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Right now at Arizona State University in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and more specifically in the Humanities, there is leadership interest in re-imagining how the institution interacts with the students, with a more career and experiential learning focus. The humanities programs have a hard time "selling" their degree programs to prospective students - but by incorporating Hacking College into their programs, they wouldn't need to sell - the students would naturally select them as a way to best meet the student's needs

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Just one example - pre-health students. There are a lot of misconceptions and unknown information for students who want to be doctors, pharmacists, etc... (especially for first-generation, low-income students). One of the biggest ones is that they should do a major in a science. From my own experience, that is often one of the worst decisions some of these students make, and they are rarely challenged by that assumption by their science major advisors. I was an advisor in a major that students ended up in after they had done poorly in their science major they had no interest in. When I asked them why they did that major, they most often said they just assumed or were told by others that was the best major. Most of them had no interest in their actual major. Then, when I helped them get into a better fit major, many of them thrived - but it was already too late for most of them to be accepted into medical school (or other competitive health professional schools) because they had killed their GPA. Hacking College implementation just for that group of students could be life-changing for so many students.

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Isn't part of the question "how do you introduce them to these ideas?" In a way, you can say this is more generally just introducing them to college, what it's about, how to proceed, what to be thinking about. I always say to incoming students--and these are traditional aged students--you don't know what you don't know. What you can do is try to deepen and engage seriously with interests you already have--and to stretch into interests you think you might have, but have never had the chance to explore.

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Thinking about one's own intellectual curiosities and creating vocational purpose from that, and then designing a field of study based on that, is clearly a time-consuming process. If it's going define a student's journey through higher education, it has to start on day one. One question I have is how to adapt it for transfer students, who arrive in their third year or so.

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Silos between departments and divisions prevent us from collaborating effectively and handing students over to one another as they explore their interests.

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This is their lives, and career is not necessarily tied to major. They deserve to learn the “field of study” way and get more out of their education and their lives.

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Often it's parents whose concerns need to be quelled as much as it is the students.

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Our group debated whether it was possible to make small changes to the system through small covert changes through a paradigm shift, or whether the entire system needed to be uprooted and restructured. It was fascinating!

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Seattle University's core is topic-forward. Students can pick their gen ed courses based on Wicked Problem-type topics - gender, environment, poverty, political division, etc. If students take at least four of their Core classes associated with a common topic, they get a certification. So, they can approach a problem like poverty from different disciplinary perspectives, such as art, science, social science, and literature.

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Coming from the University of Minnesota, we have a huge network and are centrally located. We also could collaborate with the Big 10 and MNSCU schools. There’s a lot of potential. There’s also the possibility of being a feeder from community colleges, and students could start early in high school to learn field of study.

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In my experience working with high achieving students, they begin their college experiences with so many incoming credits and intense plans to graduate early. They are NOT interested in taking any course not required on their degree plan. Introducing these concepts early, before AP, IB, CCP credits rack up, encourage students to reframe the purpose of college/university experiences.

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This approach is really about how to support students in their process of self-actualization. The sooner we can introduce students to what it means to hack (i.e., self-define) their major, the more time they have to work through and iterate on their ideas and the more opportunities they will be able to explore and integrate with university support.

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Resource shared: Career Self-Discovery Assessment

https://library.usi.edu/record/1596525

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Intentionality and a clearer path forward amidst all the ambiguity (ambiguity stresses our students out, but having a process with steps and guidance reassures them that it is not a “waste” of their time).

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Aside from the personal benefits/development - money. The sooner the students understand how to "hack" their college experience hopefully they will save money through time to degree, etc.

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There is so much pressure regarding the transactional nature of advising and the financial constraints of departments.

Faculty will need to partner with departments, as many student serving offices are only offices of 1-2 people.

We feel that otherwise the financial structure will need to radically restructure itself.

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From a design thinking perspective, I'd rather "fail" early and learn from it than late. Try as much as you can out as early as you can. The trying out can be the research interviews, shadowing, attending industry events, etc. The earlier the better

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The curriculum at the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study aligns very close to the FoS approach outlined in Hacking Culture. Our entire institution is designed to meet the needs of students who come into college longing to design their own curriculum by combining work across disciplines to help them achieve their academic and professional goals. Our entire institution is set up to enable students to benefit from the approaches described in Hacking College. It's worth checking out our student profiles if you want to see a range of students who have been able to benefit from these ideas and this approach.

