SC-U is a supplemental educational experience for college-age students who want to chart and follow a path toward making positive personal and social change. The SC-U program is a self-directed, hands-on, liberal arts learning platform that serves members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AND others who desire social change.

We need students who are interested in transformational, deep educational experiences. You will be among the first to pilot a new kind of supplemental learning, which we believe will change society for the better. Your program will include some focus on the liberal arts, which encompass the skills of reading, writing, calculating and speaking well. You will also learn the fundamental knowledge of peoples and great ideas combined with entrepreneurship and sustainability. This program will empower you to see more and do more than you may be imagining at this stage of life.

SC-U is not a college; there are no degrees or certificates, no accreditation, no professors and no campus. Without those parameters, SC-U is free to have a very different structure that can supplement traditional education models. SC-U helps students prepare themselves for life today and to change society.

Who are we? The 4 Roles at SC-U

You will learn more about each of these groups in the Root Methods section below, but here is a quick introduction:

Students

Students are the most important group at SC-U. They decide what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and whom they want to enlist to help. Though relations, consultants,  and student advocates help and mentor when asked, in the end it is students who steer their own educational experiences.

If you are motivated, hard-working, creative, and looking for a supplemental educational experience tailored uniquely to you, by you, SC-U is the right place.

Students’ Outside Personal Relations

SC-U programs are grounded in relationships. For students to succeed and create meaningful social change, they enlist their personal relations. Family members, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances may be asked to take a role. Students turn to relations for suggestions on topics of study, feedback on written work, and support in larger projects.

Consultants

As they create their own supplemental curriculum, students discover areas they want to understand better. To improve their knowledge in these areas, students contract consultants—experts in their fields—to meet with their group to answer questions, run simulations, and challenge students to engage with their work on a deeper level.

SC-U will provide contact information for consultants who have agreed to help, or students can make use of their own connections to bring in others.

Student Advocates

SC-U employees are far more than staff; they are student advocates. This keeps the focus squarely on the heart of SC-U programs—the students. Student advocates can help guide and mentor students, review applications and project proposals, and manage the operations of SC-U.

Get to know our first two student advocates:

Allen & Martha Levie, Founders

Allen and Martha currently own and operate the Abigail’s Oven bakery, a social change entity designed to create a revolution that improves nutrition through shifting how and where bread is created in ways that strengthen local communities.

Why did we decide to start Social Change-U?

• We want to see worldwide social change that strengthens the family unit.  
• We feel that one of the most important times of life to improve the functioning of families is the stage of life before and during the creation of new families.  By focusing on young college-age students we hope to be an empowering influence in the birth of families.
• There is currently not any higher education model that we know of that implements these learning tools in the way that we imagine them. We hope to enhance the traditional model by providing these supplemental programs.

SC-U in the Big Picture

SC-U is part of The John and Abigail Center for Social Change (The Center), which includes several other social change business start-ups which are in various stages of development. SC-U students will likely interact with several of these organizations, including the following:

Abigail’s Oven bakery, making 3-ingredient sourdough bread in Spanish Fork, Utah. Students will have the opportunity to work at the bakery to earn money for school and living expenses and save for the future. 

The Family Academy Inc., similar to SC-U but serving whole family units. SC-U students will be able to participate in The Family Academy by involving their entire family in what they are learning.

Hearts to Children Inc., a program to heal the generation gap by empowering those 55+ to communicate more effectively and find meaning and purpose in their retirement years. SC-U students can act as young adult consultants to train HtoCh participants in technology and work with them to complete assignments.

Social Change Studio Inc., which films innovative social change courses for social entrepreneurs and several of the key organizations of The Center. Once the studio is up and running, students will help social entrepreneurs film their courses and have the opportunity to create their own.

Each participant will pay an initial $30 per month subscription fee for SC-U programs. There will also be a premium option available for those who want to engage at a deeper level. 

Part of the SC-U program includes employment at Abigail’s Oven bakery in Spanish Fork, Utah (starting August 1st, 2021, the bakery will hire between 20-100 students). SC-U students will also have access to mentors who can help them start their own businesses so they can be financially independent. 

