by Kevin, on April 4th, 2010
What’s that totally overused expression – hindsight is 20/20? I guess it’s used so often because there’s a certain amount of truth in it. And in looking back over the past three months that have been the UCLA Extension program winter quarter, I may have learned far more than my students did. I have to admit that I began the course following a pattern that’s become my routine. I will often get a commitment for something new, like a lecture, or in this case a teaching gig, and only partially pre-prepare. I intentionally try not to figure it all out. I like generating opportunities for serendipity. When it works well, I’m able to create an atmosphere of compression that forces things to happen. With just enough planning, it forces a higher level of performance.
For those who work with me there are moments of stress. And with this course, I’m certain my students experienced many moments of anxiety. To further complicate matters, this was the first time the course had been offered, so I was testing much of the content on these students. So what worked and what didn’t?
Let me start with what went well. I believe the students were beginning to comprehend the complexity of closed loop systems by the end. I know that half way through, many were scratching their heads wondering where we were headed. After six classes we hadn’t covered enough material to start connecting meaningful dots and linking concepts. Cradle to cradle, or closed loop systems thinking is more than just a matter of rethinking waste. Transitioning from the linear path of current industrial systems to cyclical ones requires a broader understanding of contributing factors. Elsewhere on this site you can read about our own transition template where we’re attempting to establish a framework of strategies and decision making. In it we identify twelve issues to consider – resource preservation, waste reduction, closed loop, energy conservation, embodied energy, alternative supply, toxin elimination, community engagement, nurturing environments, net zero cost, life cycle cost, and ecosystem cost. The course was too short to cover all twelve, but we did cover eight in varying depth.
One of the highlights came during the third week when Ray C. Anderson, visionary industrialist and founder of Interface, presented on the same night and time. It was an incredible stroke of luck. I’ve been wanting to see Mr. Anderson speak for years. I consider him an inspirational hero. We not only saw him present material from his latest book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, but we were able to get some one-on-one time after his presentation. It was a special evening with a singularly amazing individual.
The three profile research projects which focused on materials & resources, companies & people, and certifications & labels didn’t work as well as I hoped. They required a great deal of energy to complete. Had they been the only assignments, the work load would have been adequate. But students were also required to do a disassembly project. They had to select an everyday object, disassemble it, catalog its parts, trace the origins of those components, and evaluate potential methods for environmental improvement. Here too, had it been the only assignment, it alone would have significantly taxed their available time. Though it was my intention for the three profile projects and the disassembly project to work together, that link wasn’t as strong as it should have been. Each project required significant effort and students were feverishly working on each in linear succession – complete one, move to the next. Unfortunately, that perpetuated an isolated strategy that didn’t easily permit the kind of coordinated investigation I wanted. I think it would have been better had they done either the profiles or the disassembly, or done the profile projects as an integral part of the disassembly project. Overall the students did amazing work, but it was pretty clear that the work load was taxing them by the end.
Another thing I would change without a moment’s thought is the course name. The school believed that by naming the class Cradle to Cradle we would potentially attract greater student interest than the original name I had proposed – Closed Loop Systems. They were hoping to tap the popularity and notoriety of the McDonough & Braungart book of the same name. Even though we used the book for reference, it was not used as a textbook. It’s an excellent work, but didn’t go far enough for the course as planned. The name had the desired affect; twenty students showed up on the first night, eighteen signed up, then two dropped to bring the class to sixteen – six more than I was anticipating. The unintended consequence, however, was that many students were attracted by the potential connection to the book and were fully expecting a greater link between it and class content. I mentioned several times how the course would not follow the book, but some students continued to be frustrated by that.
I don’t yet know if the course will be offered again. I hope that I’ll be able to refine the content, implement the adjustments mentioned in this post, and apply what I’ve learned in teaching it. Hindsight suggests the content worked well, but will work even better with a few careful adjustments.
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