Regenerating Trust through Higher Education
The Center for Regenerative Learning reimagines higher education as a web of relationships that connect institutions, communities, and strategic partners to embed student learning in relationships and the hopeful social and ecological solutions often pursued by place-based local efforts.
The Problem
Trust in core democratic, political, and economic institutions is eroding, creating widespread social fragmentation and uncertainty. As public confidence in governance, media, and economic systems declines, higher education remains a vital institution for restoring trust through civic engagement, critical inquiry, and participatory learning. However, traditional educational models have struggled to bridge the growing disconnect between institutions and the communities they serve.
Trust is not rebuilt through policy alone—it emerges from shared experience, collaboration, and values-driven action. By positioning higher education as a networked, place-based, and participatory force, we can create learning ecosystems that restore faith in democratic processes, empower civic engagement, and strengthen the social and ecological resilience necessary for a more just and sustainable future.
Our Solution
The Center for Regenerative Learning at Prescott College reimagines education as a participatory, place-based, and networked endeavor that strengthens democracy, civic engagement, and social resilience. The Center will:
- Expand our networks of partnerships with nonprofits, civic organizations, environmental coalitions, and governance networks to create experiential learning opportunities for students and deepening Prescott College’s role as a national convener of a new educational model, grounded in relationships.
- Establish bioregional learning hubs to develop locally grounded curricula that reflect the unique social and ecological dynamics of diverse regions.
- Develop and assess trust-building frameworks, implementing longitudinal studies and participatory research to evaluate how regenerative learning strengthens confidence in democratic institutions.
- Share insights and scale impact, publishing research and policy recommendations for higher education reform, public discourse, and cross-sector collaboration at the national level.
The Center for Regenerative Learning brings together the strengths of a network of bioregions and diverse institutions across the United States to invite participation and reinstill trust in a reimagined model for higher education.
Explore our Centers
Dopoi Center
The Dopoi Center, Prescott College’s campus in rural East Africa, supports collaboration between Prescott students, faculty, and Maasai activists to promote cultural survival and environmental justice in Maasailand.
Kino Bay Center
Prescott College’s binational field station dedicated to biocultural conservation through education, community, science and knowledge exchange.
Center for Nature and Place
The Prescott College Center for Nature & Place supports and scales up training for early childhood educators, pre-service teachers, administrators, and program directors in developmentally appropriate nature and place-based pedagogy.
Student Research
Student dissertations/publications that reflect participatory action research-based partnerships in different bioregions. Cross-sector partnerships and idea dissemination in the PhD in 2025:
These features cover realms of: Theatre, Climate Literacy, Fashion, Arts, Education, Twenty-first International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, The Progressive Magazine and More!
Drs. Emily Affolter, Kim Greeson, and Dr. Gretchen Gano (former PhD Faculty Member) with editor Dr. Clare Hintz, PC PhD Graduate, co-edited a special Issue of the peer reviewed Journal of Sustainability Education, and you can note the Table of Contents reflects publications from ten doctoral scholars (and recent doctoral graduates) including: Jackie Witzke, Nicole Taylor, Dr. Chayton Massic, Jayanna Killingsworth, Dr. Heather Moulton, Allison Guerette, Courtney Liana Wooten, Jenna Ann Broderick, and Julika von Stackleberg.
- Recent graduate, Dr. Karen Hindhede’s publication which was the conclusion of her dissertation manuscript: “Creating an Eco Pedagogical Teaching Framework”: Climate Literacy in Education Journal” (2025)
- Additionally, Dr. Hindhede’s doctoral work is exemplified in a SciTube 3-minute video.
- PhD Scholar Jen Inaba did a Tedx talk “Is Mindfulness out of Fashion” as part of her coursework leading up to dissertation.
- Doctoral scholar Elisa Bocanegra was just featured in American Theatre on Coffee Chronicles (in which they also discuss climate change, Elisa’s Hero Theatre and its Nuestro Planeta Series).
- PhD Scholars Jayanna Killingsworth and Joel Clegg were both fellows of the Yale Environmental Fellowship (in 2024 and 2022 respectively).
- PhD scholar JeLisa Marshall was selected as 1 of 16 artists accepted into the 2024-2025 Heritage Arts Apprenticeship Program with Humanities Washington.
- PhD Scholar Rohana Swihart received a 2024 I/ITSEC Scholarship in the amount of $10,000 to further her efforts in Ph.D. level pursuits.
- Rohana was also just awarded the Emerging Scholar Award on the Twenty-first International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability at the Florida International University, Miami, USA, 23-25 January 2025: https://onsustainability.com/2025-conference
Dr. Kimi Waite had 50 million views on one of her dissertation articles (Waite, K. (2022, Mar 2). Climate action must include racial justice. The Progressive Magazine. 56,884,082 article readers, 9 reprints in news outlets around the country, MSN News pickup) before graduating, and is now on the tenure track at Cal State Los Angeles.