In time, we intend to have affiliated organizations supply all of the funding necessary to maintain SC-U.

Each student is different, so no one curriculum will meet all of their needs. Instead, students customize and choose how to proceed regarding their SC-U curriculum. A student’s personal relations may recommend books and other resources, but the student will make final decisions.  We encourage them to get recommendations from many different people, including current and past students in the program. This process is a critical piece in teaching students HOW to learn instead of telling them WHAT to learn. 

At SC-U, we facilitate project-based learning.  Students will carefully consider their own experiences and outside recommendations to come up with projects. For example, let’s say a student was interested in learning more about being a Sports Illustrated writer.  She would study books, articles and biographies, and create a project plan to pursue this course over the course of 6 months. She may find other students who wish to do this with her. These students find 3 writers (consultants) to approach with questions, then as part of the process, study their biographies and other materials. They communicate with those writers about their process and best methods to become a much better writer in 6 months. As they communicate back and forth, their proposals improve. Students write and submit articles for feedback from their peer group and consultants. At the end, they may choose to prepare 3 articles to submit to Sports Illustrated for their consideration.

We believe given the right circumstances, students will push themselves harder and attain more than would have been possible with just a standard curriculum model.

Here are some of the methods that make SC-U programs unique:

Groups of 4:

SC-U participants are organized into groups of 4. These groups accomplish many of the functions of a traditional study group (brainstorming, providing feedback, etc.), while being much more. For example, groups of four are:

• Places to Teach to Learn.  Students have the opportunity to develop lesson plans to teach the other three students. These small groups also allow each student to have a role and use their individual gifts and abilities.  
• Project incubators. Students can make project proposals and get feedback. This approach allows different personalities and viewpoints to fix weaknesses and polish a project.
• The primary groups students work with. Students have a core group; however, if a group of students have similar interests they may create temporary groups to pursue those interests. Even when a student’s core group isn’t studying the same thing, they will still be able to read each other’s materials and provide feedback.  
• Tools to break the barriers to discovery. Great education requires students to increase the quality of their writing and communicating. These groups provide the opportunity for presenting and receiving feedback on a great deal of material. In addition, each student can produce more if they are individually listened to, allowing epiphanies to be captured, nurtured and applied.
• “Modularly” designed. In other words, though there may be hundreds of groups of four, they all have the same structure. That means materials created inside any one module have the potential of being useful in any other module. This allows any SC-U student to create “apps” or materials that students in every module can use.  This allows the creation of far more material than any one teacher could provide a class.

Natural Accountability:

Students will naturally begin forming rigorous habits from the start. Each day, they will be committed and hold each other naturally accountable to wake up, eat well, read, write, exercise, and to generally become more excellent.

Natural accountability for some will be a whole new system because it is chosen and not enforced. However, this is what allows a much more liquid, biological form for working together. Groups with natural accountability respond quickly and are infinitely customizable. Natural accountability works with the positive part of human nature.

Cycles:

Cycles surround us in society and in nature.  By understanding these cycles, students become much better at influencing behavior in themselves and in others.  For example, new students will be introduced to a cycle that plays out every time they encounter a new situation “The New Situation Cycle”. Knowing this cycle will help students benefit from natural frustration and enhance their experience while moving faster in their education.

Scenario Forecasting:

Any time they’re planning for the future, students will be prepared to use scenario forecasting instead of the old strategic planning methods. This approach will help them interact with other groups of students and plan for their lives, education, semester, and projects. For example, students may forecast one scenario that involves marriage and the creation of a family.  Another scenario would suggest a future where that wasn’t a reality. Regardless of which scenario is realized, the student has a path forward that moves towards desirable outcomes.

Learning to learn: 

One of the goals of a liberal arts education is to learn how to learn. Students at SC-U will learn to be lifelong learners by studying skills like reading, writing, speaking, calculating, thinking, changing, recognizing and using gifts, forming habits, using questions, managing time, natural humor and more.

