1. Storytelling and Storymaking: A New Paradigm for Sustainability Management Joshua Lasky University of the District of Columbia (UDC) Paul Morgan West Chester University of PA (WCU)

2. The Power of Narrative “Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future.” Neil Postman, The End of Education

3. A story about Josh Lasky and his...

4. Ankle

7. West Chester University: Green Campus Pioneer (sort of) WCU’s Green Campus Committee was charged by President Adler in November 1992 “to function as a task force and spend one year studying the feasibility of West Chester University becoming a green campus.” But......

8. By Fall 1999, the only remnant was the Campus Beautification Committee, which was selecting furniture for Main Hall.

9. West Chester University Mission Statement 2000-2001 This did not appear in the 2001-2002 catalogs “As part of this commitment to the future, the University is becoming a green campus designed to demonstrate that a community can, through inquiry and education, act in a manner consistent with the goal of a sustainable earth.”

12. Plan for Excellence 2007 Update “Encourage environmental awareness through training, curricula, and co- curricular programming, assess and reduce the ecological impact of the University, and promote research and service that foster regional and global sustainability.”

13. “Environmental Sustainability Across WCU” Linking Pedagogy, Operations, Research, and Service – January 28-29, 2008 Curriculum Integration Workshop for WCU Faculty 2 Days, 2 Local/Organic Meals 15 Participants 3 Colleges, 13 Departments Anthropology & Sociology, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Elementary Education, English, Geography & Planning, Geology & Astronomy, Library, Philosophy, Professional & Secondary Education, Psychology (History, Foreign Languages) $50 Stipend! Dr. Debra Rowe

14. Mitch Thomashow Visited WCU: February 23-25 2009

15. President Greg Weisenstein’s Inaugural Address “Regardless of our students' choice of major, upon graduation from West Chester University, they should be clearly identifiable as champions of the environment.” (September 25, 2009)

18. Are you ready to start earning a certificate in Education for Sustainability? Learn how to help others understand the challenge of sustainability and become active participants in solutions. You’ll be prepared to create real change in your profession, community, and daily life with courses that emphasize outdoor, experiential, and project-based learning. Visit www.wcupa.edu or contact Dr. Paul Morgan at 610-436-6945 pmorgan@wcupa.edu

19. Sustainability Coordinator (Half-Time) Reports directly to the President

20. Peter Bardaglio February 9-10, 2012

21. WCU Strategic Planning Process WCU Strategic Planning Committee “Sustainability” one of 5 Themes

22. Reflections & Lessons Think big, but don’t fail; it poisons the water for years Learn how the bureaucracy works Focus on critical leverage points (e.g. The Strategic Plan) Make effective use of outside experts Top-level support helps, but start where you are Act like you belong at the table, not like a marginalized, glorified student environmental club Reach out – go beyond the usual suspects

23. But... I often get the feeling that all of this is happening in a bubble

26. Occasionally we glimpse a bigger story outside the institutional bubble with its familiar paradigm of change management: goal-setting, action-planning, implementation, assessment, evaluation, etc.

28. Once upon a time... there was a planet

29. 6 th Mass Extinction

32. Footprints and Consumption

33. Climate Change

35. Crisis of Professional Narrative This story of the planet has brought me to a crisis point in my story as a sustainability professional. For sustainability in higher education, these are “good” times, but the reality is that there is an enormous gap separating the severity of the planetary crisis and even my best responses to it.

36. Grappling with the Crisis of Narrative How can we operate in the old story – where we have our current jobs and a habitual way of life – while simultaneously telling and making a new story in which we open up the possibility of a viable future? Here’s how I’ve been grappling with the gap...

37. What does the gap mean? It means sustainability is not exclusively, or even primarily, an engineering problem Sustainability is a metaphysical problem that calls for intervention at the level of personal, institutional, and cultural stories

38. “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story.” --Thomas Berry

39. Telling and enacting a new story begins with a clear recognition that all narratives are imperfect, and potentially dangerous. Yet we cannot live without them so we should tell and enact our stories wisely.

40. “Now for the first time in human history, a particular worldview is becoming conscious of its own impending fall (all previous civilizations collapsed probably without ever understanding why) and has the opportunity to consciously re-forge its worldview to confront the threat.” -- Jon Kohl (from www.jonkohl.com) A Unique Historical Moment

41. We can deploy graphs and data or....

42. A story about a civilizational train...

48. A Hard Truth “Almost everything being done in the name of sustainable development addresses and attempts to reduce unsustainability. But reducing unsustainability, although critical, does not and will not create sustainability” --John R. Ehrenfeld, Sustainability by Design

49. “Avoidance” “Magical Thinking”

50. Some Problems Deliberate worldview change is 1) Unprecedented 2) Not widely desired 3) Fraught with paradoxes Less Unsustainable

52. Can’t we just green the old story? Can we really meet the challenge of sustainability if we do not change the story of what higher education is for? Economic Utility, Consumership, and Technophilia?

