Amy Parsons [00:00:04] Hi, I’m Amy Parsons, president of Colorado State University and host of “The Next 150” podcast. We have so many remarkable people in our community. And this is where we’re going to hear their stories. We’re going to get their perspectives on CSU’s next 150 years and gather their very best advice for today’s CSU students. Let’s get started. Rams. Today. I’m so excited to have two amazing guests with us. CSU’s very own Dr. Martín Carcasson and Sam Houghteling. Thank you for being here on “The Next 150” podcast. You know that I’m very excited to talk with you today. This is my bread and butter coming from College of Liberal Arts, Political Science Department, myself. I love talking with you both about what you do. I’ve really admired all the dedication and expertise that you’ve shown in this last year in cultivating civic engagement here on campus, including guiding us through the Thematic Year of Democracy over the past year. So thank you for all that work. I’m excited to dive into it today. But to get us going, we’re going to do an icebreaker. So I’m going to ask you both to reach into that little bowl there and pull out a question.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:01:06] I got two.

 

Amy Parsons [00:01:08] Okay.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:01:10] And I have five.

 

Amy Parsons [00:01:11] Perfect. All right. Number two. Martín, what is your favorite speaker event from this Thematic Year of Democracy? We had a lot.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:01:18] Yeah. Yeah. Certainly, Dr. Putnam’s work was really important, and I’m playing with a lot of those ideas, but I think Ron Daniels coming in, you know, with the book, what what universities owe democracy. A lot of ideas there that have really been percolating and excited to kind of dig into that. So.

 

Amy Parsons [00:01:33] Yeah. I agree with you there. That was an amazing day. Okay, Sam, if you could instantly become an expert in something new, what would that be?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:01:43] You know, right now, with everything that’s going on in the world, I should probably say something like artificial intelligence. But but honestly, I think it’s, I think it’s what Martín does. I think it’s the polarization stuff, because that is the area that we don’t have technical solutions that we really need to dig deep and figure out moving forward.

 

Amy Parsons [00:02:01] And we learned a lot about that this year, didn’t we? With speakers like Ron Daniels and Robert Putnam and whatnot. So we’ll get into that in a minute. So, Martín, you’re a professor of communication studies here at CSU, the founder and director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation and a faculty member for CSU’s Masters of Public Policy and Administration Program. Your research focuses on helping local communities, including Northern Colorado address wicked problems, some will say intractable problems, more productively through improved public communication and community problem solving and collaborative decision-making. Take us back to the beginning a little bit. What drew you to CSU in Fort Collins and how you ended up founding the center?

 

Martín Carcasson [00:02:41] What drew me to Fort Collins in particular, I actually had a sister who had been in Denver for about ten years before I got here. And when you come up to Colorado from Texas in the summer, you don’t like to leave. So I certainly know when a, when a CSU job came open and it kind of fit what I did, it was certainly the target. I grew up in Houston and spent some time in in Dallas. I didn’t want the big city. So Fort Collins was just kind of exactly the size of city for the work I want to do. And then what drew me to CSU, you know, part of that, the CBD kind of came out of our department used to support the debate team, and that ended a few years before I got here for a variety of reasons. But what they liked about the debate team is it would have these kind of public events. So they get my job description like number seven on a list of duties was like develop some sort of program that gets students involved in local issues. And so there was an interest in really kind of digging in locally. And my work had been shifting from national to local, primarily for my mental health to get away from national politics. So it just seemed like a really good fit for some of the ideas I was playing with.

 

Amy Parsons [00:03:41] Well, you know, they say all politics are local, right? On some level. So talk to us a little bit about, give us some examples of the work that the center is involved in.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:03:50] Yeah. So that, you know, the center serves as an impartial resource. We we do a lot of work for the city of Fort Collins, for the county, for school districts, community organizations and the university. So we basically serve as this kind of local convener, hopefully a trusted source. I train students in my classes as facilitators, so we design and run innovative events to to help people have the kind of conversations we need to have for democracy to work.

