THE PSU FUTURES COLLABORATORY – YEAR END REPORT 2020-2021

Laura Nissen, PSU Futures Collaboratory Lead

Presidential Futures Fellow

Professor, School of Social Work

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June 2021

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THE PURPOSE/FOCUS OF THE FUTURES COLLABORATORY

• To build capacity to think beyond the “trap” of short-term thinking
• To help individuals be ambassadors for longer-term thinking and advocacy, and to help our institution benefit from a workforce that is committed to long-term well-being and effectiveness
• To consider, play with and apply futures thinking skills to real world challenges at PSU
• To consider how whiteness and “dominant culture” worldview has inhibited and limited our sense of possibilities, and the courageous actions we must take to be an anti-racist university
• To strengthen relational networks across all aspects of the PSU community in this process
• To deepen our collective intelligence, imagination and agility as we deepen our ability to consider the unintended consequences of different courses of action, and imagine more possibilities than we might have been conditioned to consider

IMPORTANT

• Futures thinking doesn’t fix things – it simply grows more ways to look at old problems and come at them in new ways

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• Can definitely refresh our imaginations, help us come at “stuck places” with new perspectives and engage people…if seriousness, earnestness and linear thinking could have fixed everything it would have by now

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• Changing our system – evolving our university on purpose is still hard hard work

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• You can meet the 2020-2021 cohort of Futures Collaboratory Fellows here.

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CONSIDER THE BASICS IN OUR ECOSYSTEM

• What is futures thinking/practice?
• What does the future ”mean” and when does it start?
• Are we ready for it?
• Who decides what the future should be?
• The “parts” of PSU and the “whole” of PSU – what is our target?
• What parts of PSU are most future-ready and which are least?
• What is our appetite for real change? (Where are adjustments appropriate, where is rethinking appropriate?)
• Building community/building capacity
• Doing all of this in a strange, disrupted and contested year (of exhaustion)

WHAT IS AROUND THE NEXT CORNER AND ARE WE READY? �WHAT DOES BEING FUTURE READY AT THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY MEAN?

THE FUTURE OF POWER

Hierarchies vs Networks

Types of Networks

OUR EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS AS A COLLABORATORY FROM 2019-2020

From a paper we submitted to the World Futures Forum journal re: case study of the PSU Futures Collaboratory – special edition on the future of higher education.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS FROM LAST YEAR – FIVE CATEGORIES

1. Our mission – include future readiness as part of our intentional and explicit mission
2. Our structures – break down barriers, look forward, increase structural agility to encourage innovation
3. Our equity lens – elevate our equity work as a core element of future readiness and our central role as a university
4. Our pedagogy (teaching, learning and advising) practices – encourage intentional evolution as a community
5. Our community – more creative dialogue with our community partners about our role in Portland’s (and the region’s) civic ecosystem

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• Final report to President Percy
• Final report to PSU Faculty Senate

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MAREE CONWAY

Our challenge this year (especially this year) is to not get lost/distracted in the common question “how do we survive (as a university)?” Rather, our task is to ask the broader, bigger and more expansive question: “WHAT DOES THE FUTURE NEED FROM US?”

WHAT WE DID THIS YEAR – 2020-2021

• Deeper dive with foresight tools: Look back to look forward
• Deeper dive with foresight tools: Causal layered analysis
• Experts on the future of digital economies and their impact on the world, the future of belonging, Afrofuturism and its power in our ecosystem.
• Future of work series with various experts nationally, locally and offering a PSU response to our efforts and a look forward.
• Focused conversations: Future of faculty roles, future of space use on campus, future of affordability at PSU, and future of strategy-setting and strategic planning for PSU
• Assistance with numerous other planning conversations on campus – schools/colleges, transitions, ReImagine PSU, and others

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LOOK BACK-LOOK FORWARD

• As we consider “where we need to go next” there is value in pausing to consider how we’ve dealt with challenges in the past.
• What patterns appear?
• What lessons can we take away?
• What strengths must we build on?
• What traps (of our own making) would be wise to intentionally avoid?

