Sustainability Workblog

 

Progress on Goals for Draft Sustainability Plan

• Groups are generating goals for Plan and adding as comments to document
• Deadline: class, Tuesday March 31
• STF Meeting: Wednesday April 4th at 4pm in 311 HWCC
• Basic Framework: include a range of goals:
  • Goals for Administration, Faculty, Staff, Students
  • Annual / Biannual or short term vs long term goals
• Please talk to me about goals for input, and indicate (with a comment) when your goals for a section are complete.

2015-16 UC160 Course

• Committed to teaching a section of UC 160 The OWU Experience with a sustainability & environment focus Spring 2016
• Coordinate with this course, also being taught Spring 2016
• Post ideas for this course in the shared document (Geog 499 folder) called Action: UC160 Sustainability

2015 Student Symposium: April 15

We need a few class members to speak, and the rest to develop presentation materials. Post ideas for this presentation in the shared document (Geog 499 folder) called Action: 2015 Student Symposium

Panel 7: Social Sciences
Faculty Moderator: Dr. Christopher Fink, Health and Human Kinetics
5:15 – 5:50 SCSC 161

5:15 Nathan Madonich and Sara Scinto, An Exploration of the Structure, Dynamics, and Impact on Quality of Life of Selected Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) in Italy and the United States

5:30 GEOG 499 – Seminar: OWU Campus Sustainability Plan, Draft Sustainability Plan for OWU

The room is equipped with a projector and a computer so you can use any visual material you choose. Each talk is scheduled for 10 minutes with 5 minutes for questions and answers. There are 5 minutes for transition between panelists. I encourage you to arrive early to load your presentation on the local computer to speed up the transitions. You are expected to stay and listen to all of the papers presented at your panel. You are also invited to the reception during the Poster Session at 6:15 in the SCSC Atrium.

Grants & 2015 Dominion Foundation Grant

• Dominion Foundation information here
• PDF of grant content (content starts on page 6 – under Request Information) here
• Share additional grant opportunities you have found (as per previous request) in the shared document (Geog 499 folder) called Action: Grants / Foundations

QR Codes and Sustainability at OWU

Alumni Emily Hau sent along a Yale (where she works) thing that we may be able to do something with – a QR code that goes to the sustainability web site or potentially goes to info about specific programs. Not sure if people use these codes much but may be worth thinking about ideas.

• Post ideas for how we might use QR codes in the shared document (Geog 499 folder) called Action: QR Codes / Sustainability

Badges! We need some Stinkin’ Badges!

You are probably familiar with Boy or Girl Scout merit badges. The point was simple, an organization set up guidelines for a goal or task and, when completed, the badge is issued. For the Scouts, the badge is a recognition of effort and accomplishment.

Think about your experience in college. You get credits and eventually a degree: all similar in a way to a scout badge. Specific courses and a degree are all recognition of effort and accomplishment. There are, however, many things you do as part of your college education that are not officially recognized: internships, volunteer projects, SLU projects. An increasing number of efforts like this on campus are related to sustainability and environment. You can put these on your resume, but why not go a step further with some kind of formal recognition for non-credit accomplishments: this is the idea of Digital or Open Badges.

Digital or Open Badges are getting the most attention in the growing world of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses). MOOCs are free online courses, typically offered by institutions of higher learning or organizations. You can learn stuff, but typically you don’t get any credit for the effort (eg., they don’t count towards a degree). So credentials are something you have to pay for. Digital Badges, associated with the completion of MOOCs offer some semblance of a credit (or credential) in contexts where you are not getting official university credit. They are, in essence, a way around the pay for a credit or degree model of education.

There are many models of Digital Badges but most require some kind of official organization to set guidelines which, when met, result in a badge. It is preferable if the requirements for the badge is set up and overseen by educators and professionals familiar with the content the badge represents. The badge is not issued until there is clear evidence that the specified tasks have been completed.

What about a series of sustainability and environment badges for efforts by students (and staff and faculty) at OWU? I envision an oversight group (maybe STF, but it would be good to include off campus professionals). While symbolic, the idea is that the badge is a more official and potentially meaningful way to recognize effort and accomplishment than a line on a resume.