 

Amy Parsons [00:04:11] Yeah. And I’ve seen firsthand the skills of your students that you train and their ability to be facilitators, which I personally think is a skill that they will use no matter what their discipline is, no matter what they study later in life. It’s it’s extremely important. And I want to give a here here, too, to Fort Collins. Right. In your experience coming here. I think that Fort Collins is one of the best college towns in the country. And it’s no wonder it draws talent like you come and want to stay. So, Sam, so you’re the founding director of the Straayer Center for Public Service Leadership here at CSU. Prior to working at CSU, you worked with the City of Fort Collins as a program coordinator, an analyst in sustainability and economic health. You are the state of Colorado Governor’s Fellow in 2021, and you have extensive experience working in the local community. Prior to moving to Colorado, you worked as a director for a Massachusetts-based nonprofit and intern U.S. Congressional Office, and now you’re pursuing your Ph.D. at CSU in political science. Really? I didn’t know that.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:05:04] Correct.

 

Amy Parsons [00:05:05] Amazing. How’s your PhD program going?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:05:07] It’s it’s going well. I’m a lifelong learner. It’s one of the things that I talk about with a lot of the public service practitioners that we meet with and work with out in the various civic ecosystems here in Colorado. You’ve got to find ways to, you know, continue to sharpen that blade. And so after about a year of coming to CSU decided to up the ante, if you will, and pursue a Ph.D. in political science with an emphasis in public administration, public policy, and specifically local government and environmental policy. And so, not surprisingly, I have worked quite a bit with Martín. When I worked at the city, I worked quite a bit with Martín and got to know the incredible work of the CPD through that experience. And Martín is actually one of my committee members on my, on my Ph.D. dissertation committee.

 

Amy Parsons [00:05:53] So, Martín, how’s he doing?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:05:56] Well, to go back to what Martín just mentioned related to Dr. Putnam, when Robert Putnam came to campus, one of the things that he talked about was this concept of bridging and bonding capital, what brings folks together. And what I’m interested in is how to… through the lens of American federalism, how do public organizations work together? What motivates government to work with another level of government? What is that bridging and bonding capital look like? Not in individuals and social networks, but through bureaucracy. And what that kind of leads us to is this notion of democratic bridging institutions who right now is predisposed to really help us navigate the challenges that we’re experiencing, and, you know, all of the various wrinkles in democracy. And I think one of the things that Martín and I are finding is that public research universities, specifically land grants, have a really important role to play in this space. And so we’re both playing with that idea as practitioners, as academics and as just people who are, you know, dedicated citizens who are worried about sort of what’s going on in the world around us and trying to make a difference.

 

Amy Parsons [00:07:04] Those are really interesting concepts. Let’s, let’s double down on that just for a minute, because I love this conversation, and Robert Putnam talked about how the U.S. right now is more polarized than it has been for the last hundred years. And he showed us all the statistics that prove that and said if we’re going to be able to bend that curve back up, it’s going to be through young people like our students at Colorado State University. And so what role does a public land grant university where we have tens of thousands of these young people here with us for a period of time on those concepts of social bridging and social bonding. And then I’m fascinated by what you just said in terms of scaling that up to organizations and bridging and bonding and perhaps even universities as well. So for for both of you, help me sort of unpack that a little bit about the role of a public land grant university in the lives of our students, who are we creating these people whose job it is to make us less polarized and more productive.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:08:01] Do a rock, scissor, paper shoot? You take it.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:08:04] Yeah, I mean, I’ll say most of my work is in the community, right? And I work a lot with city managers kind of across the country. And probably the number one insight from that work is what communities need to again have the kind of conversation, engagement to take on their shared problems more to deal with the polarization, to deal with the information disorder. Right? Which is another kind of big part of it is these bridging organizations. They need organizations that are focused on developing the kind of mindsets and skill sets to help us have these conversations and engage and spark collaboration. So, you know, going back to land grants, I mean, I think that’s a it’s a critical role for universities to do, not only because when I talk about the CBD, I always I’ve talked about it as being a win win, win win. But the students get this incredible skill set of me as a professor. We saw that with your answers, too. I get to bounce back and forth between theory and practice constantly, right? I’m not just kind of ivory tower in the books, right? Most of what I write about is from actual real experience. The university gets great publicity, and playing this role in the community and then the community gets increased capacity. So as I’m going across the country trying to help cities develop capacity when they have a local university that takes this role seriously, it’s such a great fit to take on those dual challenge of the polarization and the information overload.