Project Team
Pavel has worked for more than 20 years in academic leadership at progressive independent colleges in the US and abroad. His work focuses on the intersection of transformative learning, community and ecology and on finding the tangible steps we can take together toward a more regenerative and resilient educational future. Prior to joining Prescott, Pavel was the Founder and Director of the Regenerative Learning Network; Head of Schumacher College (Devon, UK) and Dean of Sterling College in Vermont. Pavel writes and speaks widely about curriculum design and pedagogy, global learning networks, environmental humanities and philosophy and has developed programs in ecology, humanities, outdoor skills and recreation, regenerative food and farming, and more. Pavel’s books include Transformative Learning: Reflections on 30 Years of Head, Heart, and Hands at Schumacher College (with Satish Kumar, 2021); Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest: Region, Heritage, and Environment in the Rural Northeast (2010); and This Vast Book of Nature: Writing the Landscape of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, 1784–1911 (2006). His current book project is titled Networked Learning: Transforming Higher Education through Distributed Learning.
Selected recent publications & presentations:
- “Hybrid Ecological Networks: Designing Relational and Receptive Learning.” P/References of Design: Cumulus Budapest Proceedings. 2025.
- “Interlinking Sustainable Education with Sustainable Democracy,” with Pravar Petkar, icfs.org.uk, International Centre for Sustainability, London, 11 March 2025.
- “Relational Ecologies: Building Regenerative Community Learning Networks.” Regenerative Ecosystems in the Anthropocene: An Interdisciplinary Ecosystemic Framework for Regenerativeness, edited by Amar Nayak, Springer Publishing, August 2024.
- “A Relational Flourishing.” Clima Utopyas. One Day in 2050, edited by Jaume Encisco, July 2024.
- “Lessons from the Periphery.” Regenerative Learning: Nurturing People and Caring for the Planet, edited by Satish Kumar and Lorna Howarth, Global Resilience Publishing, 2023.
- “Regenerative Learning.” Transformative Learning: Reflections on 30 Years of Head, Heart, and Hands at Schumacher College, edited by Pavel Cenkl and Satish Kumar, New Society Publishing, 2021, 257-265.
- Cenkl, Pavel and Satish Kumar, editors. Transformative Learning: Reflections on 30 Years of Head, Heart, and Hands at Schumacher College. New Society Publishers, 2021.
- “Interlinking Sustainable Education with Sustainable Democracy,” Talk with Pravar Petkar, International Centre for Sustainability, London, 11 March 2025.
- “Cultivating a Global Curriculum for Local Leadership in Regenerative Food Systems,” Talk with Kate Rudd and Lisa Trocchia, Re-imagining Education Conference (REC) 4.0, 25 October 2024.
- “A Global Regenerative Food Systems Curriculum,” Panel presentation, Conscious Food Systems as a Pathway to Planetary Health, Garrison, NY, 20 September 2024.
- “Interwoven Ecologies: Movement and Regeneration in a More-than-Human World,” Invited Talk at the Museum of the White Mountains, Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH, 17 September 2024.
- “Hybrid Ecological Networks: Designing Relational and Receptive Learning,” Cumulus 2024: P/References of Design, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, HU, 15-17 May 2024
- “Regenerative Design Futures: De-institutionalising Learning and Disentangling from Extractive Narratives,” co-panelist with Mona Nasseri, Untangling Design Purpose Conference, Istituto Marangoni London and Macromedia University Munich, 17 April 2024.
- “Agroecology as Pedagogy,” Speaker and panel co-organiser, Oxford Real Farming Conference, 4-5 January 2024
- “Conscious Leadership for Local Regenerative Food Systems,” Invited panel speaker. UNDP Conscious Food Systems Alliance, Oxford Real Farming Conference, 4-5 January 2024.
- “Sustainability in Small Independent Providers,” Invited Talk. Independent Higher Education Annual Conference, London, 28 November 2023.
Hava has spent the last 30 years intricately weaving solid legal and business knowledge with academic tenure at both Green Mountain College and Prescott College. She approaches her work with students to build a strong conceptual bridge between the value of academic preparation and applied business skills – creating changemakers and equipping students with the skills that translate into understanding for C-Suite executives. Hava has worked with hundreds of graduate students to build new businesses as well as in the development of strategic plans for integrating change in existing organizations. She works to guide students into strategic and thoughtful leaders.
Hava has many years of experience in the corporate, environmental, real estate and food sectors. She further focuses her time working with mission-driven businesses that focus on homelessness and hunger. Hava loves to connect people and develop networks for those that want to learn more about making the world a better place. She is currently writing a work of therapeutic stories for a world lacking connection to itself and to nature, hoping to further bridge gaps and provide healing
Dr. Emily Alicia Affolter is the director of Prescott College’s Sustainability Education Ph.D. Program. Dr. Affolter loves teaching and advising in the doctoral program, and works with a direct emphasis on equity pedagogy and culturally responsive and sustaining teaching, learning, leading, and research. Prior to this role, she worked as a Senior Research Scientist and Equity Consultant at the University of Washington’s Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Multicultural Education from the UW working alongside Dr. Geneva Gay, founder of culturally responsive teaching, and is a former Fulbright scholar (Mexico and Colombia). Emily’s current scholarship, dissemination, and facilitation center culturally responsive pedagogy for teachers, faculty, and leaders in K-16 settings and STEM higher education, and harnessing equity literacy in teaching methods, content, policy, and leadership, in addition to exploring and developing decolonizing, critical research practices. Her most recent interests include understanding climate justice impacts through critical race and disability lenses.
