Sustaining Knowledge from V515

Good people of V515...it's been a blast! At the close of this semester, I can't believe how much we have all learned about each other. We've got some seriously unique perspectives that we've brought with us from California/Ohio/NYC/Florida. We each see things through different lenses of equity/health//happiness depending on our respective passions. When introduced to a new problem, we seek solutions from personal actions/politics/incentives. One thing that ties us together now, though, is an understanding that complex problems don't have simple solutions.

I think this is the number one understanding that separates the educated from the uneducated, the irrational actor from the critical thinker, and the successful problem solver from the guy who's probably going to give up. How many times have you heard someone who has no idea what they are taking about spout out some "perfect solution" to a grand challenge? This is absolutely one of my pet peeves. I'm so appreciative that our Sustainable Communities course provided a practical look at the difficulties of fostering sustainability, and that it encouraged us to expand and pick apart rather than simplify and reduce the issues.

V515: Calvin would be displeased

The blog assignments were a huge advantage of the class, allowing much more open learning opportunities than the typical grad class affords. I very much enjoyed taking on a personal project and following up on my progress every few weeks. I particularly enjoyed class periods when we used our classmates' blogs as a jumping off point for discussion. To me, people's blogs much more strongly informed the discussion than the tweets we were assigned to submit before each class.

I could talk all day about this class (and I recommend it to anyone at IU), but I'll just share one last thought. Roseland's text was 100% the right choice. The community capital framework framed the different topic areas very well, and the breadth of example communities highlighted inspired me that innovative progress toward sustainability is possible anywhere.

As we finish, I send a big THANK YOU out to Bill Brown, who recognizes that graduate students DO have interesting things to say. He's got faith in his students' abilities and lets us run a bit wild with our ideas! It has been fun exploring everyone's values and passions together as we discussed the various solutions that could help make our communities more clean, safe, valuable, equitable, enjoyable, and sustainable :)