December 11, 2020
PSU Futures Collaboratory Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) Session
with Guest Futurist Dr Sohail Inayatullah
Dr. Sohail Inayatullah is a Pakistani-born Australian academic, futurology researcher and a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies at Tamkang University inTaipei, Taiwan. He is the founder of one of the foundation foresight frameworks Causal Layered Analysis and has been doing a fair amount of work with institutions of higher education recently. You can see a little of his work here, and a recent article that he did specific to post-covidscenarios here. This is truly an honor for us; he is an "elder" in foresight work internationally.
In short, CLA will help us do additional "stretching" of our imaginations to consider not only the superficial and mid-range issues that so worry us and complicate our experience of higher education at this moment in history, but the deeper "myths" and "stories" about our experiences with institutions and their meaning now and for possible futures. CLA has been used around the world and with the UN. Here are two more articles about Causal Layered Analysis that can inform our work. If you’d like, here’s Dr. Inayatullah in action at a recent TED talk.
Look Back to Look Forward
Special thanks to Dr. Judith Ramaley, Mark Wubbold, Raiza Dottin, Patrick Kelley, Sally Mudiamu, Molly Kramer and Sheila Mullooly (soon to be joined by Rossitza Wooster) for helping to dive into our "look back to look forward" project this fall. We will be sharing more about this but had a good first meeting to organize and get clear about how to launch this important step in good futures practice...reviewing, honoring and seeking to understand patterns in our history as a university as we look forward to what is next.
Here are the responses we got to our brief survey: Here’s the link
Here’s where respondents (among us in the collaboratory) believe PSU is MOST future facing:
Sustainability practices and community-based engagement. Determining the resources that we have locally and how we can evolve our practices through local partnerships.
Equity and inclusion work
THE PSU Futures Collaboratory!!
Installation of Zoom technology in classrooms all around campus that will allow students to take classes from home in the future when classes are happening on campus.
Focusing on making remote learning and working, and socializing, as efficient as possible.
Our work to build a common set of values, language and shared mission on the kind of future PSU we want to build together and how that will relate to the world we live in.
A leadership team in place that support innovations from students, faculty, and staff
Here’s where respondents believe PSU is LEAST future facing:
Program Prioritization = death spiral
Enact austerity measures that weaken the university
Inclusive practices are slow going but this will change. More focus needed on student agency, voices, and data to determine gaps and areas for growth.
The handling of the university budget
I often think our ideas of disciplines and what is necessary to teach get in the way of us imaging a new world of knowledge.
Focusing on "getting back to normal" and returning everyone to on campus work/learning. The time when the vast majority of PSU employees/students are on campus every day has passed, and we waste time trying to get back to something that didn't even work that well in the first place.
Our lack of connections between important work of the university - we don't have good (enough for this time in history) systems to manage the complexity and I fear important things get lost.
Disincentives for building learning experiences that span disciplines
Interesting and thoughtful responses!! Much more to discover and share as we deepen our practice together and think about how we co-create the future PSU we most want. As this list grows, we’ll have more to reflect and think about together!
As always, here’s a few more notes from a weekly scan of futures/future of higher ed literature. There are some really thoughtful pieces in here this week.
New Social Work Health Futures Fellows selected at PSU - Announcement this week!
AMA recognizes racism as a public health issue
Technologies for liberation report
Hit by covid-19, colleges do the unthinkable and cut tenure
What an anti-racist business strategy looks like
How to fix America (thoughtful list from NYT this past week - proposals for the future!)
Columbia students threaten to withhold tuition and fees amid covid-19 protest