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We need to change the entire narrative around college education in the US. The current "it's the only way to get a good paying job" both over and undersells its value. Hacking college offers a vision of higher education as self-discovery and self-transformation that both traditional age and returning students want and need (at least I think and hope so!).

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We serve students across the nation at a large variety of institutions and on various educational paths. It would be challenging to connect students with faculty on campus when we simply can't have that breadth of knowledge of all the institutions. We can, however, be connectors as part of a system of folks who are engaging in this work. A collaborative approach toward this work across institutions, organizations, and others would be amazing.

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Required cornerstone class in 1st semester, followed by guided capstone process in 3rd and 4th year, so the students are more likely to see the process rather than just the product. Our student success coaches are also all student development professionals, some with PhDs, and they are very focused on changing student contexts, contextualization of studies and experiences, and helping students see that they are learning to learn. Additionally, our administrators are supportive of us initiating processes like in Hacking College and we use such things as recognized service and benefit toward promotion.

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We have a program called Career Collaborative where students can work one on one with a career councellor. Faculty/Advisors also are a catalyst for these conversations. It helps to be a small college where these conversations can happen in casual settings as well.

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I would argue that elements of this work could (and maybe should) be happening in middle and high school. Adolescence is the optimal time to engage students in considering what they would like their future self to look like and the impact they want their future self to be having on the world around them. This is when they are already trying to figure out who they are as independent beings - if they are exploring what that might look like in middle school, once they hit high school they can already be making connections and learning the research investigative inquiry process. 

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Adults have shut children down so many times that they don't want to say what they're interested in anymore.

Recommendation: Try saying, "I know, but if you did know, what would you be interested in doing if you knew what you wanted to do?"

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The catalysts are the individual faculty/advisors. Through 1 on 1 conversations sometimes we can catch the students in short conversation and help them with these concepts, but the caveat is we have to know what we're looking for/see a student struggling with these issues.

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Outreach among career center to build relationships with faculty; for example, get to the place where just as faculty might bring a class to the library, they go to career center as well.

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Integrating "career readiness" into all our student experiences is a part of our strategic plan and our entire campus seems increasingly on board.

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In our group, Jeffrey Stamp mentioned that it's hard to get students to stop and take a moment to have those nuanced Field of Study conversations. It struck me that for students I've worked with, the stopping point is often a sticking point: can't decide a major, changing a major, can't pass math, etc. I'm wondering how to reach those students floating in the muddy middle of academic competency and that sort of "standing in the breadline" approach to connecting learning to whatever is next.

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College used to be seen as a place of self-discovery. Now it's seen as a place for guided pathways-- and you focus so much on career. You never want to take a course you don't NEED. Could some time be spent in a course to work on self-discovery during a course within a semester?

All of the curriculum committees have a say in how this happens... that's a barrier.

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We have two faculty tracks; tenure track/research and some teaching, and non-tenure track/teaching almost exclusively. The tenure track folk feel trapped by the process into performing a more traditional role (whether they actually are trapped is another question). We have extremely limited resources (we only have around 30 faculty total) so we all become overwhelmed by our required courses and service. I’ve seen this really interfere with my colleague’s willingness to experiment with wicked teaching to address the wicked problems. We also fight against student expectations, as they are so focused on “correct answers” and clear pathways that many really don’t want to veer into less traditional ways of learning.

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Contrary to older generations, our younger generations haven't learned the skills of "connecting" and networking yet. The larger the Rolodex, the more opportunities you'll have!

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One problem for any institution is how to infuse this approach throughout the student experience. Faculty have the largest amount of time with students and arguably the greatest influence but how will they learn about and be able to implement this approach? Most of the time books like this are read and discussed by academic administrators but not by faculty members, who may then be charged at some point with instituting whatever vehicle has been designed to deliver this message but not with a true understanding of why they are being asked to do it. So that needs to be solved. The other major problem would be advising of course.

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We considered the instances of "happenstance" that occurred in the book, and how we can't be those experiences for each of our students on campus. How do we help arrange those synergistic relationships between the right people to make synchronicities happen organically?

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Resources are the #1 barrier, to be able to give students the 1 on 1 time to navigate these problems we need more staff, more time, and therefore more money. As a large state institution, those things just don't exist.

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Tradition siloing of disciplines, as well as culture-wide thinking of higher ed as job training leads students to think they need to pick a particular major as a career choice, rather than thinking about what they care about and what problems they see that they would like to work on, and design a course of study based on that. Creating campus-wide (or at least college-wide) messaging to get students thinking differently is a challenge.

