With a goal of creating conditions wherein college students of adult learning paired with international adult learners form mutual partnerships for educational mentoring, where to begin? How to take into account the contextual factors and priorities of multiple stakeholders in creating academic courses and learning-focused partnerships while staying focused on a core aspiration: that of fostering meaningful relationships across differences of age, class, country of origin, educational attainment, first language and life course position? Theory of change (ToC), a process from the field of evaluation, is a means of mapping out pathways from initial conditions toward desired outcomes. Theory of Change is a powerful heuristic for acknowledging significant aspects of context, bigger picture perspectives, and stakeholder interests. I find particular value and relevancy of ToC as a planning tool for curriculum design, especially in the complex conditions of community-engaged courses. Importantly, mapping a change theory serves as a way to involve stakeholders, creating in this case, a wide-ranging constituency including culture communities, union leaders, campus service workers, academic leaders, administrators, and undergraduate students. With Theory of Change, curriculum design and program development progresses with a clear-eyed embrace of actual circumstances. When informed by such pragmatics, the act of planning toward an aspirational vision gains "robust hopefulness." An actionable characteristic, robust hopefulness is handy when returning to a campus years after the demise of its Education Department and setting about to reestablish and make relevant the field of adult education. [For the full proceedings, see ED581791.]