Wake Tech’s Future Forward Faculty initiative is a grassroots effort that grew out of conversations prompted by the Center for Strategic Futures speakers’ series. In particular, Rick Smyre’s discussion of Communities of the Future encouraged faculty to seriously consider “Designing the Future” courses for their students. As an applied benchmarking project in 2012, Benita Budd coordinated informal meetings of interested faculty, and the original group of three quickly grew to a dozen. Since then, the number of Future Forward Faculty has grown, and the applied benchmarking project has continued as a collaboration of faculty throughout the disciplines.