JANUARY 9, 2020: COMMUNITY PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: DESIGN THINKING FOR TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP WITH PACIFIC LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY ACT SIX SCHOLARS

Act Six identifies and rewards scholars who are passionate about learning, eager to foster intercultural relationships, willing to step out of their comfort zones, committed to serving those around them, and want to use their college education to make a difference on campus and in their communities at home. At Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) this includes about 25 students from freshmen to seniors.

Executive Director Dr. Divya McMillin of the Global Innovation and Design (GID) Lab was invited to facilitate two workshops for the PLU Act Six scholars on October 19 and November 16, 2019. The topic was global engagement and leadership which led to specific points of entry: what does leadership look like in a networked world? What does leadership look like on the PLU campus for underrepresented minorities? How may campus leadership be extended to global engagement? What are the ethical questions involved? The GID Lab team quickly went to work, with Program Administrator Krissy Kimura working with Fall 2019 GID Award students Lan Allison and Chris Sim assisting with slides, music, and small group facilitation. The goal was to equip students with a toolkit of design thinking strategies so they could create solutions to any issues or barriers they face.

The first workshop started with “30 circles,” an exercise that forced students to open their minds and realize the barriers and limitations they put on themselves. The next exercise was “Yes, and…” which challenged the students to stretch their thinking in terms of continuing the conversation and by building onto the idea of “yes.” The ice breakers helped the students open up and challenge themselves, and made them eager to see how they could apply design thinking to their lives.

The workshop continued with a lecture on the impact of design thinking, what global learning looks like, and the struggles behind changing the status quo. This showed students how design thinking and global learning can help address diversity in everyday settings, which is a barrier many of the students are facing on campus. After the lecture, students paired up and interviewed each other to identify and rank barriers. They wrote and/or illustrated the best and worst solutions to their problems and presented to their cohort. The GID Lab team was impressed at how receptive and engaged the entire group was and how the students look out for each other and regard one another as family.

As a follow-up to the first workshop, the GID Lab team sent out a survey to gather data about the barriers the students were facing on campus. Majority of the students submitted responses that the team collated using affinity mapping. By grouping similar responses, we started to notice common themes – including the need to understand/define the problem, the importance of connections, self-care, and inclusion. The GID Lab team enjoyed this activity so much that we ended up including it as an activity in the second workshop.

We opened the second workshop with a “5 Why’s” exercise so students could begin brainstorming solutions and get to the root of their problems or barriers. Afterwards, we led them through an affinity mapping exercise, which resulted in many of the same themes the GID Lab team identified. The students used the rest of the time to prototype solutions that they shared out at the end of the session. While there were many innovative and creative solutions, some of the best were the most simple (e.g., developing a calendar for time management). The team enjoyed working with the Act Six scholars and hopes they’ll continue applying design thinking moving forward.