MICROCOLLEGE is an exploration of the crisis in higher education and the innovative projects and thinkers working to address it, with a special focus on the human-scaled, place-based, meaning-oriented learning communities we call "microcolleges."
The podcast is hosted by Jacob Hundt, Founder of Thoreau College, a micro college rooted in the Driftless Region of rural southwestern Wisconsin, inspired by the model ...
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For this episode of the podcast I spoke with Craig Holdrege and Ryan Shea of the Nature Institute in Ghent, New York about the theory and practice of a very different way of doing science, informed and inspired by the work of the great German poet, scientist, and statesman, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In contrast to the reductionist paradigm of science as it is often practiced elsewhere today, the Goethean approach seeks a perspective on nature characterized by wholeness and interconnection through a sensitive and self-aware methodology in which the relationships between the phenomena and the observer are not forgotten. Craig was a visiting instructor at Thoreau College in 2020 and we are very excited to welcome Ryan to Wisconsin as guest instructor this coming spring during our Spring 2025 Metamorphosis Gap Semester. Craig Holdrege is the Nature Institute’s director and spearheaded its founding in 1998. His passion is to develop what Goethe called “delicate empiricism” — an approach that learns from nature how to understand nature and is infused with a cautious and critical awareness of how intentions and habits of mind affect human understanding. Craig carries out studies of animals and plants that tell the story of these organisms as dynamic and integrated beings within the larger web of life. He has written many articles and books, including Seeing the Animal Whole—And Why It Matters, Do Frogs Come from Tadpoles? and Thinking Like a Plant. Before co-founding The Nature Institute, Craig was a high school biology teacher in Waldorf Schools, working in Germany for 12 years and then in the U.S. for nine years. Since the early 1990s, Craig has been involved in teacher training. Craig has a Ph.D. in sustainability education from Prescott College in Arizona. He completed a Masters-level, non-degree program in phenomenological science at the Science Research Laboratory at the Goetheanum, Switzerland, and has a B.A. in philosophy from Beloit College. Ryan Shea taught at Providence College for eight years, including courses in philosophy of science, environmental philosophy, and nature writing. He has B.A. and M.A. degrees in philosophy. He brings to his work at The Nature Institute a broad knowledge of ancient philosophical biology (especially Aristotle), the scientific revolution, phenomenology, German idealism, and Goethean qualitative science. Ryan has been interested in Goethean Science since he was a teenager. He began working part-time for The Nature Institute in spring 2023 and is full-time as of September 2024. He is excited to now have the opportunity to develop Goethean practice through research and teaching. He is interested in pursuing the nature of metamorphosis in different realms of the living world, and what it means to read the “book of nature.” Nature Institute: https://www.natureinstitute.org/ Metamorphosis Gap Semester - Spring 2025 - https://thoreaucollege.org/metamorphosis-spring/
On this episode of the podcast we talk with Grace Greenwald, Research Director at the Springboard Foundation for Whole Person Learning about the white paper she recently researched and wrote entitled "Distinctive Pedagogies that Address the "Meaning Crisis' in Higher Education:" Case Studies from Microcolleges and Living-Learning Institutes." This study is a marvelous new resource for the growing Microcollege Movement, featuring case studies of 4 exemplars of this new field: Thoreau College, Outer Coast, the Tidelines Institute, and the Seguinland Institute. Applying concepts from the work of cognitive scientist John Vervaeke on the "meaning crisis," Grace explores ways in which intimate, place based, and physically engaged higher education programs like these help to cultivate a sense of meaning and purpose for their students. Grace Greenwald graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Human Biology concentrating in Neuroethics, and received her M.Ed from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied education leadership and school design. She served on the team building Outer Coast, a nascent liberal arts college in the rural island community of Sitka, Alaska, and later supported The Burke Middle School in Boston and Workshop U in Philadelphia. At Springboard, Grace helps to tell the story of emerging small-scale, place-based schools and their communities through portraiture, research, writing, and narrative. On her own time, Grace is learning her way around a woodshop, and thinking about the role that labor, building, and fabrication could have in our education system. Springboard Foundation for Whole Person Learning: https://www.springboardlife.org/ Distinctive Pedagogies that Address the "Meaning Crisis" in Higher Education: https://indd.adobe.com/view/50a1af48-a183-4a1e-91bb-c70ae0defa91 Outer Coast: https://outercoast.org/ Tidelines Institute: https://www.tidelinesinstitute.org/ Seguinland Institute: https://www.seguinlandinstitute.org/ Thoreau College: https://thoreaucollege.org/
