Member Highlight: A conversation with NSS Member Krista Hiser

Krista Hiser is the Director of the Sustainability Education Accreditation Commission (SEAC). She is also a Professor of Composition & Rhetoric with an emphasis on sustainability curriculum, climate change education, and community resilience at Kapiʻolani Community College

Give us your cross-sectoral, transdisciplinary, intersectional elevator pitch/ Description of your job.

For the last 3 years I have managed a grant-funded initiative to explore professional accreditation for sustainability degrees in higher education. We just completed a major document: Sustainability Education: Guidelines for Sustainability and Sustainability-Related Degree Programs in higher education.** This title is a mouthful. But intentionally so, keeping a broad scope to encompass a variety of transdisciplinary programs. This document took 3 years to create because we engaged with over 500 stakeholders, employers, students, alumni with the sustainability degree, community members, as well as the program directors and faculty who have created these programs.

**Krista will facilitate an info session (Workshop A3) on SEAC at the 2nd Annual NSS Conference!

What’s one persistent challenge you face in your work?

I'm gonna go with the slightly flippant answer of time zone. Time zone management. In the course of a day, I’m in Hawaii, I'm on the East Coast, I'm in Europe. And… and then daylight savings happens, and Arizona and Hawaii don't participate, and then I have to recalibrate my time zone brain.

Yes, you're always counting hours on your fingers! That's a totally valid challenge for the kind of work you do and all of the interactions you have.

What's something that brings you hope for a sustainable future?

This one also really stumped me, Cristy, because… I don't really have that much hope for a sustainable future. I mean, I don't want you to say that, but it's true. AND, the thing is, I believe in sustainability education anyway.

To me, it's not about hope. It's about reality.

It’s about the preparation that students need. So, I don't want to sound like a doomer, but I don't really focus on hope. I focus on reality and preparing students for their future, and meeting sustainability challenges in their future.

Hope is not what drives me, it's reality.

If you could have lunch with a famous person, who would you choose, and why?

I would choose Kim Stanley Robinson. He's my favorite writer. He wrote an incredible book called The Ministry for the Future. It is a cross-sectoral, transdisciplinary, intersectional novel. It's 739 pages long, and everybody should read it, because it's the only novel in which we actually draw down carbon from the atmosphere. I've always been curious about Kim Stanley Robinson's thinking... like, how did he organize the novel? I would want to talk to him about draw down and carbon solutions, and as a layperson, as a writer, not a scientist, what research he did for the novel. I would want to talk to him about what he really thinks can work, in terms of drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. It's such a great book, and it has this section in the middle, maybe it's, like, 4 pages long, and it is just a list of solutions that already exist. Real projects that are happening right now.

But he takes it into the future, and what works is everything. All at once. It's… like a pastiche of every solution being implemented together. Cross-sectoral cooperation. Globally. 

And it's got a happy ending, and I love that book.

This is a little different from how you answered two questions back, because it's looking at what's happening now, and how it can carry and continue into the future…

But the novel's not… It's not about hope! It's a futures-thinking novel.

Ok, you are a director. And a professor. And a reader. What hobbies and interests do you have outside of work?

My hobby is dancing. And I love all types of dancing. I take modern jazz class, and I enjoy ecstatic dance and country music dancing.

Two very different styles! Ecstatic dancing is, like, free form, just everybody does whatever movement, whatever the beat tells you to do.

House music… Very joyful! And what I like about ecstatic dance, too, is that there's no talking. There's no stopping, so… you're communicating with others, but it's just like… turning my mouth off is such a relief. I love to not talk.

Lastly, how can the NSS support you in your career or other sustainability-related aspirations? 

I got involved with the NSS, through the founding board, and currently, the NSS is the fiscal sponsor of this project.

Yes, this is an actual illustration of how NSS supports transdisciplinary, cross-sectoral, intersectional work.

NSS can support the relationship between sustainability degrees and academics that create, manage, and teach within them, and employers. This intersection has so much potential, because internships, capstones, experiential, real-world learning is the main characteristic of the sustainability degree.  And that is a place where I think the NSS can really be critical for this program.

We need two-way conversations, so that employers also understand what students are coming into the job market with. Students are prepared with key competencies and they are prepared to be change makers, but I think sometimes the employers aren't ready for what some of what the students are bringing. So NSS can continue to create that dialogue and engagement space. I think that would improve the degree.