 

Amy Parsons [00:09:17] Absolutely, yeah. A benefit to the community, benefit to the university and benefit to the individual students who are learning those skills, who when they graduate and go into other communities, they take that with them and build that capacity there.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:09:27] And it’s not because, you know, you talk a lot about civic education and often civic education is seen like something extra, right? Like they’re here to learn a job. Well, when the civic education is about how to come together across differences, to take on a very complex problem. That line between civic education and job education blurs. Right? Because that’s exactly what our employers need is how do you deal how do you work with people on complex issues?

 

Amy Parsons [00:09:50] 100%. And the statistics also show that even just five, ten years from now, the majority of jobs that our students are going into then don’t exist today. We don’t know what that workforce is going to look like. We didn’t know that “Ai Developer” would be the largest job today. We didn’t know that five years ago. Right? So the skills that our students need, as you said, it’s not extracurricular. Those are the skills to navigate these issues and these societal issues that are coming our way that we don’t even know that they’re there yet.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:10:17] Nice having a president from the liberal arts, isn’t it?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:10:18] Is it is It is. I actually saw a tweet a few days ago that reminds me of this conversation and it said, “A.I. isn’t going to take your job. Someone who knows how to use A.I. and manipulate it and and use that in their systems is going to take your job.” So I think what you’re saying is right. We don’t know what disruptive innovation is around the corner. But historically, what I think this university has done really well is put out people who care about their communities and have incredibly robust critical thinking skills. So they’re really active. They know their neighbor and they’re working on solving problems in their communities. We’ve been doing that for 150 years. And if we kind of just go back to that bread and butter, I think a lot of these issues, you know, all of a sudden they’re not insurmountable. Because, you know, this is something that I picked up from Martín, but, you know, we when we think of the polarization, a lot of that plays on sort of brain chemistry. But the other side of that brain chemistry is the fact that we are really altruistic. We’re really empathetic as human beings. And when we come together, we solve problems. That’s fantastic because we need more of that.

 

Amy Parsons [00:11:19] We need more of that. Yeah. Let’s let’s go back to Sam, your center for a minute, the Straayer Center for Public Service Leadership. Talk a little bit about the development of the center and the work that it’s doing today.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:11:31] I appreciate that, too, because I think that’s a good segway into something that I wanted to mention a little while ago about agency and students. But this at the Straayer Center was founded in 2017 with the mission to ensure that students are equipped with the knowledge, skills and ability to navigate public service ecosystems. We fundamentally believe that students are not just future leaders, they are current leaders and that we need to find opportunities for them to flex those muscles, because if we don’t, it’s going to be really difficult to develop them 20, 30 years down the line. John Straayer taught at CSU for over 50 years. He was just an incredible figure in Colorado politics. And for close to 40 years, he ran what’s called the legislative internship program down at the state capitol, which has become or was, I should say, you know, kind of the key feeder mechanism for CSU students who were interested in going into public service leadership leadership roles across the state of Colorado. So in 2017, when I started at CSU, our mayor, three local city managers, one of our county commissioners, four members of the legislature, one of our sitting U.S. senators, and one of our past sitting one of our past governors for the state of Colorado. All graduates of that program.

