Rob Scott – Cybernetics and Ecological Design
Rob Scott escaped the world of compulsory education to join the School for Designing a Society as a student in 1998. Rob was a skilled complainer, but his life was changed by the School’s challenges to “say what you want” and “make a proposal”. In 2000, Rob co-founded the Urbana Permaculture Project, a non-profit dedicated to using ecological design for social change. He studied Permaculture with mIEKAL aND at Dreamtime Village and Peter Bane of Earthaven Ecovillage.
Recent Publications
Scott, R. and W.C. Sullivan. (2008.) Ecology of Fermented Foods. Human Ecology Review 15(1): 25-31.
Scott, R. and W.C. Sullivan. (2007.) A Review of Suitable Companion Crops for Black Walnut. Agroforestry Systems 71(3): 185-193.
Scott, R. and R.M. Skirvin. (2007.) Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa Michx.): A semi-edible fruit with no pests. Journal of the American Pomological Society 61(3): 135-7.
Scott, R. (2005.) Illinois Permaculture Handbook, Unpublished Masters’ Thesis. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences.
Scott, R. (2004.) Legitimate Questions. Permaculture Activist 54: 57-58.
Danielle Chynoweth – Composition and Social Change
Danielle Chynoweth has been a City Council Member and Mayor Pro Tem in Urbana, Illinois. She holds a masters degree in politics from the New School for Social Research, NYC and degrees in sculpture and politics from New College in Sarasota, Florida.
Co-founder of the Urbana-Champaign Indepedent Media Center, she helped the group purchase the downtown Urbana post office building. It now serves as a Community Media and Arts Center with a radio station, performance venue, art gallery and studios, newspaper, bike coop, and books to prisoners program. She helps illicit the social producer “inside” the socially-produced consumer by offering tools through which we think about and make the society we want to live in.
Danielle is a social change artist, currently interested in activating the edge between public and private domains, both by making art and designing a Public Arts Program for the city of Urbana. She explores how humans do and can coordinate their desires through organizations and decision making structures (like a city). On city council she helped bring about a Civilian Review Board of Police, a model energy efficient affordable neighborhood, a domestic partner registry, a living wage ordinance, fairer hiring practices, and two local anti-war resolutions.
Larry Richards — Cybernetics
Larry Richards is currently Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (organizer-coordinator-facilitator) at Indiana University East. Larry brings his administrative experience as founding chair of a department of engineering management (Old Dominion University), founding dean of a school management and aviation science (Bridgewater State College) and now chief academic officer of a small campus of a large research university (Indiana U.) to issues of organizing for social change. He holds degrees in electrical engineering (B.S.), aeronautical systems (M.S.), management (M.B.A.) and operations research (Ph.D.), with special interests in cybernetics, conversation, and the role of science, art and technology in social design and social transformation.
Richards has participated in the School for Designing a Society since its beginnings.
Selected Publications
Richards, L.D. (2007.) Connecting Radical Constructivism to Social Transformation and Design. Constructivist Foundations 2(2-3): 129-135.
Richards, L.D. (1991.) Beyond Planning: Technological Support for a Desirable Society. Systemica 8(2): 113-124.
Michael Brün – Political Economy
I discuss topics in political economy at the School for Designing a Society, have done so off and on since 1994. Otherwise I have taught at the University of Illinois, Illinois State University, and the University of Agriculture in Slovakia. Classes have included Comparative Economic Systems, Labor Economics, Economics of Women in the Labor Market, Micro- and Macroeconomics, Statistics.
Patch Adams M.D. — Social Change and Health Care
Patch Adams, medical doctor, clown, social activist and subject of the film “Patch Adams”, is founder and director of the Gesundheit Institute, a holistic medical community based on the idea that we cannot separate the health of the individual from the health of the community and of society. Patch Adams is also the author of Gesundheit, which chronicles his ideas about the U.S. health care system, and House Calls, a ‘how-to’ guide to giving care when visiting sick friends and family.
Current projects: expanding “clown diplomacy” by means of organized trips of non-professional clowns to refugee camps, shelters, checkpoints and other places where systemic violence has crushed the human spirit; creating five 2 hour professional films, to be shown on PBS, on the topic of “What Is Your Love Strategy?”