dissertation is a call to action and proposes the use of new approaches to research and educational practice—specifically, critical futures studies (see Equity Futures (Brown, 2017; IFTF, 2019)) and arts-based research (see  Barone & Eisner, 2012; Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008). Design justice principles and participatory action approaches frame and motivate these possibilities. Foresights frameworks and arts-based approaches are considered in papers 1 and 2, respectively. In paper 3, this multi-paper dissertation outlines four futures-facing, arts-based, participatory methodologies that could be used in international higher education (IHE) and other educational settings to amplify student voices: design futures (Costanza-Chock, 2020; IFTF, 2021), scenario building (Dator, 1998), ethnographic experiential futures (EXF) (Candy & Kornet, 2017), and poetic inquiry (Prendergast, 2009; Reilly, 2013). The IHE Design Futures Framework I propose is outlined in paper 3 and toolkits intended for use in IHE are included. These participatory, critical, and creative methodologies are a form of jargon-free, open-access, public scholarship. They could help us re-envision and re-learn how we engage with internationalized HE in a post-COVID world by amplifying transnational, multilingual voices through design justice principles in order to re-imagine globalized HE as otherwise.