The State of Houston Foresight 2026 | Hinesight....for Foresight

Once more unto the breach! My 13^th year at the helm of the University of Houston Foresight program is kicking off. Seems like a good time to report in on where we are at.

Students: Looks like 70-ish students this fall (10 graduated and 20+ new students). We’ve been in this range the last several years, after a crazy pandemic spike where we hit 90. Still mostly part-time working professionals, with a slight uptick of full-timers. (see student work … scroll a bit)

Faculty: We have totally turned over the faculty since I started (I’ll be the final domino). Many thanks to the faculty who got us here! I really love the new team we’ve been building to steer the next evolution of our program. As someone y’all probably know once said: “change is hard; stagnation is fatal.” (see faculty)

Research: We continue to build our portfolio of research projects staffed by faculty, alums, and current students. The students love having the ability to work “for real” and see how what they are learning in the classroom applied in the real world. An amazing variety of topics: water, church, the Arctic, security, and education to name a few recent ones. (see project examples)

Certificate Boot Camps … and an Immersion: We run four Certificate program per year: two virtual and two face-to-face. This is a great way to get up to speed quickly on the basics of doing foresight work. It’s a also a way to try-before-you-buy re: the Master’s program. We also introduced an immersive weekend: Bringing Futures to Life through Design: Prototyping Possible Tomorrows, led by Dr. Adam Cowart. It’s three creative, high-energy days, of experiential modules designed to shift how you perceive and shape what’s next. (see Certificates)

The FAB Lab: The Foresight Activation Lab is our virtual community that brings together Masters students, alums, and Certificate grads for monthly meetings, communities of practices, and good futures discussion. We chose “Activation” very intentionally — it is a place for doing things, after all, our goal is to build better futures together! — Andy Hines

About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

Comments

James W Breaux, MSF 2014 says

August 24, 2026 at 2:42 pm

Wow Andy! This is great, and you should feel very accomplished at this point and deservedly so. I love the faculty you have engaged, and their empathy and dedication to students are making the alumni ranks swell as the Houston Foresight Program continues to mint futurists and foresight(ists?) for the present.

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