A selection of the things I’ve built — in classrooms, locker rooms, gardens, and communities.
Currently Building
MANLY: A FIELD REPORT
- Manly explores the tensions a man must learn to hold, the standards he must choose to live by, and the fragments of wisdom he gathers from experience—scars, mentors, mistakes, and quiet moments when, as a boy, he watches other men and decides, “That is who I will be.”
SOCIAL GOOD LAB
- A new initiative inside the College of Business that helps students confront real-world problems while doing the inner work required to lead with empathy, agency, humility, and integrity. The Social Good Lab blends experiential learning, emotional development, and community-engaged design. It is not a startup incubator; it is an incubator of selfhood. Learn More: https://socialgoodlab.org/
FUTURNOMICS (COMING FALL 2026)
- A course exploring the mindsets and practices required to meet the future with optimism, resilience, and imaginative capacity. Students learn exponential thinking, abundance mindsets, personal visioning, and the art of crafting opportunity in uncertain times. Futurnomics is Rewilding pointed forward — into possibility.
SIDEKICK MANIFESTO II (COMING SPRING 2026)
- April 2026 marks ten years since the release of The Sidekick Manifesto. To celebrate we are returning to its ten promises and asking: What promises still hold? Which ones need to be broken, rewritten, or reborn? We’ve brought together 15 thinkers, doers, and critics from around the world to engage with one promise each — to revisit, challenge, expand, or rewrite it for a new and improved 2026 edition.
On-Going Projects
REWILD SCHOOL
- Our education system was built for domestication, not for aliveness. Rewild School challenges teachers and students to return to curiosity, agency, and interior transformation: http://rewild.school/
EXISTENTIAL POKES
- Ralf Waldo Emerson said “Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” Here’s my “bible” (including podcasts and speeches I return to repeatedly): https://shawnhumphrey.com/existential-pokes/
FLIP THE FIELD
- An innovative experiential learning program where roles are reversed: student-athletes become educators, guiding faculty, administrators, and staff into their world: https://flipthefield.info/
HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD
- Got an idea for changing the world? Not sure where to begin? I’m building an all-inclusive checklist of what you need to do to get started: http://howtochangetheworld.today/
SIDEKICK MANIFESTO
- All the resources you need to become a sidekick in the story of poverty’s end (Manifesto, Storytelling 101, and Do’s and Don’ts): http://sidekickmanifesto.org
TWO DOLLAR CHALLENGE
- An experiential learning exercise in which participants live on $2 a day so as to deconstruct their hero-complex: http://twodollarchallenge.org
LISTS, LISTS, AND LISTS
- When I am not sure what to do, I make lists: 50 Bits of Unsolicited Advice, Top 10 Star Trek Episodes, 20 Saddest Country Songs of All Time, and 10 Books that will Double the Size of Your Universe just to name a few. Here’s more: https://shawnhumphrey.com/lists/
Legacy Projects
These early projects formed the foundation of my teaching philosophy now called Rewilding.
INDOOR AIR POLLUTION INITIATIVE
- A three-phase project in partnership with the University of California at Berkeley’s Air Monitoring Center and ADHESA from 2007-2008: https://www.umw.edu/news/2008/02/04/umw-students-tackle-indoor-air-pollution-in-honduras/
LA CEIBA
- A microfinance institution my students and I operated in Honduras from 2008-2018: https://laceibamfi.org/
MONTH OF MICROFINANCE
- My students and I declared the month of April as the Month of Microfinace and organized a global coalition of microfinance experts and organizations to put clients first.