 

Amy Parsons [00:12:42] Yeah. That’s amazing.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:12:43] And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It just goes on and on and on from there. And so we realized, hey, we have this incredible program at the state capitol. We need to focus on making sure that students have the opportunity to go to Washington, D.C., like you did as a student, but through a more institutionalized formal program. So since 2018, we’ve had over 50 students go to Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C., through what we’re calling the CSU in D.C. program. And then we also focused on the local level. We realized that there were incredible career opportunities at the local level, but the local level was also unique in that we didn’t see the same levels of polarization. There was, there wasn’t as much of a lack of trust like we see at the federal level. There was some significant trust, and that trust allows for risk taking, but really calculated risk taking in a way where communities can innovate and try things out and get better. And then some of those ideas actually scale up to the states and then to the federal level. So this whole notion of the states is the laboratory of democracy. Well, we’re we kind of noticed was that it’s actually the cities which are currently the laboratories of democracy where we’re seeing these sort of forward thinking reforms. And so we built a number of programs to ensure that students could intern with cities and counties, but we also wanted to have some active sort of experiential learning programs in that space. And so that’s sort of just the tip of the work we do. We have like a lot of events and engagement, but I think the internships are really important because what we hear frequently from students is that they want to have a sense of agency related to these quote unquote insurmountable problems that we see out in the real world. And so you’re learning about politics and policymaking. You’re developing critical thinking skills, really strong oral and written communication skills. It’s then you then take that and you apply that to real world problem solving through an internship. And that’s, so students come back from these internships both with sort of a more profound sense of career readiness, but also just they’re, they’re excited, they’re passionate, and they’re, they’re taking what they’re learning and applying it to these professional settings where they’re making a difference in their communities. And so I think that, you know, I oftentimes encourage students to to engage with both of our programs, because I think that what you said earlier related to that sort of facilitative leadership, like, that is one of those critical sort of soft skills that moving forward are going to be a huge differentiator for many of these students in their lives, whether that’s professionally, personally, whatever it may be. So you take that and then you add on some policy chops and a few other things and you go and work with the city, you’re going to you’re going to be really successful. You’re going to enjoy that work and you’re going to find a way to continue that work is what we’ve experienced.

 

Amy Parsons [00:15:21] Yeah, I mean, the centers that you lead and the impacts on the students and the experiences that they get are so incredibly valuable and really so unique to Colorado State University. What can happen here? I wonder how we inspire more students who are taking, you know, who are in biomedical sciences, who are in engineering, who are in all these places to really engage with the centers and make that part of their undergraduate experience here, so they’ve, they’ve, they’ve, they’re exercising those muscles, as you said, those muscles of civic engagement and democracy so they’re strong when they come out because we’re going to need all of these students engaged if we’re going to make progress going forward.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:15:54] And if there are astudents listening, we bring in about 15 students every semester. It’s through an application process. But then the program you know, our program is curricular. So you’re taking a three credit hour class, your first semester. You come back for at least a second semester, do a one hour practicum. That allows us to to start each semester with experienced students and kind of the ground running. That second semester going to be repeated. But yeah, if there’s any students out there that sound like that’s interesting, we’re always recruiting every semester for that new horde, new cohort of students coming in to be facilitators.

 

Amy Parsons [00:16:21] So great. How about you for students?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:16:23] So what I would say is, so we’re based in the political science department in the College of Liberal Arts, but we work with students from all colleges and majors. And so any student who’s interested in pursuing a career in public service or leadership, there are a number of places on campus that you should stop by. There’s the president’s leadership program, key civics, ASCSU SLiCE, etc.. over in the Lory Student Center. There is the Center for Public Deliberation, obviously. There are, there’s the career center that you can stop by and have a great conversation with an advisor. But if you haven’t ever come by the Straayer Center, which is now located in Morgan Library 110 E, come see me this semester or sometime next spring, we would love to have a conversation about, sort of, how you take the various things that you’re passionate about now and apply it to a public sector leadership role, because trust me, there’s a way to do it.

