August 20, 2021
GEN ST 297 Undergraduate Seminar | Future-ish
In the not-so-distant future, we will learn calculus in kindergarten, design our own clothes and cars on handhelds, and enthusiastically keep our culture and traditions alive whether we are on Earth, the moon, or Mars
I lead a quarterly, discussion-oriented undergraduate seminar through First Year Programs that gives students the opportunity to explore future studies and the science, design, and culture shaping the future. This seminar will not only engage students in finding and researching trends that are shaping the future, it will provide tools and develop leadership skills so that students can help shape the future.
Feedback from students that have participated in the seminar:
I really liked the chance to reflect on things that are important to me, think deliberately about the big picture of those things, and learn some new methods for thinking deliberately about the future and things that I perceive as important. – Senior, Physics
I really enjoyed all the group discussions we had and learning about future studies in general. I didn’t know what future studies was prior to this seminar so I was surprised that there were multiple universities that offered programs in it. I think my biggest takeaway from this class is that it is important to look at problems and issues from different perspectives and considers different points of views. – Senior, Public Health/Global Health
I was surprised by how much fun I ended up having with some of the assignments. I really like trying to predict the future, and it’s useful that I learned some new tools and systems for doing that. I enjoyed the group discussions as well. The bests things I took away were the two exercises we did on alternate futures and future scenario planning. Both of them were personally useful to me. – Senior, Neuroscience
I really enjoyed that students were able to select their own topics for each assignment. This made each assignment relevant to each student’s interests. I wasn’t sure what the course would be like when I registered (I registered for the compelling course title) and I was not aware the future studies was its own academic field, but I feel that I now have a solid basic understanding of the field and I found all the topics to be interesting and well-connected. The processes for scenario planning and design charrettes are relevant to any form of planning effort. – Senior, Informatics
Enjoyed talking about ways to think about the future, especially the aspects surrounding foresight and forecasting. I will certainly bring these elements into my career moving forward. I also enjoyed the seminars on design thinking and scenario planning. – Senior, Computer Science
It surprised me how simple and versatile some of the tools were for future planning. Some could be used to strategize on personal problems in your own life or scaled up to a cooperative team effort on a large project. In the future, I hope to work in public health and public policy, both which are heavily influenced by forecasting and foresight. – Sophomore, Pre-Health Sciences
This quarter’s seminar exposed me to design thinking via stories I likely wouldn’t have discovered on my own. For example, I don’t follow fashion, so it was inspiring to have another student in the class presenting stories related to their interests. The conversations were also quite inspiring. I wish we had more time to explore them. I enjoyed that the discussions typically started with a seed topic and almost always evolved into a conversation about the variety of opinions on a subject. – Junior, Geography
I like how open-ended discussion were and how topics brought by the students were what guided discussions. I will bring the design thinking ideas to my future career – Sophomore, Arts & SciencesI liked the casualness and different perspectives of the class. Everyone chose interesting articles and most of them sparked even more interesting conversation. I was surprised about the variety of topics brought up despite it being such a small class. It was also interesting that some people, myself included, had a similar theme around the articles they found, while others had a completely new topic each week. Despite not being interested in fashion, I actually really liked learning about the new things going on in that industry and getting new perspectives. I also liked the design thinking models. I’ll use them in the future, and even if I don’t remember all the details, the double diamond shape is pretty easy to remember visually. Big takeaway is to just keep learning. There’s so much going on at any time, and yeah, it’s overwhelming, but I don’t have to mindlessly scroll through news on social media. I can just look up stuff about topics that interest me, learn about them, and share what I learn through conversation. Just something to keep in the back of my mind I guess. – Junior, Environmental Sciences
I really enjoyed the course this quarter. I like how concise each mini lecture is and think it is great that they are referenced these when we do the article discussion. One big thing I will take away from the course is trying to be more conscious of design thinking. – Senior, Mechanical Engineering