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Our organization is small and can be nimble, so we're able to pilot something like this quickly. Each of our high school scholars has a volunteer mentor with whom they work their entire senior year, and with them on board with this approach, we can really make up a lot of ground in a little bit of time.

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Time is a big barrier. How can doing the reflection, research, and outreach not feel like an extra thing that students do in spare time they don't have? Is there where for-credit career development courses come in? Are there existing processes/tasks that this can piggyback on or take the place of?

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It helps to create genuine interest and engagement in the classes/programs that the students enroll. When a student can actually see the pathway to their goal, it mainatins interest and inspiration.

It also helps to form lasting connections with the people who help them acheive their goal; expands networks for the student and in turn has a lasting impact on that student as an alumni which in the long run benefits the college via advancement/donor relations.

I do however see this approach benefiting the more outgoing/extroverted students and the question is how do we engage the more introverted students. My question to the Hacking College model is how do we meet students where they are and continue to create engaging dialogue to support the diverse range of students across campuses.

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I am an independent college counselor in a solo practice. I am careful with my students to not use the word "major" too often and instead ask them what they enjoy doing, what they want to learn more about, and where they think that might lead them. I ask many of the questions that you recommend, my favorite being the one about what they would do if their future were secure and they could do anything. I also encourage them to talk with their parents' friends, family, and friends' parents about what they do, what they studied and how they got to where they are. I want them to be able to hit the ground running once they step onto their best fit college campus to take advantage of everything they have available to them.

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We have huge budget challenges and our state is all-in on evaluating programs by ROI. In response, many of our departments are in fear for their livelihoods and are doubling down on depending the value of their individual disciplines and are unwilling to pursue interdisciplinary initiatives.

Another obstacle is that our academic affairs division is divided into 5 colleges, 3 of which are seen as vocational (Business, Natural& Health Sciences, and Education & Behavioral Sciences), making the other two (Humanities and Social Sciences, Performing and Visual Arts) non-vocational by default. I appreciate that the book calls out this kind of division. Many of our faculty know it's a mistake, but the signaling to families is problematic.

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To be frank -- time is the enemy. The longer a student is in college, the less likely they are to graduate. We need to connect students with the FoS method ASAP so that they can begin the process and start gathering contacts.

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Universalizing the process of how we approach tackling the wicked problem. For example if there is a protocol or a flowchart for our faculty/staff/students can access to know where to start can be helpful.

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On the financial side it's a huge benefit to the student to figure out their path early on and not spend additional money on extra semesters or courses. If a student can start figuring out their hidden intellectualism early on, they can be strategic about classes and internships and not extend college longer than they need.

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We recently created the Pathways Initiative which is focused on helping students identify new ways of accessing higher education, which is right in line with what Hacking College is about. I think the desire is there to adapt to what will serve students, both current and future, better.

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We are lucky to have some amazing individuals at our university who care deeply about the students, who work hard and are willing to do 'one more thing' in their already full jobs. I think having awesome people in key places is so important because the ideas in Hacking College can't be implemented by one person. You need a team.

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One issue for an institution is how to institutionalize the Hacking College process. 😃

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The social and cultural connections you need to make start early. Students need time to start making those connections to lead them to their field of study, then time to connect with key mentors, and time to develop experiences/internships/etc. This could help motivate students through their coursework and be a driving factor to what they take, what they do in their extra time, what they do during their summer, and where they are and who they know as they graduate.

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The more time we have to get students and parents to understand that the "short crosswalk from major to career" isn't automatically the way to go, and that every major can be vocational in a sense when the blank spaces are filled in with intention, the more likely we are to get them to see the truth behind what we're sharing and how exciting this can be. Even families who place a high priority on ROI might be open to this approach if we have the time to get this message out to them!

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At Thomas Edison State University, we may short change passion with getting the degree completed quickly since we are focused on degree completion.

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Our college helps students engage in the "what comes after college" process right from the beginning, as a four-year journey. Using StrengthsFinder during Orientation, students begin to understand their strengths and integrate them into what they are studying. Internships are encouraged, but I'm not sure advising always helps them understand the wicked problem or truly engage the hidden job market.

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Campus structures are not built at all to focus on wicked problems that are multi/interdisciplinary and cross campus departments.

I am at a smallish private nonprofit, and the culture of campus with its departments and budget model does not incentivize these collaborations.

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I'm wondering how I as a Philosophy instructor can incorporate an identification and exploration of students' "wicked problems."