 

Amy Parsons [00:17:17] That’s amazing. That is the value of a undergraduate education at a place like CSU. Big public land grant institution, you’re going to get a great education in whatever discipline, but layering on opportunities like this and this real world experience and preparing you for the future, that is the value. Right? Of attending a school like this, in my opinion. So we just wrapped up an amazing year on the Thematic Year of Democracy, which, which for me is just getting us ready for it to be a permanent priority, which it, it has been for a long time, but really focusing with a sharp focus on democracy and our role in that, and you two are leaders in that. What are a couple of things that you saw that we did right in this last year on the Thematic Year of Democracy, that you want to make sure that we keep going or the types of programs or discussions that we had?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:18:03] You know, the first thing that I would plug is the democracy summit that we hosted from April 8th to 12th. We had roughly 1500 participants, community members, public sector leaders, students, faculty, staff, you name it. It was really, really exciting to see the level of engagement, the level of and of interest. And I would say from both our, our students and for the, from the community at large, the community at large was was really, really excited about digging in here and excited about CSU sort of saying, “Hey, this is, this is a place that we have a really important story to tell. We have a really deep history and we’re going to be doing more moving forward.” With our students, I think that they were really excited about having conversations that were maybe less sugarcoated about the true challenges that our democratic systems face. I know that many of our students are looking to November just like they were in 2020 or 2022, 2016 and saying, “Well, you know, this system, it doesn’t seem to be working for me. Like, I don’t see myself reflected in the candidates. How can I make a difference?” And the answer, of course, is, well, you’re looking at one specific federal office, and that is, you know, the one that we oftentimes spend the most time talking about, especially in the media, the presidency. But let’s take a step back and let’s think about this whole ecosystem here and all the various touchpoints where you can get engaged. And that’s what they really want. They want to see a change and they want to be a part of that change. And so, I think what folks like Martín and I do is we try to equip them with the skills and some of the knowledge base. And then it’s, hey, the world is your oyster. What can we achieve together?

 

Martín Carcasson [00:19:49] Yeah. I mean, playing off that, I think, you know, to answer your question in terms of what really jumped out to me was kind of the variety, right? I mean, so we talked I mean, you talked to a couple of senators, right? And a couple of governors. And, you know, so we did some of the national stuff. We did some of the state stuff. We did a lot of deliberation kind of stuff. But we also did kind of more adversarial or kind of activists. You know, there’s there’s lots of ways of thinking about democracy. So I think we were able to kind of capture a lot of that complexity. And then embedded in that of of this growing need to defend democracy. Right? I mean, the reality is, is is democracy isn’t easy. It forces us to have some tough conversations. And so being able to focus on that. Right? David Mathews is the President of Kettering foundation I work with many years, always makes us distinctions of the problems of democracy and the problems in democracy. So the problems in democracy are more like the issues, you know, climate change or inequality, those type of things. Problems of democracy is more like this polarization and information overload, and how do we kind of, you know, identity, you know, and when you spend more time on that. Right? Because I think when we’re so polarized, we’re going to be unable to deal with any of the problems in democracy. So, so the democracy year, I think, shifted that focus and say, “Hey, how do we shore up some of this area, how do we think deeply about, you know, what do we need to do to kind of support democracy and figure out the skill sets that we need to keep?

 

Amy Parsons [00:21:09] I agree. The variety that we had was amazing. And the people who participated and came from the community, from student, from faculty, staff, from, from everywhere was amazing, as well. I think that was the secret sauce. Even having some celebrities like Jane Fonda or Kamau Bell, who come at it from a very different perspective, but you hear it in a different way and it inspires different types of conversations. So you mentioned the election. So let’s come back to that for a minute, because for a lot of our students, many thousands and thousands of our students, this will be their first election. They are showing up registering to vote when they get here. This will be the first time at the ballot box. Their first time may be seeing debates and and participating as a voter in this election. I know there’s a lot of people just not looking forward to this election and thinking that it’s going to be really dicey. I’m excited about it as a political science geek because I think it’s such an opportunity to capture these conversations with especially first time voters and our very young students who are coming into this for the first time who weren’t here to vote for these candidates the last time. This is their first time, sometimes we forget that. So how can we capture that excitement and attention on campus this fall to really get students engaged in a new and fresh way in democracy?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:22:21] That’s a tough question.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:22:23] You’re the voting guy.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:22:24] It’s a no, it’s a really good question, but it’s a…

