February 19, 2021

Guest Futurist: Vanessa Mason on the Future of Belonging

February 19th we were joined by a futurist colleague from the Institute for the Future, Vanessa Mason. You can visit her website here. Vanessa’s work crosses many topic areas, but she specializes in the “future of belonging.” Laura was thrilled to have her speak at her social work futures group last week and reports "she blew us all away". You are in for a treat. Vanessa really stretches thinking about what belonging means now and how it is evolving. Here’s a link to her slides. It was really lively and inspiring and gave us all a lot to think about. Following her session, we also spent some time learning about the PSU campus equity agenda and exploring the ways in which futures thinking can best support the goals and activities in these spaces throughout our shared work.

More . . .

New diversity. Striving for prestige. Limited money. Meet the ‘broke’ research universities. Here’s a link to the new book mentioned in the article: Broke: The racial consequences of underfunding public higher education.

New report from Chronicle of Higher Ed - The Trends Report 2021

• The Great Contraction

• For Town and Gown - a Pandemic Pressure Test

• The Surveilled Student

• The Shrinking of Scholarly Ranks

• The Antiracist University

Pandemic privatisation in higher ed: Edtech and university reform (Thanks Sheila!)

Framework for Intergenerational Fairness (from Portugal - stretch our thinking way beyond the “now.”)

The deadly mix of individual responsibility and racial capitalism

The future history of America and the world to 2050 (Group of global futures thinkers got together to move beyond dystopian scenarios and try to plot out a plausible equitable and sustainable future...this is the collection of pieces that came from that effort.)

The future of work will demand these 8 skills

The “Imagination Sundial” - a tool to help us stretch our thinking about what is possible. (Does it sometime seem like there is too much bad news? Creative tools are needed to reminded us of the power and purpose of our imaginations.)