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We are tiny, so we only have one department, which means that we all have consistent contact with each other. Cross-pollination and interdisciplinary teaching is encouraged. We not only all know each other, we all know the majority of the students as well, which leads to many mentoring opportunities. We only have BS and BA in health sciences majors, so it is also harder for students to intellectually silo. We also have a required course specifically on community engagement structured around wicked problems, but that doesn’t happen until the third or fourth year for most students. I think we are very lucky to be so small and so new, as we are coming into this with an expectation of experimentation with the curriculum.

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Available staff and faculty. Being a small private college, everyone is already doing multiple jobs and finding the time to do one more thing seems impossible.

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Thomas Edison State University focuses on degree completion, and emphasizes credit for prior learning, which is the area I work. I'm finding it interesting that the idea of our portfolio process (used for mining prior learning/passions) could be used to help students get a sense of their passion and be used as a tool of self-advising into their next step. While Hacking College focuses on traditional colleges and student pathways, I think "reverse portfolio" is a way for students to get define their potential next steps and build out what they want to do next, which for TESU, where we serve adult learners, that is their next step.

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Because the gap between what people will do in an entry-level job and what they've been exposed to in an academic setting has become so large.

In my experience, the most needed skills in most jobs are communication, time management, collaboration, and critical thinking. Helping students recognize the value of these skills independently of a knowledge domain (English, Data Science, Psychology, Engineering, etc.) is important - e.g., seeing that every major provides transferrable skills.

Additionally, every organization will have its own business processes and culture, so although a major (English, Data Science, Psychology, Engineering, etc.) provides valuable foundational knowledge, a new employee will still need to learn a lot about 'the job' and needs to be open to learning in general and learning about things outside their 'major'.

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I think one barrier to tackling wicked problems is the capacity of universities and colleges to understand each student’s own wicked problem. Academic advisors are often overloaded and focus time on course enrollment. Faculty may also not have the time within their teaching, research, and service responsibilities. Certain administrators may be poised well to speak with each of their students about wicked problems, but not everyone is in that scholarship program or the Honors College or that support program. Whose responsibility does it fall on to talk to students about wicked problems when everyone has a full plate? Revolutions in processes take time.

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BGSU has a comprehensive, university-wide life design program. Life design and hacking college are different. They benefit different populations. And while our ingrained life design mentality might actually be a barrier to implementing hacking college ideas, it does show the institutional priority of serving students and setting them up for career and life success after graduation. There are people on campus who care about student success in a variety of ways, so the support is in place for students to benefit.

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I feel like this is important because we put them in the driver's seat of their life! As faculty, staff, and family members - we can guide, encourage, provide introductions, but we need to tap into their creativity, their goals, and help them impact the world in the way that only they can.

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We have looked at our advising processes as an organization and have now begun to look at career and workforce readiness - at what point should a students receive assistance from Career Services vs if a student receives services. We are looking at Career readiness for every student.

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One barrier is identifying and articulating a wide range of experiential learning opportunities. More focused efforts on identifying and communicating these opportunities (outside of internships alone) would be helpful in reducing barriers for students to connect with areas of interest/passion

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I think the ideas in Hacking College should be introduced freshman year, with students encouraged to do research inquiry interviews before they commit to a major - if they commit to one at all. I think that if we introduced students earlier to these ideas, we would see many more independent study or interdisciplinary degrees being taken. Rather than see these degrees - which most of our institutions have on the books - as the fallback for students who didn't complete their major requirements, these flexible interdisciplinary degrees might become the norm.

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We are a smaller school that can make changes more easily than a larger institution. We are a smaller "boat" and can change course more quickly and easily than a larger "boat". Our top people are open to new ideas and will often help make things happen if they are in the best interest of students.

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As a faculty member, I'm not as aware as I'd like to be of the career and academic counseling services provided; except, in my stint on our Academic Senate, I heard repeatedly that counselors were overworked and could hardly serve students beyond a quick Ed Plan construction.

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I would say students AND their parents should be introduced to this early because the current higher educational culture conditions them to equate majors to jobs even though those very same parents probably have personal experience with the hidden job market (but don't actually have the vocabulary to communicate this). The only way to break out of that conditioning is to introduce these concepts early and then reinforce them throughout high school and into the college search process so that they become far more educated consumers of what's actually in the marketplace and how all of those (well-packaged by the college marketing department) things add up to actual education and an eventual career path (whatever it may be).