53. Critical Choice Will we envision and make a new story or simply fulfill the story of the future we have been conditioned to accept as desirable and... inevitable? from www.mentaloptima.com

54. The story of the future?

56. Cultural Transformation?

57. Where do we go from here? A Creative Storytelling Leap

58. How do we mind the gap? Less Unsustainability Sustainability

59. What story will they tell? What is the story people will tell – in 2212 – about how we managed to get off track, cross the chasm, and begin telling and making a new story?

60. Daniel Quinn “If there are still people here in 200 years, they won’t be thinking the way we do. I can make that prediction with confidence, because if people go on thinking the way we do, then they’ll go on living the way we do—and there won’t be any people here in 200 years.”

61. The New Renaissance “The extraordinary thing that’s going to happen in the next two or three decades is that a great second renaissance is going to occur. Nothing less than that is going to save us.” - Daniel Quinn

62. What is the story of how this happened?

64. Sustainability “the possibility that human and other life will flourish on the planet forever” --John R. Ehrenfeld

65. Education for Sustainability Starter Principles for Enacting a New Story Principle #1: Buying time is OK if we know what we’re buying time for Principle #2: Increase the creative tension – emphasize the difficulty. More doom and gloom please! Principle #3: Encourage courage Principle #4: Learn how to imagine and see around corners Principle #5: Short-circuit the game of school: the game only makes sense if we’re committed to the current story Principle #6: Provide glimpses of a new story, outside the bubble, off the tracks, and outside the Matrix Principle #7: Always keep it real Principle #8: We learn what we live – require experiences, not courses

66. Education for Sustainability Some More Principles Principle #9: Loosen the cultural grip with cosmology, big picture perspectives, and metaphysical-spiritual questions Principle #10: Focus less on curriculum and more on culture and mindscape Principle #11: Unplug. The revolution will not be televised Principle #12: Think in epoch-changing terms (the New Renaissance). This is the Great Work, and these are transitional times; we won’t see the end of it. It must awaken in us a sense of incredible opportunity, privilege, and responsibility Principle #14: Focus less on school and more on culture Principle #15: Resist temptations to be a winner in the old story and learn how to engage opponents in telling and making a new story

67. Education for Sustainability Some Principles Principle #16: Provide powerful, memorable, transformative experiences Principle #17: Love’s got a lot to do with it. Help others fall in love with the world. Principle #18: Cultivate creativity, imagination, and real skill Principle #19: Heal the split between what we think and what we do Principle #20: Educate for real transformation – individual and cultural

68. Telling Our Stories

69. Keep it positive...

70. Be bold and visionary

72. Telling Your Story 1. What’s the story you have actually been enacting? 2. What’s the story you want, hope, need to enact? Are they the same? 3. How can you retell the story of your work in a way that celebrates successes while acknowledging the enormity of the sustainability challenge? 4. What can you do that makes it more likely that surprising, non-linear change will happen?

73. Inspiration What historical lessons can we take inspiration from? What will inspire us to see our work in epoch-making proportions?

74. Mastering Behavior Change How can we take back the art of storytelling and put it to use in the sustainability movement? (Master storytellers are behavior change engineers. Right now, the masters are people who have managed to successfully get us to buy stuff we don’t need, get us to eat things that are slowly killing us, and otherwise waste our time/health/money.)

76. Storytelling and Storymaking: A New Paradigm for Sustainability Management Joshua Lasky jlasky@udc.edu Paul Morgan pmorgan@wcupa.edu

78. Success in the old story tends to decrease creative tension

79. Buying Time?

80. “Avoidance”

81. Buying time for what?

82. Educate for Transformation

83. Cultivate a Big Picture Perspective “The only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, the cosmos.” -Vaclav Havel “The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World” (1994)

85. We Learn What We Live from www.mentaloptima.com

86. Narrative of Technology It offers speed, efficiency, and convenience for all who subscribe to it. It is a powerful story that has turned means into ends. It’s vision of the future is a techno-utopia, but it is a false narrative.

87. The Narrative of Economic Utility It is a passionless god, cold and severe. But it makes a promise, and not a trivial one. Addressing the young, it offers a covenant of sorts with them: If you will pay attention in school, and do your homework, and score well on tests, and behave yourself, you will be rewarded with a well-paying job when you are done. Its driving idea is that the purpose of schooling is to prepare children for competent entry into the economic life of a community. It follows from this that any school activity not designed to further this end is seen as a frill or an ornament – which is to say, a waste of valuable time.

88. Narrative of Consumership You are what you buy. Clearly a false and distracting narrative, but like other narratives, it has incredible power. Why? Because the greatest storytelling tools in our culture are fueled by and are devoted to the narrative of consumership.