From the alumni page

These things have a habit of disappearing. This way I can hold on to them.

"I am most definitely not here to attack any individual, but let me share my perspective. My husband went to the old Unity in the late 70’s and it changed his life. I followed him here and later taught as an adjunct after I earned my MFA. We settled in Unity as a result of the incredible interaction between the college and the campus. We went to the Performing Arts Center for music, theater, lectures, and art. We held field days in Field of Dreams. I had Unity students in my science classroom up the road, for ITL experience. My kids checked out books at Quimby Library where I later donated my library of 5000 books. My husband became an administrator for NRCS and was able to hire other alums. We live just down the road and I drive past the sad, empty campus everyday. The lively interchanges at cross track are no more. The Cheeseman farmhouse has been sold, and I would think the original founders would be rolling in their graves. I always expected that both my sons would attend Unity. No way; they attended campuses that were IRL communities. My youngest, now at UMFarmington, had 100% in-person classes all throughout the pandemic. The value of the loyalty to the old Unity College is priceless. It has been squandered. There is a place for online classes, and I was a non-trad student and get it. But it shouldn’t be called Unity College. Melik traded in a shining diamond for a piece of dirty coal. He stole a name, a shared identity, from many people and that is why we are so upset. Enrollment data can be manipulated, as all data can, to infer what is not reality. Trust is lost. I worked with a middle school guidance counselor once who got his degree 100% online at Liberty University. You can imagine the result: bad. Taking the salary while the kids’ real needs went unmet. My husband, on the cusp of retirement, decries the lack of practical IRL knowledge of young hires. They are great with the tech but don’t have a clue on the landscape, so they struggle to gain the confidence of clients. Zoom school, for us teachers and students was a sham, as test scores are now revealing."

Professing

"You're a professor. Professors should profess." 

That's what one of my mentors told me, a long time ago. Back in the day, before online teaching and the general adjunct-ification of higher education worked together to bid down the price and intellectual capacity of the teaching help, a professor was supposed to have her own ideas about things. She was also supposed to be able to express them freely without fear of being fired or sidelined. Academic freedom of this kind had a purpose. It ensured the open marketplace of ideas could flourish, which itself aided in the development of modern liberal society: society with free markets, free speech, and free institutions. Free students led by free professors who grew up to be the building blocks of a free society. 

Through the free expression of ideas about culture, economics, business, politics, technology, and even education, modern society developed and moved away from the religious dogma in which it was founded. Think about just about any idea that has any importance, from the rule of law to the factory system to the US Constitution, and you notice that this idea, in its day, had detractors. But the marketplace of ideas won out, and today we are protected by the rule of law, our products are made by the factory system, and the US Constitution is still in force last time I checked. 

Try to imagine society without these ideas.

I have some strong opinions about a lot of things, but as a PhD-trained climate policy specialist who also studied "PPE" (politics, philosophy, and economics), I was encouraged to express these ideas without fear or restraint -- except the intellectual restraint that grew out of the facts themselves. 

Actually, I was required by the nature of my PhD program to express my ideas. 

If I hadn't had any ideas I would not have passed the program. And I kept having ideas and expressing them right up until the time that my having ideas, and the ideas I was having, became incompatible with the new so-called leadership of (some) parts of American higher education. 

Some folks just don't like ideas. 

Well, they didn't stop me. I've been at it again. 

Professing.

From the comment section of the New York Times:

Mick Womersley | Maine
Bret has made a workmanlike job of setting aside bias and exploring the options. I wish more conservatives would do the same. My only quibble is that he hasn't quite gotten his head around the math and so has picked, in a weak-minded way, the wrong option, doing nothing now. Global circulation is a complex dynamic system and requires a dynamic systems model. This kind of math isn't taught except in science programs. Commentators get it wrong. Yes, climate policy is a kind of insurance, an ounce of cure to avoid a pound of pain. So much is mentioned fairly. But the full scope of possible outcomes is missing or slighted. As one example, the results of the recent Thwaites Glacier expedition have served primarily to demonstrate that one possible outcome, the catastrophic melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is more likely than previously thought, with enough sea level rise as a result to swamp a good portion of the worlds largest cities. There are several other bad possible outcomes to discuss. They aren't. It isn't alarmist to cover all the bases. You buy house insurance to offset the risk of a drastic fire. It may be a low risk, but the results of the fire would be sufficiently bad that the conservative householder views the premium as a reasonable expense. Climate scientists have been asking the free market to pay the premium for decades and it hasn't done so. So we will instead choose to rebuild after the fire. That's the logical outcome of the thinking in this column.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/28/opinion/climate-change-bret-stephens.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/world-close-to-irreversible-climate-breakdown-warn-major-studies

College Nightmares

Otherwise happily retired, I still occasionally have long weird dreams about somehow righting the disaster that became our previous place of academic employment. 

This is of course my subconscious at work, and it signifies nothing except the weird workings of one fat old white guy's subconsciousness.

In this latest one, graduation was somehow held mistakenly outside Aimee's craft room window, and a board (bored) meeting followed. We were able to eavesdrop on all the lies and wool-over-eyes-pulling that went on, directly from the lips of the lier-in-chief to the ears of the gullible items supposedly responsible for an institution of higher education.