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I'm a liberal arts grad with a STEM background, and I mostly work with STEM students. I've long been committed to the principle that STEM works best when the liberal arts and humanities are truly a part of the study, which it turns out is one of the keys for this kind of approach. Now I have to figure out how to operationalize this!

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The field of study approach will support who they are becoming vs. simply taking them through a major and possibly into work that is not fulfilling resulting in dissatisfaction, resentment, debt, and sometimes worse, leaving the institution before earning their degree.

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A student's development is cumulative - the earlier create opportunities the more value we create for students and their outcomes.

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I think my university is on the path towards being better equipped to handle wicked problems. We are doing some restructuring to increase the services our student success team offers. I think they will be a great place to start in assisting students with these questions.

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Most of our students arrive with their end goal in mind. Our new curriculum is deisnged with interdisciplinary collaboration as a goal. We offer a professional practices class, that I teach for seniors before their capstone course. Our goal is to prepare students to enter the workforce, but often many of them have placement upon graduation due to the hidden work force connections they make here with faculty and alumni. We also have a mid year check in with students to identify those who need extra help finding pathways to success. We have a diverse faculty who work together to find solutions for our students.

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At our organization, we are further integrating a more holistic model of support available through the Center for Student Success; connecting with a Student Success Advisor expands well beyond degree planning and major/minor decisions-ensuring students are aware of opportunities, support, and ways to connect with (and learn more about) their interests, as well as focused work on communication efforts

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Some individual faculty on my campus incorporate wicked problems in their courses, but we have no campus-wide strategy for tackling what the book highlights wicked problems our students face.

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Some faculty and staff are tired and feel overworked and sometimes not interested in anything else coming on to their plate. This is not everyone but the few can put dents in trying new things.

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It is important to introduce students to the principles in Hacking College early because this will lead to more buy in on the side of the student. Students will be more intentional when they select classes and will be more invested in their learning when they understand how they can apply the concepts taught to their future. Also, it is important to start practicing networking skills in a lower stake environment (as opposed to starting junior/senior year of college). Students with knowledge of HC concepts can better align their schedules to their interests instead of taking random classes that just lead to a diploma.

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Collaboration and partnerships - there are hidden opportunities with many resources on campus to create field of study experiences.

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The biggest barriers are time (as a one-woman show) and getting students and families to buy into this approach. They have to be open to these conversations and the student has to want to do this kind of thinking and exploration. Not every teenager does.

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While our R1, Land-Grant university campus is more complacent than I wish it would be, some of our smaller campuses face enrollment challenges that can be a catalyst for embracing the ideas in Hacking College.

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Disciplines and departments are structures that are pretty well entrenched. They are based more on the "supply" side in terms of ideas/content and less so about the "demand" since in terms of what the world needs

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Most faculty members have careers outside of teaching and are an excellent resource for connecting students with social and cultural capital.

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People will quickly say resources but more importantly its how we use our resources to solve problems that make a difference.

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We are a small liberal arts institution and we have a couple of key ways to help with the wicked problem.

We have faculty advisors that carry a load of around 15-20 students. These advisors meet regularly with students and through conversations, can help students through this process.

We have an ingenuity in action requirement that has students complete 2 different internship, volunteer, research, activity to gain experience in the cultural and social aspects helping their success in landing a job in their field of study after college.

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Opportunities to meet with students is the #1 issue as it is not a requirement to navigate through courses/programs.

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Other than the "Grand Challenge" curriculum, our university - like so many - is organized by departments, with curricula full of required courses in the disciplines and with little space for addressing wicked problems.

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I'm an independent college counselor who has just moved from a large counseling organization to my own LLC, so my "organization" is just me. Part of my goal from the start has been to reimagine how I help students explore potential majors and careers and then connect those to colleges. I'm already making notes on how to adapt what I'm learning to configure my work in order to support this.

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I'm not at an institution but the two most common structures I see are: a) :grand challenges" like water, poverty, etc that create a big tent folks can focus on and b) interdisciplinary themes like "sustainable materials" - but I don't see a lot of institutions focused on this or organized this way

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Campus Culture and values drive a campus' ability to tackle wicked problems. Ned makes a great point - our wicked problems may not be the ones students are trying to solve for - in fact we may be causing them more problems than solving. A student centric model can create opportunities to change both culture and outcomes.