Look over some resources on Badges and lets discuss if and how we might consider implementing a system here at OWU.

Post ideas for how we might use QR codes in the shared document (Geog 499 folder) called Action: Stinkin’ Badges

• Question: badges vs. .25 credit (like physical education courses)

• Educause: Badges overview of badges from higher education perspective
• Wikipedia: Digital Badge overview of broader context of digital badges with resources
• Chronicle of Higher Education: “A Future Full of Badges”
• New York Times: “Here’s What Will Truly Change Higher Education”
• Mozilla Foundation: P2P Badges

Week 9 Progress

• Waiting on feedback on draft sustainability plan from STF (meeting Wednesday March 4th at 4pm in 311 HWCC) and alumni reviewers
• Submitted Legacy Internship proposal for Food Sustainability
• Considering teaching a section of UC 160 The OWU Experience with a sustainability & environment focus (Fall 2015 or Spring 2016)

Post Spring Break Work: updated Monday March 16

A few new additions in red below.

1. Put Thursday April 9 4pm meeting of STF on your calendar. Let me know who can attend.

2. Potential grant opportunities and fundable projects: please identify a minimum of three foundations and their specific grants we can consider.

• Foundation Center (Karen Crosman has a subscription and can search more options through the Center; I suggest compiling any questions you have or searches you suggest and we will send her a list from all of us).
• Columbus Foundation: several people with OWU connections are in significant positions at this Foundation, which is more or less a “meta” foundation which administers many smaller foundations and grant sources. Some are limited to the City of Columbus or Franklin Co., but others are available to Delaware Co.
• General Foundation Search: keep in mind what Karen talked to us about foundations and search for additional options. Sometimes it helps to have a project or projects in mind (dishwasher, natural gas powered vans) other times it helps to see what a foundation funds (to get ideas for possibilities on campus).

3. Review entire draft of sustainability plan and document ideas for specific, measurable goals. Please generate a minimum of ten sustainability goals for our sustainability plan.

• Determine which groups are covering which sections.
• Meeting with Gene Castelli (Chartwell’s related content).
• Review other sustainability plans for goal ideas and examples.
• Review President’s Climate Commitment page on Geog 499 Class blog (in tabs at top of page, or here) for ideas for sustainability plan goals. We have to review the 2009 report and focus on the issues which led to OWU not signing the Commitment and address those.
• Another source of ideas for goals are the Ceres Principles.
• Practice Greenhealth has a relatively succinct overview of how to put sustainability goals into practice. While aimed at hospitals, the principles seem to by and large work well for an academic institution:
  • Sustainability Leadership and Infrastructure: introduction, with more detailed sections linked at the bottom of the page.

Progress:

• Krygier has completed a first draft of Sustainability Plan and opened it up to comments from Geog 499 students.
• Krygier has revised President’s Climate Commitment page on Geog 499 Class blog (in tabs at top of page, or here). Use this Commitment to generate some goals for the Sustainability Plan.
• May Move Out meeting Tuesday Feb 24 at noon (207 Sci Ctr) to review draft of May Move Out plan and schedule.
• Proposal for Legacy Internship position for Food Sustainability distributed for comments. Due Friday, Feb. 27.

For the next week:

• Review draft sustainability plan for adjustments prior to distribution to STF members. Discussion in class Tues., Feb. 24. The draft goes to STF members on Wednesday Feb 25 in preparation for the Wednesday March 4 STF meeting at 4pm. Please plan to attend that meeting if possible.
• Review President’s Climate Commitment page on Geog 499 Class blog (in tabs at top of page, or here) for ideas for sustainability plan goals. We have to review the 2009 report and focus on the issues which led to OWU not signing the Commitment and address those.
• Another source of ideas for goals are the Ceres Principles.
• Hold off on the grants issue until next week.

