Dr. Peter Bishop
From Dr. Peter Bishop:
Colleagues,
“All good things must come to an end.” So it is with my full-time appointment to teach in and support the futures program at the University of Houston. I have submitted my letter of resignation to the Dean, and he accepted it at a faculty meeting on Tuesday.
It has been just over 30 years since Oliver Markley allowed me to sit in on his forecasting class to learn how to teach futures studies (and where I met my wife of 30 years!). It’s been 25 years since Chris Dede invited me to teach three-day futures courses at IBM plants around the country. It has been 8 years since we moved the program from UH-Clear Lake to the College of Technology at the University of Houston. And whole lot more has happened in between– too much to describe.
But it is time to retire and turn the program over to someone who has more life left, and in many ways more talent, than I have. It’s called succession planning. We futurists are supposed to be good at that! And most of all, if our plan works out, I am most grateful that our program will be in excellent hands for many years to come.
So what of me? Frankly not as much change as you might expect. The Dean has asked me to stay on part-time to teach a few courses, manage our Certificate program, and generally represent the University and the program as I have always done. With a slightly reduced teaching load, my conscience will finally force me to push out those papers that have been hanging fire for years.
I am also still passionate about promoting futures thinking for the “rest of education.” My vision is that we teach as much about the future, to all students, as we teach about the past. And I am collaborating with other foresight programs around the world to define a common core of what we teach to improve ourselves and to guide those who would like to start new programs.
So, as I’ve said to my colleagues at the University, “You’re not rid of me yet!” And most of all, it is still a privilege and a pleasure to know and work with you all to build a new profession and a new academic discipline for the benefit of future generations…