In the dream we were morbidly fascinated and outraged by all the BS that was spouted. At times we laughed our heads off, the lies were so fantastic. But nothing happened. No hard questions were asked, and none answered.

Especially, questions were not asked, or answered, about learning: when it happens, how it happens, how experienced teachers can make it happen, and how to measure that it actually has happened. 

Now, this was only a dream. But dreams do come true.

Specifically, on the spectrum of conscious knowledge, there are people who know and know what they know, people that don't know and do know what they don't know, and people that think they know but don't know what they don't know. 

If this all sounds rather Rumsfeld-ian, it may be because that former Secretary accidentally put his finger on, or in, a greater truth.

As did my dream.

The GOP War on College

The Comical Of Higher Edification has a moderately decent feature article, "above the fold," on the history of right-wing opposition to learning here. It's not behind a paywall but you will need to sign in.

It always fascinates me that right-wing types believe you can run a complicated modern country without the kinds of clever folks that earn advanced degrees. Where do they think all the computers and robots that do our work and make our houses and cars run, all the advanced medical care that keeps us well, and all the advanced weaponry that protects us against authoritarian states like Russia, China, and Iran, where do they thing it all comes from? 

Trump voters? Q-Anon? Don't make me laugh.

If you subtracted the combined output of clever people with advanced degrees from the economy, there wouldn't be very much left.

And of course, we have working examples of this. The new Trump-era book "The Divider" by Glaser and Baker, the husband/wife NYT best seller team, is useful here, recounting the absolutely mind-fucking thoughtless chaos inside the Trump White House, as Trump picked staffers and appointees for their loyalty and their "...from Central Casting" good looks, not their qualifications.

Of course, it burns right-wingers to the core that, once begun, higher education tends to produce liberal thinkers. 

Well, duh. The whole premise of scientific education is to learn to think without bias. That's the purpose of scientific logic, the use to which we put the theory of probability, and the rationale behind the need for statistical significance before publishing the results of a study.

But right-wing thinking seems full of thoughtless bias. Against people of color, against ideas, against sexual freedom, against different cultures. It's a morass of thoughtless nonsense.

It may be time to paraphrase the old RAF engineer's adage, "If flying were hard, the engineers would have to do it." 

If right-wing thinking were hard, people with college degrees would have to do it. But they can't do it, or won't, because it's not actually hard, just wrong. 

We should call it wrong-wing thinking.

College Scorecard

An NYT article about the dollar value of graduation in earnings -- always a limiting way to look at things* -- is here (behind a paywall).

(*Limiting because, of course, the person properly educated to use their brain to look after themselves and others, and their stuff, needs less money than someone who doesn't to be happy. Basic Buddhist/Quaker thinking. And... duh!)

'Tis a gift to be simple.

I downloaded the DoE base data, just for shits and giggles. I'll publish what I find here.

From the archive, an oldie but goodie

 Career counselling?

What advice would I give to a student looking for a career in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate change mitigation?

This is an interesting question, as our Unity College admissions calendar is well in progress and the Admissions Office is assembling next year's entering class. It's also in the news. Each morning, if I have time, I read the New York Times and scan the education section headlines, and lately the paper has been full of articles about admissions.

I encounter the admissions process through visits by high schoolers. I generally meet most of the entering students in our Sustainability Design and Technology Program one or two years before they attend Unity College. They come for a visit, or attend one of our Open Houses, meet me, and we have a conversation.

The conversation that I can have with them at that point is naturally shallow, as are most processes associated with this stage of the choosing-a-college process. I can't tell you how many students have shown up to talk, only to realize that they were looking for something completely different. Students show up thinking that we offer a program in household installation, for instance. Or they somehow arrive believing that they can have a career in energy without doing science or math.

Often the first thing I ask is, "so you want to be an applied scientist working in the energy field" When they're stumped or bemused by this question, that's a bad sign. They hadn't realized that what we offer is a science degree in energy. I don't know how high schoolers show up at my door thinking this, but they do.

Indeed, I'm not sure how high school and college age people think or where they get their information from.

Which is good. That's not really my job.

But every week I have long conversations and/or email correspondence with half a dozen to a dozen different professionals that already work in this field. Sometimes we are talking or writing about students, setting up internships or projects, for instance. But more often than not I'm helping solve real world problems that these professionals encounter, in energy analysis, anemometry, finance, or legislation. They call me up or email me for answers, to stay in touch, to learn how to do new things, or I call them for the same reasons.

So I know what these well paid professionals do for a living, how they or the businesses they work for make money, what the skill sets are that they seek in order to make more money, and how to train students up to the proper standard in those skill sets.

That is my job, isn't it?

Thank heavens I don't have to think like a high schooler, though!

What I have to do instead is put the information needed in the workplace into forms and levels that high school and college-entry age folks can understand.

So, based on that information, what advice do I have for the student seeking a degree program and remunerative employment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate mitigation?

First, up, lay down the iPod, get off Twitter or Facebook, remove all distractions, and settle down for at least a minute.

