Our Services:
Services to Higher Education
Comprehensive Solutions for Higher Education
At Petersen Future Solutions, we provide robust support tailored for higher education institutions, including student teaching, faculty training, event design, program development, and strategic institutional planning to foster enduring success and innovation.
What We
Offer
01
Teaching Students
As a graduate teaching fellow and adjunct professor in undergraduate and graduate programs, from Seton Hall to Hunter College, Dr. Petersen is most comfortable working in teaching moments of moving to the next level and of maximizing human potential.
I have always been a student and a teacher. I remember having my first teaching moment when I was 14 and helped a young tennis player who was struggling with confidence. He felt great and I caught the teaching bug, so it guides all projects and programs.
– Saul Petersen
02
Training Faculty
As a graduate teaching fellow and adjunct professor in undergraduate and graduate programs, from Seton Hall to Hunter College, Dr. Petersen is most comfortable working in teaching moments of moving to the next level and of maximizing human potential.
My Fellows program at a public urban institution was the only time per month, according to the many faculty, when they were encouraged to think freely and deeply about the vocation of teaching, from multiple disciplinary perspectives, and with a clear eye to community engaged (service) learning as a guiding practice.
– Saul Petersen
03
Institutional Planning
From 2017 -2022, Petersen led a group of faculty, two of whom served on the faculty senate, to formally adopt a definition and practices for community-engaged learning and scholarship.
In 2019, Petersen chaired a representative committee of students, staff, VPs, Deans, and faculty over a year-long period to benchmark institutional norms, priorities, and assessments, as they relate to the institutionalization of community engagement known as the Carnegie Classification. It remains the benchmark across the US and Petersen has worked on Carnegie in committees, institutes, workshops, webinars, and with the Middle States Commission.
From 2020-2021, Petersen and colleagues from state administrations worked with Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) on a series of guided conversations aimed at linking institutional practices regarding high impact community engagement with accreditation expectations.
So many institutions do not actually align mission with spending and action, making institutional culture diffuse or unclear. Coherence of planning, action, and messaging, builds authenticity, buy-in, and an enduring legacy. The leadership of this public institution was unwilling to lean into coherent planning and messaging, and so buy-in with staff and faculty was diminished.
- Saul Petersen
04
Program Development
Dr. Petersen has founded and led myriad centers, institutes, programs, and consortia, spanning nearly two decades. Principles of Future Solutions have already guided this work. Whether it’s multi-campus programs that develop transferrable workplace and public service skills through civic engagement, or campus resource centers that place student dignity and rights at their center as opposed to need-based design like food pantries. In short, principled design and bold leadership create solutions that endure.
I became increasingly disappointed with the flurry of campus pantries developed over the past decade, many funded through state “anti-hunger” grants. These efforts cherry-pick ONE issue faced by thousands of students in Jersey alone, rather than looking at the totality of barriers to educational success that are within the control of institutions to address. One of these is hunger, certainly, but hunger is entwined with mental stress, housing insecurity, a perceived lack of belonging and, indeed, sometimes even perceived blame for failure. Not ok. If we want generational change through educational opportunity, something of an American dream, then we ensure equitable opportunity to the whole student, body and mind.