 

Martín Carcasson [00:22:26] I mean, CSU has a great record, right? In terms of, and it’s nice that we’re, we’re still pushing ourselves to even be even better on that in terms of how many are voting in support of that.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:22:37] Yeah. If you look at data from the last 40, 50 years, you know, if you’re getting 50% voting in a presidential election, you’re doing a pretty good job.

 

Amy Parsons [00:22:43] Yeah.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:22:43] CSU’s close to 80% student body. I mean, we’re… Congressional District Two, which we live in here in, in Fort Collins has the second-highest voter turnout in the United States of America, aside from one congressional district in Minnesota. Voting is, is the first and one of the most important things that you can do as an active citizen. And so I think that we want to just encourage all these students to vote. If I were them, I would also think about the ease of voting in a state like Colorado and how we value accessibility. And we we want as many people to vote as possible. We actually kind of, you know, look at results and we think we’re going to get better results the more people are involved. And that’s one of those in Democratic theory that’s actually sort of the there’s a question about that, if you will. But, you know, here in Colorado, we make it easy to vote and voting is that first step, so we want as many students as possible to take that first step. But it’s only a first step in terms of a life of active civic engagement. And so, think about volunteer opportunities, maybe that’s with a city or county board or commission or with a local nonprofit. Internships, other leadership development programs at CSU. The list goes on and on and on and on from there. But we are hoping to to bring first year students in, say, hey, you know, we know that you’re not enthused per se right now, but this is, this is the method that we have. We want you to vote. We want you to vote your whole ballot. And then we’re going to talk about that. We’re going do a, we’re going to do an election recap afterwards, and then we’re going to provide you with all these other touch points for how you can get involved in moving forward. I think that’s the secret sauce at CSU, is we, not only do we have really high voter turnout with our student body and encourage that, we don’t stop. A lot of other campuses it’s, “All right. Let’s get let’s get our students voting and then we’re good.” And here it’s, “No, no, no. We want we want you to vote and we want you to be engaged in a ton of other ways.” We also know from the academic literature that if students vote their first election, their second election and their third election, so we know they will be lifelong…

 

Amy Parsons [00:24:48] It’s a habit.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:24:48] It’s a habit that you form and you become lifelong voters. So that first election here is really important if you’re 18 or 19 or 20 and it’s that first election that you’re voting and we want to make sure that you’re building those civic muscles, not to keep using the muscle metaphor repeatedly, but I mean, it’s it’s pretty…

 

Amy Parsons [00:25:06] Right, and I think, I think our responsibility in this, too, is to set that expectation that we expect everybody to vote. We expect them to register to vote. We can do it right at orientation, right? And this is an expectation that we, that we have. And maybe you’re the one who is leading dialog about issues leading up to it. And then you, Sam, are the one who’s going to do the post-debate wrap up conversation. So I like where we’re going with this. Martín, what do you think about the election coming up and how we can use it for good?

 

Martín Carcasson [00:25:31] Yeah, I mean, I agree that yeah, yeah, everyone should vote. That has to be kind of a focus and certainly for us to kind of create those lifelong habits. But yeah, I’ll also kind of play with, I don’t like if voting is seen as the overall focus, right? That is kind of the first step in a way. I like to think when I when we’re running one of our events, we have 100 people in the room and my students are there holding forth and there’s 15 different tables that are having a tough conversation about a local issue. For me, that’s democracy.

 

Amy Parsons [00:26:00] Yeah, yeah.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:26:00] You know, that’s the quintessential, kind of, image, not, you know. We actually even created little small stickers that say, “I deliberated,” right? So we give those stickers out at the end like you’ve done your civic duty today.

