College 8 is green on innovation, at least according to Ravi Rajan, provost for the plainly named sector of UC Santa Cruz. Rajan is spearheading a campaign to give the college a name that’s more in line with its environmental and entrepreneurial focus.

Together with Next Space, UCSC and Monterey College of Law, which now has a Santa Cruz satellite campus, College 8 kicked off a second year of What’s Next Lectures with the prolific historian and environmentalist author, Douglas Brinkley.

Rajan said that when questions arose as to whether the lecture series would be able to continue last year, he got involved. “We’ve got to keep it going; this is a tremendous community asset," he said.

“We are hoping to inspire young students to think of careers as entrepreneurs, be solutions and become change agents.” 

Rajan calls Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty the heart behind the What’s Next Lectures. Coonerty said the collaboration is “the first of its kind of a partnership like that in our community. The idea is to bring thought leaders to town to help us think about ways that we can prepare and innovate in the future.”

This year, the lectures will focus on change, according to Coonerty, who said, “what better way to think about how to change for the future than to look at how change occurred in the past.”

“Douglas Brinkley is the leading living American historian, and his research has covered so many areas of American life," said Connerty. "His research that is focused on the environment is incredibly important, given the issues that we face in terms of climate change and limited resources.” 

Brinkley is an engaging storyteller, weaving an enamoring picture of the American environmental movement, featuring characters from Theodore Roosevelt to poet Gary Snyder.

It’s the little-known stories that animate Brinkley, who recounted how Walt Disney created the documentary “Seal Island”—a conservation movement milestone—and garnered an Academy Award by a trick. Movie industry folks of the time felt that no one would find interest in Alaska’s seals. Disney played the movie in the Crown Theater in Pasadena for seven days to an empty auditorium. This was all that was required to qualify the documentary for an Academy Award.

Brinkley pointed to greed as the drive for America’s leaders who lack the vision that Roosevelt and Disney shared. A vision of the future is needed to maintain the heirloom of America’s wild, which the “federal government has done an extraordinary job of preserving.”

The question every American should ask, said Brinkley, is, “Are you leaving property better than you found it?”

“It’s not about tree-huggers; it’s about Americans,” said the author who emphasized the importance of being good stewards of the land.

“Find what you love most about nature and get really involved with one nonprofit group that focuses on that aspect of nature. Become an activist,” said Brinkley in response to a UCSC student’s question: "What can we do as young college students who want to make a difference?"

Brinkley said that doing something small is a manageable way to make a difference, and the best way to cure what he called “nature deficiency disorder.”