LOOK BACK LESSONS

• While we endeavor to be planful and thoughtful, we are often caught in cycles of reactivity and crisis, and because of our structural challenges, we do this in silos. 
• We have pockets of success and innovation but we struggle to take them to scale (there are a few exceptions, e.g. university studies, but these are rare in the current era). 
• The “old way” and the “new way” of doing things on campus is common - takes a lot of energy to do both (teaching, advising, recruiting, and more).
• We have internalized our “scrappiness” in terms of not being afraid of a challenge, but this may also inhibit our ability to dream and imagine big things together, and to successfully harness/use resources in new ways to achieve big things. 
• Though our commitment to racial equity/justice has grown and matured, we have also exhibited powerful and lethal missteps that complicate our progress and make our commitments less robust.
• We study and discuss things a great deal - doesn’t translate to action often enough, we can get stuck in cycles of inaction resulting in frustration and cynicism.
• Our dedication to our “let knowledge serve the city” mission has endured and even though we can be tired and frustrated, we remain committed to this ideal.
• We are typical (as a university) in not thinking that outside forces will impact us as much as they may indeed do.  We are not immune from the crises around us in our world.
• We are capable of envisioning transformation, positive evolution and co-creation of the future we aspire to but is still a “new muscle” for us and not deeply woven into our culture or practices (e.g. Equity Task Force, Futures Collaboratory work).

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HOW MIGHT OUR HISTORY AS A UNIVERSITY SHED LIGHT ON HOW WE’LL APPROACH CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES?

• We could task force and study things too much
• We could fail to look around at the world and learn from how aspirational peers are organizing as universities of the future
• We could fail to engage widely with our community and seek to deliver what is most needed per their requests of us
• We could utilize our scrappiness to succeed against all odds 
• We could boost our dedication to imagine and then work together to create something transformational (take risks, intentionally defy our past patterns of incremental change and do something bold)
• We could “break” past patterns with racial injustice and center the needs, voices and experiences of students, faculty, staff and communities of color in Portland to design new systems and processes better suited to their needs and boost/demonstrate a commitment to equity that is more authentic, deep and impactful than ever before
• We could respond to challenges in the community in a new way for a new era and seek out the renewal/expansion of the motto “let knowledge serve the city” 

You can read the rest of our notes from this exercise here.

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THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES

• Another futures exploration is called “Causal Layered Analysis” and it urges participants to do a variety of activities related to identifying the “working metaphors” for our shared reality.
• The idea is that if we want a different future, we need to identify the working narratives that keep us “stuck” in replicating an old story.
• Members of the PSU Futures Collaboratory were joined by Dr. Sohail Inayatullah, Internationally known futurist who is the originator of this framework, which is used throughout the world.
• He led us through an exercise to “find” our working and alternative metaphors.

METAPHORS MATTER – �LESS MACHINE, MORE LIVING AND VIBRANT CORAL REEF

PSU AS A HEALTHY AND VIBRANT CORAL REEF

• Healing, regenerative, cooperative
• Honors and requires all parts to work in sync
• That has withstood and resisted pollution and other ecosystemic assaults
• A living entity that is always growing new parts, while allowing other parts to complete a life cycle and end
• Centering the identities, needs and gifts of those who have typically been unseen, underrepresented or harmed or literally pushed out by the dominant system
• Attention to our ecosystem more centrally

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Read other aspects our metaphor exploration here.

SOME OF OUR GUEST FUTURISTS

• Lonny Brooks – Afrorithms of the Future, Afrofuturism and pathways to liberation through Afrofuturist imaginaries.
• Ben Gansky – Understanding how the global economy has shifted to a “platform economy” with profound power asymmetry with relation to big tech. Decoding how this new economy works and the politics/tactics in play to assure democratic and ethical futures.

• Vanessa Mason – the future of belonging and looking around/ahead at the shifting nature of what community, connection and meaning is transforming towards. Especially relevant to the worlds of our students.
• Hector Aguirre – City of Portland’s rejection of facial recognition software in one of the most expansive efforts in the country. The story of how the community came together to make this happen is a story about power and the future to assure democracy is part of the inevitable push to bring technology to community spaces.