 

Amy Parsons [00:26:11] Yeah.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:26:11] So we got to think about, you know, democracy required. Yes, voting requires a lot beyond that, right? And overall, if we’re for engaging people as collaborative problem solvers, I think that’s the heart of democracy that we need to kind of bring forth in our students.

 

Amy Parsons [00:26:26] Absolutely. I agree. So as as we’re wrapping up, I always like to ask a final question about advice that you have for our students. At the end of the day, student success is our number one priority. And as students are coming to campus, no matter what they want to study here, as leaders in your field and here at CSU, what advice would you give to incoming students at CSU?

 

Sam Houghteling [00:26:48] So this is advice that I received probably 15 or 20 years ago. Basically, follow your passion. Figure out what you’re really, really passionate about, and then find a way to turn that into a career. I mean, I think that if you start with something you’re passionate about, you’re not going to go wrong because it’s going to be something that you’re going to wake up every day and say, “Yeah, that yesterday was really hard. But I’m still very dedicated to solving this problem or helping these people or figuring out a solution to whatever issue it might be.” And, you know, that’s one of the things that I see we have a unique in the political science department here at CSU, we are one of the political science departments across the country with a real focus on environmental policy and politics. And that is what our students are passionate about. It is climate change. It is single use plastics. It’s figuring out how we can continue to, you know, live on this planet. And our in our kids, and their kids, and their kids. And so it’s the intersection between those social systems and democracy and those natural systems and ecosystems. And, and that is I mean, talk about a place to be quite literally, like, engaging on that work, a land grant like CSU with the historic strengths that we have in food systems and natural resources. And then to, to couple that with these, you know, kind of really important issues of our day, I think that’s… What I see in the students who are who are the most active with our internship programs is they’re trying to find a way to create that true sense of agency. And that starts with passion.

 

Amy Parsons [00:28:18] That’s great advice, Martín.

 

Sam Houghteling [00:28:19] So I’d say two things. One, and we’ve talked about this, is tapping into kind of this, this curiosity, intellectual humility. I mean, a lot of my work is tied to social psychology and brain science, and unfortunately, our brains are wired. We want simple stories. So I think particularly your undergrad days is is a chance to push back on that. To get curious. I know my best memories from undergrad is, you know, sitting back in my dorm with 5 or 6 people from different majors and talking about issues and seeing, you know, cultivating those relationships as lifelong relationships, you’ll need, particularly the people that think differently than you. And the second thing is, and we talked a little bit about this in terms of facilitated leadership. I mean, I’ve talked a lot about that, that I think the superpower of 21st century leaders is going to be the ability to bring people together across perspectives. So while you’re here, learn those skill sets. Learn how to ask good questions. Learn how to listen well, right? Learn how to figure things out. And and so that traditional leader of, you know, rah rah and can kind of fire people up and that still can be useful in certain situations. But, but with the world that we live in now, the people that can bring people together and have that, that different kind of facilitative skill set is what our communities need, which our organizations need. So make sure while you’re here, you, you, you learn those. You take the classes that are going to equip you for that.

 

Amy Parsons [00:29:36] Could not agree with you more. That’s great advice from both of you. Thank you so much and thanks for your time and what you do for CSU. It’s a real differentiator for Colorado State University. Having The Straayer Center, having The Center for Public Deliberation, giving all of our students the opportunities to learn this and to apply their passions and to exercise those muscles on democracy. I think we do that uniquely well, and that’s in large part because of the work that you do. So thanks for spending your time with us today and providing this great advice to our students.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:30:04] Thank you.

 

Martín Carcasson [00:30:04] Go Rams.

 

Amy Parsons [00:30:05] Go Rams. Yep. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I’m Amy Parsons, president of Colorado State University. And you’re listening to CSU’s “The Next 150,” where we explore what comes next for CSU by chatting with changemakers who are already leading the charge and shaping our next 150 years. I’m gathering their very best advice for today’s CSU students. Stay tuned to wherever you get podcasts for our next outstanding conversation. Go Rams.