Pando Days Update: Beth Abels, Pierce College

This is part of an ongoing series of blog posts following up on the real-world, community-based work being initiated through Pando Days. We sat down with Beth Abels of Pierce College to talk about her Pando Days 2023 project, which she builds on for the current Pando Days 2024-’25 season. 

Pando: It is great to see you again Beth. And I am so happy to hear that your and the students’ work from last season is going to continue into the future. Our aim is for all Pando Days projects to have “legs.” What sort of developments with your project are you seeing going forward?

Beth Abels: Well, the ongoing goal is to create pollinator pathways for critters that move between the LA River and our campus. It is still a student-led project, so they will determine how exactly it develops further. In that regard, it is totally out of my control.

However, I am happy to announce that, for this season, we are being joined by an English professor and an Anthropology professor as well as both of their classes. The idea is for their class teams to focus on narratives related to the plants we will be using. 

Fascinating, at least in theory. But what exactly do you mean by that? Do you know the angle they will be taking?

For English, it is a class on mythology and they are going to focus solely on the plants and their stories. 

From Anthropology, the students are going to explore traditions related to the plants and their historical relationships to people. 

I am very excited by all of this. I have no idea how exactly it will develop as I want my students to be the chief explorers here while I am more of a facilitator. But even so, I have to say that I think it’s going to be great.

If I remember correctly, last season, it was just you in the architecture department working on original blueprints and ideas. What happened now that this project is becoming truly multidisciplinary? 

Over the course of last year, as I talked to more and more faculty about the work we were doing in Pando Days for the campus, different faculty just got interested. I am so happy this is happening because now the students will have a chance to see and think about what multidisciplinary education focused on a professional project could be. 

Not only is this much more similar to the professional world, my students will have the opportunity to work in more complex teams. They learn leadership, the practice of doing – and not just learning – and how to work in a collaborative environment in a much more meaningful way.

As something of an outsider, it sounds unique for an architecture department to pair up with anthropologists and literature students. How do you think this will affect the results of your project? Aside from the learning opportunities, do you think it will be more successful now as a multidisciplinary endeavor? 

In terms of the project, I think it gives us the opportunity to grow more organically. My students are building, designing, and going through processes and iterations. And my students will see the other students doing that in their writing and their research. 

But, regardless – for me, this is a process-based project, not an outcome-based one. So, having more teams involved will allow it to be more expansive. We may get some middling work that’s possibly not complete, not ready to move into the world. We might get some stories that are half-baked, right? We might get some research that’s unfounded and not well done. All this is possible.

But most likely we’re going to get some things that are more useful and hold the potential to take our project onto a new path – especially as we have these three different groups working together, throwing a monkey wrench into the works, so to speak. 

But you know, it actually is not odd for architects to work like this in the professional world. 

What would the usual disciplines be that an architect maybe works with?

As professionals, we definitely work with storytellers and we definitely work with science and research. I mean, really, architecture is storytelling. It happens to be a three-dimensional construction of storytelling, but it is storytelling. 

With different fields, the information, the focus, and the lens are different, but they all share the same practices, right? We’re all working with iteration. We’re all working with creativity and we’re all working with research. 

For example, you can’t tell a story about a plant unless you know about the plant and you can’t tell a story about people’s use of a plant unless you know about it and you know about them. 

So, you can’t design a habitat if you don’t know anything about it. It’s all research based. And it’s all a process. The process requires that you look at it and try again and try again and try again. And it requires a willingness to step out of a comfort zone and problem solve. I actually can’t think of a discipline that doesn’t get made use of in architecture. 

That makes a lot of sense. Does maybe this just feel more radical because while we know this to be true in the professional world, it is almost kept secret from students during their education?

Yes. Many students wonder all the time: what does this have to do with my field? I think though that comes just from traditional pedagogy not including much project-based work. That is why it has always been an important part of my curriculum. 

For many students, especially those early in their careers and still doing GEs [general education requirements], they do not get those connections. They are not thinking, oh, my math class is going to help me with my psychology degree.They’re thinking math is just math and English is just English. 

So, I guess that, in an academic sense, it’s probably unusual what we are now doing. But, let me tell you, when we do these types of Pando projects as multidisciplinary endeavors, the students get a ton out of it. They make connections and in other ways connect the dots beyond what I might think they technically need to do.

Students come out with a lot more capacity as problem solvers when they work in a more diverse community. Also, there is a kind of pressure that comes from that that results in better work. 

You know, my students are in a cohort and they’re used to kind of working around each other and being whatever they are. If they’re great or if they’re having a hard time, everybody knows it. When they’re working with students from another discipline, there’s a sense of needing to show how capable they are in an area they’ve chosen for their profession. It’s a little competitive that way but it also pushes them as well. So, I hope that this year, with more teachers, it will add a bit more bounce in everybody’s step and push the project forward even more.

So, all this being said, how do you envision your project’s impact continuing in both terms of sustainability and the culture of your educational community?

Concerning sustainability, I would really like to see an incremental shift in the neighborhood that connects the LA River to the campus. Last year we got students to the point where they could think about how to do this and could start to build the necessary infrastructure. But, we didn’t get them totally engaged with the community. I think that’s one of the benefits of having more students involved too; there’s more opportunities for that engagement. 

My ideal scenario, my dream, is that after this upcoming year we have four to five houses along a one-mile strip that have adopted some part of the systems we are developing. In this way, the campus can be even more embracing in its ability to be a model for the community. But, we will see. 

The amazing thing that happened after last year is that already many different organizations that my students were involved with got inspired to address sustainability issues with biodiversity at the core of their efforts. 

For instance, the food pantry decided to plant a butterfly garden in what was once just an empty pile of dirt. The food pantry folks weren’t in my design studio, but the work we were doing inadvertently served as an inspiration for them to make a change. I would love for our impact to keep on extending in this way. 

Secretly – now, not so secretly as it’s in a blog post! — I am hoping that the farm on our campus, which is 420 acres of open space, will want to work with us as well. Ideally, we can create a demonstration area on the farm showing the importance of our work and have that be an educational attraction for people to come to our campus. 

Maybe all of this can’t be done in a year. But, if we get the seeds planted, so to speak, and start with four or five locations, then who knows how much it can grow in the future.

Wow. That is very exciting. I cannot wait to see how this year unfolds. Good luck and thanks for your work.