To create real systemic change, we need to change the way things are. This only happens when we change the thoughts and assumptions that led to our current state. We can do this by asking different questions. This interactive workshop will use a real world case-study to explore the process of using the catalytic thinking framework to change the questions we typically ask ourselves when designing a graduate student course and the corresponding impacts on graduate student well-being.
So often, our planning processes are guided by questions rooted in reactivity, suspicion, exclusion, and scarcity:
- What’s the problem?
- Where will the money come from?
- Can we trust them?
While these kinds of questions can be important, they reveal just a small part of what’s going on, causing us to become stuck in a loop of mitigating negative outcomes without actually creating positive ones.
Catalytic thinking is a visionary systems-change framework rooted in brain science and focused on cause-and-effect conditions. The framework guides us through a series of questions around people, purpose, and resources:
- What is the future we want to create? For whom?
- What could we accomplish together that we couldn’t do on our own?
- What can we share with others?
Questions like these help us focus on possibility, connection, inclusion, and enoughness in order to create a humane, healthy future that’s different from our past.
This is the framework Madeline DeMarco turned to when she was approached by the Athletic Training program at Adrian College to teach a mental health course to students in their professional master’s degree program, AT505 BH. Much of higher education today is based and structured around habit, ways of doing things that reward competition and independence over community and care, no longer meeting the needs of today’s students. And with mental health and well-being needs rising around college campuses nation-wide, it was important to design and implement a course, especially one focused on mental health, that rethought that status quo in order to meet the program’s accreditation requirements and promote the holistic well-being of AT505 BH’s students and instructors.
The catalytic thinking framework was the perfect tool for this. It enabled DeMarco to change the questions (and assumptions behind them) we typically ask when we start designing a course: “What readings will we assign?” “What’s the grading breakdown?” “When will the exams be?” in favor of starting with our strengths, values, and other conditions needed to create a future graduate student course different from one of the past. As a result, she was able to create a course based on trust, the learning process, and work-life balance that students feel is valuable and worth their time to participate in.
During the workshop, DeMarco will use the catalytic thinking framework to explain the design process and outcomes of AT505 BH. Workshop participants will get the opportunity to follow along with the framework and use it to practice designing a course, program, or initiative of their own that promotes graduate student well-being.