Classics:

Much has been written about the use of classical works. A basic definition of a classic is a work that can be experienced again and again, allowing a person to learn something new each time. Instead of automatically providing a list of classics for students, we facilitate students selecting materials that will provide them with the classics they most need and to use conscience and the subconscious to get the most out of them.  

Self-Led Learning: 

Being trained and being self-led are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes, when people agree to be trained, they give up control over how they will be trained.  However, in the business world you often let outside consultants know what you need from their training and work with them in a very choice-based relationship. 

Engaging consultant coaches:

Students will primarily work with fellow students in order to get the feedback they require. However, there will be a need to bring in outside consultants. These consultants may engage with students in person, perhaps in 2-3 hour paradigm-shifting workshops. They may also choose to engage through long-distance communication.  Students may ask consultants to teach specific things, to give insight into a project, or to help design a simulation.  

These consultants may include personal relations, social entrepreneurs, Social Change-U administrators, or experts in various fields. Students will let the consultant know what they would like to learn and lead the discussion.

Polishing through publishing:

Students naturally improve their material as they publish or share their written materials with various audiences. This will primarily be with the students’ group of four and close relations.  Because of the frequency of writing and feedback, progress can be quite fast.

As the quality of the students’ writing and insights improve they may want to run their ideas by an expert in a particular field.  This will require developing materials to a greater degree. This higher-level audience will lead to a higher quality of writing.  

Simulations:

Each year, students will participate in simulations which will define a large part of what they learn during the program. These simulations could be a real world situation, or they could involve a situation an individual, family, community, business or nation may encounter.

Students develop and execute their own simulations, augmented by institutionally-created simulations.  The primary role of SC-U will be to propose topics and give vision, training, and challenges. Students may choose to rearrange or reject these ideas and create their own model. After each simulation, students will meet to debrief and make decisions based on insights, inviting consultants to participate as is best.

Living Portfolios:

One of the most valuable pieces of this supplemental program is the chance for students to create “living portfolios.” It’s up to each student to increase the quantity and quality of items in the portfolio. This is a tool to capture, stimulate and enable changes in the student’s life. Living portfolios may include items like books students have read or better are reading, articles they’ve written, current and past projects, personal epiphanies and more.

The more this portfolio is rendering the student’s authentic voice and present momentum the more powerful the engagement will be with personal relations and the more “living” and therefore more transformative and lasting the “Living Portfolio” will be. 

Relationship Learning:

The goal of all technology and social media should be to increase the amount and quality of in-person interaction.  At SC-U, we believe personal connections are an enormous untapped resource for learning.  

There are 36 different types of personal relations and each type is a network connected to other networks. Students will learn to identify these relations and then demonstrate how to communicate with them according to type, proximity, frequency, cycles, etc.

This will allow students to develop a method for personal relations to read their work, examine their projects, give suggestions, and network connections.  Relations can decide if they want to touch base with students every 10 years, 1 year, 4 months, monthly, weekly, or even daily if they both choose. This connection may be accomplished through a simple blog or website.  

These relations are in a natural position to talk with students about what is happening in their lives (natural accountability). This networking is a key component that allows SC-U to not rely on tests or a large staff. 

Journals/Writing/Publishing:

Moving past paradigms can be tough, but by recording their journey through journals and other writing, students become much more self aware while maximizing their forward progress.  

Epiphany rate:

SC-U focuses on epiphany rates, which are the amount and quality of epiphanies a student experiences in a given space of time. One reason for students to be divided into small groups is that they can handle discussing and capturing what may become larger amounts of epiphanies that occur during this kind of learning.  Epiphanies will not be institutionally tracked as a way of judging students. 

Years 1-2: “Social Change Foundations”

The purpose of this supplemental program is the “whole-person” development of the student. The first step in changing society is to change and improve yourself. We hope the SC-U program will literally add years to your life, along with higher quality and effectiveness. This is accomplished through various focuses including health, personal development and financial wholeness.

These two years are a hands-on time during which each student stabilizes his or her life in every way both physically and spiritually. Students establish strong, deep habits, skills, knowledge and wisdom in a self-led environment. 

