The journey continues: Intermittent Ph.D. diary #1

I still contend that the loneliest Ph.D. to do is one in the field of sustainability. Maybe especially in the field of sustainability as interpreted through the practice of design. I can’t be sure, but it’s a gut feeling I have about it. There is a vast community of sustainabilists (sustainabilers? sustainabilitons?), though, so I know I’m not entirely alone. I feel that the effects of COVID-19 are also exaggerating the level of isolation I’m feeling. Even though I’m not really isolated, I mean, I’m married with kids and my dad lives with us, so I’ve got company. But there is an umbra of hovering doom, it seems, right? Maybe not doom, but a kind of foreboding or feeling of things-yet-to-come floating around in the ether. That’s the feeling that’s been so hard to shake since March or so. How are you doing?

Back to the thing at hand!

My focus for this Ph.D. is on the use of design thinking within a sustainability context, specifically in a rural community trying to discover and properly address local sustainability issues. I’m interested in how the design process can interact with and be informed by backcasting, specifically in terms of checking on the future state of solved problems.

I’m most of the way through completing my IRB application for the practicum (pilot study), and I hope to get that wrapped up this semester. Though to be honest, I’m expecting that I will need next semester to finish out the practicum due to the length of time for the IRB approval process.

Aside from the practicum work, I’m also writing my dissertation critique this semester. I chose one from Fielding Graduate University because that was my alternative choice if I hadn’t attended Saybrook. Next semester — in addition to wrapping up the practicum, I bet — I will be doing literature reviews and then defending the first three chapters of my dissertation. If that goes well, I can start the actual dissertation research itself.