You're going to need to learn to concentrate.

The modern world is full of distractions for all people, young and old, and the way that the field of energy and climate is evolving is no different. There is all kinds of spin and greenwash. But the great majority of successful professionals I encounter are not this kind of person. They are analysts and engineers, number crunchers and applied scientists who have a natural tendency to want to solve practical problems in making green energy or saving dirty, brown energy and in accounting for the emissions that are reduced when either of the above happen.

This is good, because this is where the money is, that pays their salaries. Energy is valuable, and green energy more valuable than brown, so if you know how to make green energy or save brown energy, then you know how to make or save money. You have to be able to account for making or saving that money if you want to get paid -- you must prove to your employer or the government that you are making or saving this money. But the potential supply of money to pay your salary is quite large. There's an awful lot of wasted energy in this world.

You need to learn to concentrate so you are capable of analyzing the energy problems of whatever organization you are working for, and solving them. Most organizations are complicated and energy can be made or saved in hundreds of different ways. It takes concentration to analyze all the ways and lay them out for study and pick the most cost effective ones and come up with physical improvements.

If you are prone to distraction, you won't do very well at this. So learn to concentrate.

The next thing I would say is, get real. Put away the ego. Stop noticing yourself. The world is not a stage on which you may play out the fantasy of your life. Get used to noticing, identifying, interpreting physical reality instead.

These energy problems are real problems with real physical embodiments. There's either a leak in the building envelope or there isn't. The oil level goes down faster or slower in the tank. The meter turns faster or slower, or if you're really good, backwards. Something physical has happened. You have made a difference or not.

You're in the picture, but you're not the important thing. The machine or the building that is using energy is the thing. Reduce the ego, get outside of yourself, and study the thing, not how you feel about the thing.

This is not a job for folks who enjoy telling fictional stories, for fantasists, or egotists, or grand-standers who like the idea of spinning out their own egos. Good analysts are often quite modest types, with modest dress and modest habits. Sometimes we're downright frumpy.

This is a job for somewhat grumpy Zen masters who can leave their egos at the door to the boiler room. People who are prepared to see things, to notice stuff. People who are more comfortable doing than being.

Pocket protectors, suspenders, toolbelts, sensible shoes, backpacks or handbags that contain useful stuff, these are all signs of the emerging energy master. Who cares what others think about how I look? It's not what I look that counts. It's what I know. My students may not be the most well dressed on campus. (But they will be the most well paid on graduation.) They are not the most gregarious, nor the most popular. Some, like me, tend to the grumpy.

But this is only because what we are interested in most is outside of ourselves, and we don't necessarily like what we see. When we get to the point where the thing we wish to fix is fixed, then we'll be happier.

The next thing I'm going to say is, be patient. Take your time to understand things.

Good news. This is a good area to be in right now. It's probably the best area to be in, from a job security and financial point of view.

Here's a common-enough type of headline about humanities majors who can't find jobs.

Our Sustech students won't have that problem. The energy sector, especially the renewable energy sector, proved relatively recession-proof during this latest business cycle droop.

Wind power in particular was one area where companies continued to hire during even the worst of the recession. And salaries are relatively high. Most of the just-left-college professionals I talk to, with only two or three or four years under their belts, get paid more than I do.

If I didn't love teaching and learning, I'd quit and take one of these jobs myself!

So why can't our Admissions Office find more students who want to work in this relatively recession free and relatively well-paid area? The usual American aversion to science, technology, engineering and math is one reason. There was a time when this country turned out the best scientists and engineers in the world, and in many ways that's still true, but you wouldn't think so sometimes, especially when you're trying to find a high schooler who wants a good career.

I don't know what it is that teachers and parents and pop culture does to scare students away from science and math, but it sure works.

Science and math is hard, but not that hard. One of the things that constantly amazes me in my energy outreach work is how easily people's eyes glaze over or they get confused when you show them a schematic, a spreadsheet, or a GIS map. People lack patience with complicated ideas. We geeks and wonks get paid because we have this patience. The huge STEM salary premium, the extra money you get paid for the rest of your life for being a bit of a wonk, is not so terribly hard to get.

You just have to be a tiny little bit more patient with science and math than the competition. That's all it takes.

Finally, I'd say, be prepared to change your ideas lots of times in life, based on new evidence and the emerging situation. I can't tell you what the price of a barrel of oil or a tonne of carbon will be in even one year's time, let alone for the rest of your career. But everything you want to do, every problem you want to fix, will be more or less easily fixed depending on those two metrics and many others. As the major facts of the energy and climate system change, so will you need to change. And you will need to be able to bootstrap yourself into new areas of expertise. the basic skills and knowledge: analysis and problem solving, physics, ecology, engineering, accounting, business skills, presentation skills, these will remain the same.

But the problem will change. So don't get stuck on one thing. Keep your eyes looking down the track. Read the papers and the blogs, trying to see what's ahead.

And keep your hard hat handy.

Climate bill article cites Jimmy Carter Solar Panels

A long time ago in an educational galaxy far away I became the default Guardian of the Jimmy Carter Solar Panels. Now they are cited again in todays WaPo.