Bakery Work

A significant part of the first two years will be working at the Abigail’s Oven bakery or other associated businesses. This fulfills a few needs:

• It provides the students with a steady income while engaging in entrepreneurial work and schooling.
• It grounds students in an ancient art while giving them practical business experience in a social change organization.
• It will be used for building teams of four and allowing students to network in a real world setting. The regularity of the bread baking work is a chance to be grounded in a routine as students adjust to a new way of networking with people. 

Students will work approximately 10-30 hours a week in the bakery, with an additional 1-10 hours of optional freelance/piecework.

Financial Foundation

One goal of this 2-year foundation program is to help each student develop a per-month residual income of $1,500 while continuing their steady bakery work and academic studies. If students already have family funding options or other financial support, this 2-year preparation period will still provide benefits, including an invested network and the opportunity to learn about values, people skills and work ethic. Failure is key and will be an emphasis.

Some possible approaches to this financial base could be launching a business, submitting and promoting an invention, substantively augmenting a current business, creating something, buying an asset by using a rented asset, learning a skill, solving a problem, championing an ongoing cause, etc.

In addition, the following are in-house businesses under development and managed under The John and Abigail Institute For Social Change, which may assist students with funding:

• Abigail’s Oven Inc. marketing: work for Abigail’s Oven on initiatives with commission potential. 
• Simulations Center Inc. – students will be able to write and receive commissions on simulations.
• Social Change Studio Inc. – participate in filming social entrepreneurial systems. 

Academic Preparation

SC-U helps students prepare for academic success. This preparation includes a basic understanding of reading, writing, calculation, and history.

Life Preparation  

This is the most important aspect of these two years. They give students a solid base to work from throughout the program.  This doesn’t mean the student will have everything in life figured out, but life will flow and function with stability.

A big focus of this stage is how to break old paradigms and understand oneself well enough to make positive personal changes.  This knowledge becomes essential as the student begins working to create societal change.

Years 3-6: “4-Year Liberal Arts” 

(Prerequisite – Social Change Foundations program)

We believe that any educational experience can be enhanced by learning the liberal arts. At SC-U, we provide liberal arts training to supplement students’ college education. This is a liberal arts education based on classics and the same methods used in our 2-year Foundation phase.  The purpose is to train and expand the student’s intellect so that their capacity for good can be multiplied.

Students may choose to study from a set curriculum modeled after other high-quality liberal arts programs or create their own. As the student works with their group of four they will customize the program accordingly.

Years 7-8: “2-Year Societal Impact”

(Prerequisite – 4-Year Liberal Arts Program)

Our third program involves a student-led internship that puts them into a wide range of roles interacting with very different locals.  This experiencing may be similar to Ammon living among and serving the Lamanites.  There are many benefits of this program.  It will help students escape the “group think” that naturally comes with a small community, while building new relationships. This gives them practical experience discovering real problems in the real world. It also benefits the communities served.  

Students may choose to spend 6 months transitioning into this program as they enhance their residual income and create a plan to connect with the world in socially transformative action.

Students will likely choose to travel for the final 18 months of this phase.  In this scenario, it may be helpful to move to a new area every 4-6 months to engage with up to 3-6 different communities.  Students could engage with 4-8 different project or work situations (e.g. business, government, education, entertainment) of the community they are serving in for the purpose of implementing positive changes. Over the course of two years, 12-48 unique project situations will have been affected (perhaps many more) and the SC-U student will have learned a great deal and come away with as many as 120k new and diverse personal-relations. Some students will not engage with as many but will build many close personal relations, being now mighty in their reach and capacity.

An important part of our method combines work experience with education. All students in 2021 will work at the Abigail’s Oven bakery. Students must make arrangements to live local to our Spanish Fork location. Social Change-U is best able to serve young adults who do not have their own children. However, we are still able to serve married students, though they may find it a better match to work with us through the League of Families Inc..  

Students must fill out a standard application to work at the Abigail’s Oven bakery. In the application form, check the box that indicates you would like to engage with Social Change-U.

On entry into the program, students will be trained in the methods they will be using at Social Change-U, including the living portfolio, consultants, small groups of 4, scenario forecasting, simulations, etc.