# The students who came back

## The course

*Pizza and a Slice of Future* (FIS 394) was a one-credit ASU course built on an unusual premise, stated in its own syllabus: "This is not a conventional course!" — grounded in the idea that transformative learning happens "when you are so engaged in a topic or conversation that you forget about class" (Fall 2025 syllabus). Students met weekly over pizza, in a room designed to look like a lounge, to talk about what it will mean to be human a hundred years from now. Conversation was the learning mechanism: attendance and engagement carried 70% of the grade, and the community norms were the initiative's five [guiding principles](philosophy.md), quoted verbatim in the syllabus (Fall 2025 syllabus; taught since 2023 per Maynard CV, with the meetup dating to at least December 2022 per [futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/2025/12/31/pizza-and-a-slice-of-future/)).

Some sessions mixed undergraduates with residents of an ASU-affiliated retirement community — intergenerational conversations about self-driving cars, airships, and why people travel — a format the initiative's federal foresight report describes as testbed, community outreach, and amplifier in one (*Future Travel Foresight Catalyst* final report, §3, 2025, [rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942](https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942)). The course drew university coverage: "The future is at hand — with a slice of pizza in the other" ([ASU News, June 20, 2023](https://news.asu.edu/20230620-discoveries-future-hand-slice-pizza-other)).

## What happened

Students came back after their enrollment ended. Not for credit — they weren't seeking any — but to keep being part of the conversation: some "kept returning to Pizza and a Slice of Future without seeking any course credit" ([andrewmaynard.net](https://andrewmaynard.net) llms.txt, captured 2026-08-05).

This sits inside a wider pattern Andrew describes from his teaching and mentorship across the initiative's courses: impact on students that changes the way they think in ways no assessment captures — apparent only when you talk with them, hear back from them later, and have them tell you that the course and the mentorship were transformative (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05).

We state the significance plainly, because it is easy to underweight: **this is what unmeasurable student impact looks like.** A student returning to a class they are not enrolled in is a data point no gradebook records and no KPI framework requests. It is also close to the strongest evidence a course can generate — revealed preference, freely given. Our teaching philosophy anticipates exactly this: some learning is deliberately left unassessed because assessment would deform it, and the danger is letting "metrics of learning take the place of actual learning" (see [Philosophy](philosophy.md)).

## Status and gaps

- **Established fact**: the course design, its principles, its intergenerational sessions, and its media coverage are documented (syllabus, 2025; DOT report, 2025; ASU News, 2023).
- **Documented fact**: the returning students are documented on Andrew's own site — some "kept returning to Pizza and a Slice of Future without seeking any course credit" ([andrewmaynard.net](https://andrewmaynard.net) llms.txt, captured 2026-08-05).
- **Elicited testimony**: the transformative-mentorship pattern comes from Andrew Maynard directly (2026-08-05). No student is named here; individual stories await elicitation and clearance before they can be told publicly.
- **Accurate current status**: FIS 394 is paused — "currently not being offered" as of August 2026 ([futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/2025/12/31/pizza-and-a-slice-of-future/)). It is designed, taught, and documented, not currently enrollable. The pedagogy it embodies continues in the initiative's Thunderbird phase.

*Fuller detail — which cohorts, how many returned, what students said in their own words — awaits a dedicated elicitation session with Andrew.*

**What this evidences**: the [Philosophy](philosophy.md) claim that the most consequential impact is real, observable in testimony, and destroyed by attempts to instrument it — teaching as catalysis, with care as the input that counts.