As increasing numbers of people across the globe are realizing there must be something more, something solutions-based they can do to positively shift their relationship with others and the natural environment, permaculture is growing in reach – not just in numbers, but also in sectors of our society. As a professor, higher academia is an area of peak interest where permaculture is setting roots. Andrew Millison, Senior Instructor 1, Permaculture, and I sat at a coffee shop on Oregon State University’s (OSU) campus in Corvallis discussing his journey, permaculture, and how that has taken form at the major land grant university where he works. You may assume he wound up here due to a job posting, but it was actually climate change that prompted his move from Prescott, AZ (16 inches of rain a year), to Corvallis, OR (43.7 inches of rain a year). At 9.5 inches of precipitation a year in Moab, UT, I’ve often worried about climate change and whether our water-strapped community drowning in new development pressure is right for our family. However, I’ve seen too much hope to migrate north in the form of local movements including a 100% renewable electricity commitment by local government, our health department interest in rewriting greywater policy and composting toilet code, community meetings to re-envision our recycling center and waste stream as a whole, community potlucks and more. That said, I and many others can relate to Andrew’s concern and decision, and many more will move north. Upon arriving in Corvallis, Andrew delivered a talk on peak oil and permaculture at a local food coop. Coincidentally, a student group had just formed a permaculture club and one active student, recently having emerged from a PDC, lobbied to create a permaculture course at OSU with Andrew as the teacher. Yes, past PDC participants have many ripples. The Horticulture Department agreed to trial permaculture and funded one class as an experiment. However, despite great reviews, there was no more funding. The university wasn’t looking to hire a permaculturist, but was open to the idea if Andrew could make a go of it. To solve the financial issue, Andrew launched a summer site-based PDC. This course involved installation projects at the OSU Student Sustainability Center, which had extra funds for Andrew to provide another summer course. It was through online courses, however, where Andrew secured his position at OSU. This catalyzed when someone within the State of Oregon: Oregon Housing and Community Services, which builds low income housing throughout the state, had heard of permaculture and Andrew was funded for a year to develop an online course and a large conference for the state agency (Jude Hobbs, Toby Hemenway, and others presented) and the group toured Portland-based permaculture housing developments. This opportunity allowed Andrew to design an online PDC through OSU’s Ecampus and generate a revenue stream. Oregon State University’s Ecampus is ranked third in the country for online education. Shortly after, he produced a PDC for non-credit through Professional and Continuing Education (PACE) and the growing enrollments began impressing administration. Where Andrew has seen the greatest impact and potential, however is through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). These are free open source courses, in which he developed Introduction to Permaculture. Students post their work publicly, get feedback from other students around the globe, and must hold themselves accountable for earning their badge of completion. Forty-five thousand people have partaken in the course, and that is just in five iterations. These large numbers helps attract students into Andrew’s online PDC, as students who complete the MOOC receive a 10 percent discount on their enrollment. Students can also enroll in his Advanced Permaculture Design for Climate Resilience online course. He is now working on a Permaculture Water Management four-week MOOC and on two paid courses: Rainwater Harvesting and Permaculture Food Forests. Why all online? Besides the large numbers and reliant revenue stream, Andrew sees many advantages. He has received feedback from some who do not want a social experience in class, and only want to learn how to design their home site differently. Others have families and can’t dedicate two or more weeks to an in-person experience. Many people live remotely and don’t have access to a PDC anywhere near them. Many are also attracted to the legitimacy that a PDC issued from a major university carries. Thus, online has allowed him to reach a wider pool of people. When describing permaculture in an elevator pitch, Andrew says “sustainable land design.” From his Introduction to Permaculture course page, the definition states “Permaculture design is a method of landscape planning that can be applied to anything, from a home garden or farm to a city block or entire village. Permaculture uses design principles from nature itself and takes into account such things as how indigenous people use the land; how water, fire and wind flow through the land; and how soil, water, vegetation, buildings and habitats can be managed in a stable and enduring way.” His goal in permaculture is “to elevate permaculture design further into mainstream knowledge and discussions so this valuable design system can be used to transition civilization to a future with clean water, safe and abundant food, renewable energy and resources, healthy watersheds, and prosperous people and ecosystems.” Working in higher academia, I wondered if Andrew liked the word, ‘permaculture.’ He does. “I think that the word now encompasses a powerful vision…it’s almost a gateway to a possible reality…The meaning behind permaculture and the imagery associated with that meaning is developed and just gets bigger.” When students leave any of his courses, Andrew hopes they can “put on their permaculture glasses” and see the world through a solutions-based, whole systems lens. From there, “I want them to have actual, actionable tools at their disposal” Despite his incredible enrollment numbers, support has not been ubiquitous. “I would say I do not have blanket administrative support. All of the administrative support I have, I’ve had to build relationships through mutual trust and prove that I can be self supportive and economically generative overtime, and then suddenly they want to support me because there is reciprocity and respect.” Now, after eight years of incremental work, Andrew has a Fulltime Equivalent (FTE) position. The vast majority of that position is funded through his online course income, and the horticulture department covers a portion of his position. In his promotion process to Senior Instructor 1, Andrew recounts his presentation to the Horticulture Department’s faculty “‘I’m not really teaching [students] horticultural techniques. I leave the details of tree fruit breeding, vegetable production, greenhouse management, and plant pathology to you folks.’ My students are taking soil science, they are taking landscape maintenance, they are taking berry and nut crop cultivation, they are taking organic agriculture. They are taking this wide sweep…I’m teaching them a design system to help them organize and use the things they are learning in all of your classes.” I was excited to hear this framing. As a whole-systems design framework, permaculture could be housed in horticulture, in English, watershed science, business, or any major because it brings together what students are learning into a solutions-based action framework. I see potential here and am excited about where we will take permaculture in higher academia. To discover more about Andrew and Oregon State University’s permaculture courses, visit: https://horticulture.oregonstate.edu/users/andrew-millison
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For those of you working in – or passionate about – the subject, you have inevitably been asked “what does permaculture mean?” When defining the term, eyes might gloss over as you struggle to portray the importance embedded within. As a Sustainable Communities professor, I have seen the value in clearly articulating what I mean by the often-used term ‘sustainability.’ Similarly, as an internationally respected permaculture teacher, Jude Hobbs emphasizes the importance of clearly relaying what permaculture means. When asked to define the term in our interview, Jude, co-founder of the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) and Cascadia Permaculture Institute (CPI), clearly and confidently says permaculture is “a new buzzword for an old way of being.” We could stop there, or if the inquirer is curious, then expand further with “Think about how your ancestors lived – they purchased things local and they worked within their community. They didn’t waste resources as much – everything was precious. Water was precious, wood was precious…Talk from where they are comfortable and then expand out from there.” Another way she defines permaculture, as I do with sustainability, is “it’s a whole systems way of thinking.” Jude clarifies “I’m not using resilience, I’m not using regeneration, I’m not using harmonious relationships. I’m not using any of those words.” Instead, the focus is on a tangible, sixth-grade-level understanding of what is becoming a widely used (sometimes misused) and interpreted term…just as with sustainability. It’s not an issue with the word, it’s the struggle with a clear definition. In our interview, Jude rhetorically asks “What other word describes this system? Sustainability? Yeah, true sustainability. People say ‘oh, I don’t want to use the word sustainability. It’s greenwashed. But if you define that to what it is truly meant to be, that’s what permaculture is.” It’s true, when we analyze the intention and meaning of sustainable living, the three pillars often referenced – environmental protection, social responsibility, and financial justice – with the intention of creating a better life for future generations can be interchangeable with the three main ethics of permaculture. Jude was trained as mental health professional, but in 1979 her career underwent a much-needed turn through taking a master gardener class. After then working as a program developer with master gardeners, she moved into traditional landscaping. A course on edible landscaping in 1984 further shifted her direction. Then, in 1985, she was invited to learn about permaculture on Whidbey Island at a 5-day workshop and fell in love. In her words, “I’m a whole systems thinker by nature. Mollison used to tell this story that he did all this research, with Holmgren as his apprentice, seeing what worked and didn’t work. Then he went on to public radio and was talking about the [permaculture design system], and he gave his address out. As his story is told, he says that within a week, 5,000 people wrote him and they all said the same thing…‘you expressed what I have been thinking about and have given me a way to act.’ And that’s what is so unique about permaculture to me. As a systems thinker and how to encapsulate all of these elements, those principles and ethics give you the toolbox of how to make change.” Since her first exposure to permaculture, Jude has been practicing on various landscapes and teaching both the traditional Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) and more advanced courses. Around 2000, Jude started offering teacher trainings “guiding people to have the confidence to talk about this.” She has found her niche and passion in teaching teachers, which she does through her business of Cascadia Permaculture and her Advanced Permaculture Course in Teaching, which counts towards the PINA permaculture diploma (an advanced certification level beyond the PDC). As with language, ethics are critical to Jude. In co-founding PINA, Jude helped create an option for professional development for PDC graduates. She mentions how some refer to her strong focus on credibility and ethics as a sort of “permi-police.” Jude is passionate about credibility as “My ethical stance is very strong. Ethically, that 72-hour curriculum with Mollison doesn’t include hands-on, doesn’t include field trips. That is 72 hours of lecture and if you have ever seen him, that’s what he did. He told stories and talks and wrote on the board. And he was magic because he could tell great stories. My courses were 92 hours so we could do all these different things. I’ve come to balance that out a little bit because I think that field trips and hands on, well-done, are an integral part of the educational process. But there are people who offer 8-day courses and they give certificates. And so that’s where we are saying ‘no’, that doesn’t work for us…What we care about is the integrity of the movement and of what is being shared as knowledge learned. So that is why I invested my hours in PINA.” And she is still serving as an advisor despite her other responsibilities. In addition to running Cascadia Permaculture, Jude also works with a nonprofit called Salmon Safe through her Agro-Ecology Northwest business. In this role, she is helping farmers and ranchers to assess management practices for water quality. This is lessening the toxic chemistries applied to the land and making their way to waterways and to increase biodiversity. “I’m really familiar with conventional agriculture, even as a rabid organic follower, just because that’s where I feel the change needs to go.” In her spare time, Jude also sells at the farmers market or trades produce from her homestead in Cottage Grove, Oregon, called Wilson Creek Gardens and she is writing a book about multifunctional hedgerows. Going back to her advanced teaching courses, Jude reflects “my goal is to change the educational paradigm one person at a time.” She describes her teaching as interactive, both in the classroom setup and in the content. This interactivity is accomplished in asking herself “How do you create wonder and awe in the classroom setting for adults or children? That’s the premise I would like to move forward with in education.” In teaching teachers, Jude is “very interested in working with people who are professional because I feel like permaculture has suffered from the hippy syndrome and that’s why I wanted to teach at the university.” We aren’t just talking traditional teachers either as less than 5 percent of the participants in her classes are traditional teachers. Participants range in nature from farmers looking for tools to teach their interns to librarians. Jude sees in this older group of people who are proactive learners more of a mission they want to accomplish in life. In regards to that mission, “My goal is giving them a way to act. How are they going to take what they’ve learned and utilize it? I’m not there to just entertain them – edutainment – I want them to make change and that’s what is so fun about doing the advanced courses is they will write me…with examples of how they have utilized what they have learned”. In regards to doing this as her career, “It’s a passion that can be set to reality and that I can make my living at it because I’m really FOCUSED ON right livelihood. Every time I teach, especially when I was doing PDCs, every single module we taught covered how can you make a living doing this. It doesn’t have to be la-la-land.” And unfortunately, many see permaculture as an idealistic ‘la-la-land.’ Thus, “The more professional that we are, the more the mainstream will embrace the concepts.” This hits home for me in working within academia. Jude also points out that “If we hold our stance of integrity then it will pass the test of time. I tell all of my students, if we do have collapse, you are going to be the ones people call. You are going to be so busy you’ll be grateful you have followed this path.” To discover more about Jude, Cascadia Permaculture, and the Permaculture Institute of North America, visit: https://cascadiapermaculture.com/ and https://pina.in/ |