I Seem to Be a Buckminster Fuller Fan

This fall our School of Visual and Communication Arts developed a poster to recruit students and showcase the talents of our current students. They designed an edgy, attractive piece and using a phrase "Become a Verb" to capture the imagination of prospective students.

This phrase caused me to wonder and so I googled it to learn more about its origin. Apparently, there is a debate between proponents of various search engines over which is more of a verb and which is more static and hence a noun.

Digging deeper, I learned that Buckminister Fuller used a similar phrase nearly forty years ago in his style of communicating by "thinking out loud." When asked to describe himself, he offered after a few phrases. One captured my attention, "I seem to be a verb." In doing so, Bucky aligned himself with a world constantly in the process of change and defined himself as a person influencing this change. This intrigued me. Since then, I have examined the contributions of this futurist.

I think this concept of "being a verb" may capture well what we most desire to achieve with students, empowering them to be innovators and agents of change, leaders who serve, who question, and who act. It also challenges us as an institution to be the type of place where students can ask hard questions, explore, engage, and experience, and as a result, achieve the outcomes they most desire (more on this at another time).

Suffice it to say, "I seem to be a Bucky Fuller fan."