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My "campus" is a fully online school which was initially designed for older adults returning to school for very specific majors--business, IT, nursing, teaching. Since COVID, programs have expanded and the student has become much more traditional aged making it very challenging for the student who enrolls, unsure about their wicked problem. What concerns me most is that many students will go through their program without ever speaking with their advisor/faculty as it is self-paced.

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We have had a "Grand Challenge" curriculum in place for many years, with courses that are co-taught by faculty from different disciplines and with teams of students from across the university, asked to tackle a wicked problem and develop an entrepreneurial strategy to address it. Students have launched businesses and non-profits out of this curriculum and several students have told me that it was the most meaningful class they took in college.

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I am part of a small college access and success CBO, so one benefit for us is that we are small and, therefore, can be agile. We have the ability to make changes in our programming in real time due to the fact that we have no bureaucracy. We also have a large number of community volunteers that are available to help us put any plan in place.

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We have 1 interdicsciplinary major, so we're essentially doing the field approach. Unfortunately, employers— especially large employers— use AI tools to pre-screen applicants and if the applicants major doesn’t match, they are rejected regardless qualifications.

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Honestly, I’m not sure how our campus is configured to tackle emerging wicked problems—at least not intentionally or strategically.

Part of that is circumstantial: I’ve only been at my institution for six months, following 18 years at a different university. I’m still learning the ecosystem. But another part is systemic. Like many smaller private institutions, our systems, processes, and structures have largely been in place for decades. They’re consistent, reliable—but not necessarily agile. I don’t yet see mechanisms intentionally designed for cross-disciplinary collaboration or rapid response to fuzzy, complex, and unsolvable problems—the very definition of a "wicked problem" as discussed in Hacking College.

If I had to name a strategy, it would be the informal work many of us do: identifying challenges, raising them with supervisors, and slowly cultivating buy-in from colleagues across campus. But that’s more grassroots than structural. The fact that I don’t have a better answer may itself be a signal: we need better pathways and processes that empower faculty, staff, and students to engage in problem-solving beyond traditional departmental boundaries.

Reading Hacking College made me wonder: What would it look like if we treated wicked problems not as edge cases but as the central organizing principle of the undergraduate experience? And what if our institutional structure reflected that same urgency? For example, what if we allowed for greater autonomy and authority to directly address aspects of wicked problems rather than having to go through an outdated and slow shared governance system. I don't mean to suggest authoritarian or drastic decisions by anyone. Rather a revised process that better reflects the fast changing and evolving system we are working in.

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As I make notes throughout this book, the issue that comes up repeatedly is how to adapt this for 2-year institutions. As we are focused on gen ed, it's difficult for students to find that hidden curriculum to complete an AA or AS. The key here is for our Success Coaches (unicorns who are underpaid and overworked) to understand the FOS approach. What resources are available?

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We serve many students who might be excited about the opportunity to engage in this sort of thinking around their education. Being outside of the institutions in which the students are enrolled provides both opportunity and challenges in this approach, but would be exciting to pilot and develop approaches around.

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Our organization has committed to providing transition support to young high school alumni in efforts to provide individual 1:1 guidance to our students as they transition into college and career. Coming up with a framework with which to approach our work, in order to meet the unique needs and wants of the students, while meeting the wants of the administration is our current wicked problem. Consensus of thought around the correct way to do the work is our current wicked problem.

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We've become more intentional about breaking down silos between Academics and Student Success. I work with the Career Curriculum Subcommittee (for our Success Coaches), and I think a lot of the Research Investigative Inquiry strategies can be incorporated there. I've asked for this book to be added to our libraries, and digital versions will be available beginning in August.

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Our university structure - no faculty.

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When students stop competing with others and focus on finding their own passion and authentic self, the blinders can fall off earlier. They can focus on defining themselves, not being defined by others (degree programs, peers, even parents).

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Every time a student says "yes" and pursues a new opportunity on their campus, they're learning more about themselves and their wicked problem. The sooner we can introduce them to Hacking College, the more opportunities they will have to raise their hand, do the research, lead the club, get the internship, and -- above all -- expand the social capital that will help them in their professional careers.

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Our college access and success organization serves a relatively small number of scholars in each cohort (34 this year) so we're able to get to know each scholar really well. This allows us to have very personalized conversations and gives us the time to help scholars discover their wicked problems through one-on-one conversations and support them in the research investigative inquiry process.

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The interdisciplinary nature of wicked problems can be difficult to explain to the high school seniors with whom I work. Often, I find they want something very black-and-white -- engineering, medicine, etc. -- but wicked problems live in the grey.