IN ADDITION TO OUR GUESTS , WE HAD SPECIAL SESSIONS TO:

• Invite the PSU Equity Task Force to our meeting to compare notes and align our efforts towards progress in our shared goals of a more equitable future PSU.
• Explore the future of ”space use on campus”
• Had an indepth conversation on the “future of faculty roles” at PSU and how this discourse is being shaped nationally/internationally.

• Support the Affordability Task Force by dedicating a meeting to efforts to do an imagination refresh and idea generation for bigger thinking in the coming years on this topic.
• Explored what the future of strategy setting should look like for PSU (our current strategic plan is now completed…and it is time to start building a new one. What should be in it? How should it function?)

THE FUTURE OF WORK WEBINAR SERIES FEATURING:

• Dr. Anmol Chaddha, Research Director, Equitable Futures Lab at IFTF

Presented the work of the California Commission on the Future of Work

• Maggie Wooll, Head of Strategic Insights, Better Up

Presented on maintaining a human focus on the future of work

• Todd Nell, Shari Dunn, Mark Mitsui, and Christian Kaylor – State of Oregon

Presented on the Oregon efforts to develop resources, plans and vision for an equitable future of work in our state

• Susan Jeffords, Ame Lambert, Greg Flores, and Laura Nissen

Presented on PSU’s response to the challenge of preparing ourselves, our university and our students for the future of work

You can view the entire series and extensive handouts from sessions here.

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FUTURE OF WORK CONTINUED

• Developed extensive resources for PSU utilization on this topic available at this link.
• Acknowledge that the future of work is an equity issue – full stop.
• Refuse to allow the future of work and the future of higher education discourses to derail us - this is a false and unproductive dichotomy. We need a narrative big enough to protect higher education AND contribute meaningfully to future of work discourse and advocacy. With economic mobility frequently at the top of our students’ minds – they need this from us.
• Inspired to organize model legislation from around the US and the world on this topic and to more urgently find ways to participate in this conversation for our state to best serve our students and preserve our roles as educators.

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LASTLY WE…

• Played a variety of futures games and explored use of various futures tools
• Collected and reviewed/discussed “signals” of change in our higher education ecosystem
• Considered the ways in which racism and neoliberalism have shaped the contemporary higher education ecosystem and reflected on the need for long-term and focused strategies that involve challenging dominant economic paradigms, and structural/historical barriers to equity/progress.
• Developed an interactive feature on our website to invite PSU colleagues to participate
• Provided consultation and futures thinking supports at a variety of school/college levels to assist in development of strategic agendas

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OUR RECOMMENDATIONS AT THIS YEAR END - 1

• It is clear that it is time for strategy setting at PSU (it is starting to happen in a fragmented way which won’t help us in the long-run). But strategy setting of the future should not be like any previous effort. Unusual and transformational times call for something more creative, more alive and more dynamic. Emphasis on trust building, listening, imagining, and community alignment.

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• Use new tools, new questions and new ways of connecting to co-create the future we want to share at PSU. People want a shared narrative – but the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) elements of the planning environment will not likely calm entirely, even though covid-19 concerns may lift somewhat.

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OUR RECOMMENDATIONS AT THIS YEAR END - 2

• Balance attention to not only creative thinking, but change management re equity concerns, simplifying our systems, preparing for a rapidly changing ecosystem, and participating in the healing/recovery of our community (Portland) bring all of our gifts and a minimum of our baggage as a university

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• Be more active and visible in the future of work agenda setting space without compromising our academic integrity/focus.

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OUR RECOMMENDATIONS AT THIS YEAR END - 3

• Increase the #’s of people and ways that thoughtful and equity-centered foresight and futures thinking can assist us in escaping the tyranny of short-term thinking and rally around a longer term view with a commitment to future generations and our ecosystem.

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• Formalize a role for futures practice in the university to protect space and cultivate expertise in these ideas, to have dedicated efforts to scan and coordinate shared learning on emerging issues/trends, and to serve as a resource for anyone on campus wishing to receive support and tap into a thriving network of foresight-linked actors in the PSU-community.