This week on the podcast we spoke with Drs. Rutger Engels and Ginie Servant-Miklos, who recently staged the "Bildung Climate School," a part-type summer pilot program in Rotterdam, the Netherlands that draws inspiration from the model of the Danish folk high school as described by Lene Rachel Andersen in The Nordic Secret as well as from the microcolleges in the United States. Carefully structured from a research perspective to test pedagogical strategies and program impacts for future prototypes and initiatives, the Bildung Climate School brought together students from differing tracks of the Netherlands' highly stratified post-secondary education system for 2 hours per day for 9 weeks during the summer of 2024. The program they experienced put into practice elements of what Ginie calls "the pedagogies of collapse," combining a frank examination of the sobering ecological and economic challenges facing humanity with embodied artistic and social practices and techniques for working through anxiety, building community, and even having fun. Ginie Servant-Miklos is an engaged environmental educator with fifteen years of experience in education practice, research, and advocacy. She currently holds an Assistant Professorship in behavioural sciences at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research and education work focuses on developing innovative pedagogies for societal impact. She developed the Experimental Pedagogics educational design framework, co-founded the Bildung Climate School with Prof. Rutger Engels, and is the author of Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It. She is a Senior Fellow of the Comenius Network for educational innovators in the Netherlands. She is the founder and chair of the board of the FairFight Foundation, an organisation that provides girls and women from Zambia, Zimbabwe, and India with the mental and physical benefits of martial arts practice, as well as educational support. Ginie is a vocal activist for sustainability and gender equality, advocating for change through public engagements like TEDx talks, debates, podcasts, and other digital media outlets. Ginie obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Kent, an LLM in International Law from Kent Law School, an MA in International Relations from Sciences Po Lille, a PhD in Education Philosophy and Psychology from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a post-doctoral research grant in Sustainability Education from Aalborg University. She was also a visiting professor in Experimental Pedagogics at Tyumen University. Rutger Engels, PhD, is an award-winning full professor in Developmental Psychopathology, at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and a board member of the venture philanthropy ‘De Verre Bergen’. Dr Engels received his MA in Psychology at the University of Groningen, his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Maastricht, followed by a post-doc at Utrecht University. In 2001, he was appointed as a professor in Nijmegen. From 2014-2018, he was CEO of the Trimbos Institute, the National Institute for Mental Health and Addictions, and a distinguished professor in Developmental Psychopathology at Utrecht University. From 2018-2021, he was Rector Magnificus of EUR, one of the top public research universities of Europe. Currently, he is cofounding a specialized mental health clinic on psychedelic-assisted treatments. His fundamental and applied research focuses on mental health and substance use in adolescents and adults. In the last decades, he has coordinated programs aiming to design, test, and ship (technology-enabled) interventions for mental health, addictions, resiliency, and personal growth.
In this episode of Microcollege, we speak with Felipe Medina and Jakob Seidler, two of the co-founders of Suna Barichara, an aspiring microcollege and educational center located in a remarkable rural community and dry tropical forest biome in the mountains of Colombia. According to their website, Suna Barichara is "a living education platform created to support people become the authors of their lives and weave futures of connection and reciprocal flourishing of life. This is what we mean by growing whole... Suna offers an open registry and series of learning routes, that grant locals and visitors the possibility of meeting meaningfully to learn how to live better on earth in connection. Suna is a Muysca word that means the meeting of important or sacred paths." Join us for an inspiring conversation about the influences and life experiences that have led Felipe and Jakob to this project and about how thoughtfully enacted place based education might serve as an alternative to the extractive industries that have done so much damage in rural areas of Latin America and elsewhere in the world. Suna Barichara: https://sunabarichara.com/ Thoreau College: https://thoreaucollege.org/
Join us this week for a conversation with Hannah Schwartz about her life devoted to the service of community and people with disabilities in the context of the Camphill Movement. She was a founder and longtime leader of the Heartbeet Lifesharing Camphill Village in Hardwick, VT and is now engaged with the founding of a new community called Riverflow, in Monkton, VT. Riverflow aspires to create wholeness in life for everyone who is part of and connected to the community. United by meaningful work, community members with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities form friendships, gain vocational skills, and pursue dignified, self-directed lives. Hannah formed and cofounded Heartbeet Lifesharing in 2000. She served as the community ’ s Executive Director and Development Director, drawing on her lifelong experience with social therapy and her commitment to bringing the lifesharing philosophy to community-based care for adults with developmental disabilities in Vermont. Hannah dedicated over 20 years to Heartbeet and during her tenure there joined national and statewide conversations and action to expand meaningful options for adult life, removing barriers and increasing opportunities for adults with developmental disabilities. Hannah pursued a Masters in Special Education at Antioch New England, graduating in 2016. In 2020, Hannah felt called to leave Heartbeet Lifesharing, to deepen and expand her understanding of diversity, equity, justice and inclusion, through a social work and policy lens, at the University of Vermont in their Masters of Social Work program. Hannah has dedicated her working life to embodying alternative, diverse systems of care with a special focus on neurology. She is a social researcher, innovator and leader in cutting edge thinking who is dedicated to encouraging all to reach their highest potential. Riverflow Community: https://www.riverflowcommunity.org/ Heartbeet Lifesharing: https://heartbeet.org/ Camphill Association of North America: https://www.camphill.org/