Dr. Affolter’s recent dissemination efforts:
- Affolter, E.A., & Cenkl, P. (2025). Integrating Sustainability Principles into Higher Education–Education for Sustainable Democracy Podcast.
https://lnkd.in/g_q4D3a5 - Affolter, E. A. (2024). Equity and School Culture with Emily Affolter–FocusED: An educational leadership podcast that uncovers what is working in our schools. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/equity-and-school-culture-with-emily-affolter/id1484191856?i=1000675928611
- Affolter, E.A. (2024). Cultivating and sustaining Wholeness in Education–Teaching Today Podcast.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cultivating-and-sustaining-wholeness-in-education/id1508333458?i=1000668967308 - Affolter, E.A. (2024). Equity-Centered Teaching, a Path to Educational Justice with Director Dr. Emily Affolter–The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation, and Resources Podcast.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2048018/episodes/15737241 - Affolter, E. A. (2024). Rehumanizing Higher Education with Emily Alicia Affolter, PhD. Care More Be Better — For a Regenerative Future Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DSmzv_1KQ4 - Affolter, E. A., & Yost, A. (2024). Accountability as praxis: a dialectical conversation on decolonising teaching methods. Oxford Review of Education, 1–17.
https://doi-org.prescottcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/03054985.2024.2328606 - Affolter, E. A. & Hodges, S. (2023). Pressing Pause: Subverting hegemonic norms in educational spaces. In Mealy T. M. & Bennett, H. (Eds.), Equity Planning for School Leaders: Approaches to Student Diversity, Access and Opportunity. Mcfarland.
- Cross, K. & Affolter, E.A. (2023). Can we be free? An Engineers’ guide to culturally responsive
- teaching. In Neal, L.V., Militz-Frielink, S., Colompos-Tohtsonie, M.T., Lewis, R.A, & Moore, A.L. (Eds.), Legacy of Action: How Dr. Geneva Gay Transformed Teaching . Loyola College/Apprentice House.
- Dunbar, R., Greeson, K. & Affolter, E. A. A. (2023): The healing trifecta: a collaborative autoethnography on intersectionality, motherhood, and pedagogy during a global pandemic, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,
- DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2023.2181429
Dr. Molly Bigknife Antonio is Shawnee, Munsee Delaware, Cherokee, Irish, and English. As a Prescott College faculty member since 2011, she coordinates the M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Prescott College, a B.A. from the University of Arizona, and an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. As Executive Director of Pollen Circles, she promotes Indigenous wellness and learning. Her doctoral research explored sustainability through Navajo weaving. A mother of three, she values diversity, creative expression, and community building. She strives to weave a more balanced and thriving world.
Dr. Bigknife Antonio’s most recent publications:
- 2025 – Edges of Transformation: Multicultural Women’s Voices on the Intersections of Ecological and Social Healing (2ndEd.), contributing writer for this anthology. My essay title: Navajo (Diné) Youth: Cultivating Healthy Relationships through Traditional Reciprocity.
- 2019 – “Sitting to My Loom”: Weaving Sustainability Through Navajo Kincentric Wisdom, by Molly Bigknife Antonio, Published Dissertation.
- 2016 – Edges of Transformation: Multicultural Women’s Voices on the Intersections of Ecological and Social Healing (1st ed.), contributing writer for this anthology. My essay title: Navajo Youth: Cultivating Healthy Relationships through Traditional Reciprocity.
Mary has been an historian on the faculty of Prescott College since 2003. She teaches and publish in the arenas of U.S. and African history, with emphasis on histories of social movements, racial capitalism, colonialism, feminist and other critical social theory, and Indigenous decolonizing research methods. She came to history through a prior career in welfare policy as a fiscal analyst for the Washington State Senate, a job undertaken at a time of the federal dismantling of the U.S welfare state, and of rapid prison expansion and the corresponding increase in racially discriminatory new drug laws. She later served as Executive Director for Early Options for Unintended Pregnancy, a non-governmental organization established to teach family practice doctors techniques of early abortion. She earned her PhD at Rutgers University in History. She works closely with an Indigenous rights movement in Maasailand, East Africa, and has co-directed for two decades the Institute for Maasai Education, Research & Conservation (MERC) and the Dopoi Center for Education & Community Organizing.
Books:
- The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State (University of North Carolina Press: 2006)
- Meitamei Olol Dapash & Mary Poole, Decolonizing History in Maasailand: A Path to Indigenous African Futures, (Zed Books Bloomsbury, 2025) – Click here for the eBook
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