 

Progress:

• drafts of content sections complete and to Krygier for review & revision
• draft of May Move Out plan and schedule completed
• draft of proposal for Legacy Internship position for Food Sustainability
• meeting with Karen Crosman & discussion of Dominion Foundation grant

For the next week:

• prepare yourself for specific requests from Krygier as he reviews the content of the content sections. The draft goes to STF members on Wednesday Feb 25 in preparation for the Wednesday March 4 STF meeting at 4pm. Please plan to attend that meeting if possible.
• review key sites related to foundation funding and begin to document potential projects and foundations for funding the projects
• Foundation Center (Karen Crosman has a subscription and can search more options through the Center; I suggest compiling any questions you have or searches you suggest and we will send her a list from all of us).
• Columbus Foundation: several people with OWU connections are in significant positions at this Foundation, which is more or less a “meta” foundation which administers many smaller foundations and grant sources. Some are limited to the City of Columbus or Franklin Co., but others are available to Delaware Co.
• General Foundation Search: keep in mind what Karen talked to us about foundations and search for additional options. Sometimes it helps to have a project or projects in mind (dishwasher, natural gas powered vans) other times it helps to see what a foundation funds (to get ideas for possibilities on campus).
• Document what you find with links and questions and we will compile this information together as part of the Sustainability Plan.

As we scoot towards our rough draft of the sustainability plan by Thursday Feb 19 make sure you review the additional student projects I uploaded to the Geog 499 shared folder:

Info: More Past Student Projects

Grants:

Building on the excellent news about the May Move Out Grant, Thursday we also have Karen Crosman (OWU Development) coming to talk about the Dominion Foundation Grant – take a look at the details before we meet Thursday.

Interviews:

First round of interviews: make sure you have your answers typed in the form in the shared folder.

Second round of interviews: I am thinking this is the round (a different group takes over) where we talk to (email, Skype, phone, in person) alumni, Sustainable Delaware, etc. I propose we wait until we have a revised draft of the plan (Wed Feb 25). I think we can also include Mary’s idea of random interviews of selected students, faculty, staff.

A third round of interviews can happen in early April after we have a 2nd draft of the plan. This can be an online survey, in part to get feedback from as many people as possible but also to help promote the plan.

External Reviews:

External Reviews of OWU’s Sustainability Efforts: One more task (probably in the Co-curricular & Community category – Sarah, Thomas, Cindy) is to compile the various places OWU sustainability efforts are documented and review them for accuracy. There seem to be cases where students submitted information, other cases where we are not sure who submitted the information. The Sustainability Task Force can oversee these external reports in the future, but we need to gather the relevant information in one place. A few of these (I am sure there are more):

Campus Sustainability Report Card

The Princeton Review Green Colleges

Digital Tasks for Each of You

Please do the following:

Follow this blog so you get an email when I put up a new posting (this is not working at the moment, will let you know when it is)

Follow the Sustainability and Environment blog

Join the OWU Alumni LinkedIn group, and also the Environmental Studies Sub Group.

Scrappy Sustainability

Finally, in an interview with the OWU Magazine I talked up our efforts and suggested they get a photograph of our group for the article. I also started calling what we are doing “Scrappy Sustainability” as per our discussion about schools with large endowments (who can easily afford the costs of sustainability) vs. our situation at OWU. Might be a good sound bite, but we should discuss more.

Live long and vesper,

John K.

Week 5:

News: May Move out is a Go (grant money or not)!

1) updates from the interview group on progress (Thursday at 10:30)

2) updates on alumni outreach and ideas for how to use LinkedIn contacts

3) updates on the content groups

• make sure to organize your sections per our discussion last week:
  • current practice
  • recommendations / goals
  • responsible persons, offices, people
• any impediments to progress, people who need to be contacted
• we should continue to discuss any changes in format you think may be
  appropriate – ultimately, the sections need to follow the same format
  so any insights you get while working should be shared.
• ideas for continued work towards a draft (see calendar) Feb 19

4) Meeting with Karen Crosman regarding Dominion Foundation grant: Feb 19

5) Query from Rev. Casto. How to respond to this, from the perspective of
campus sustainability?

Week 3: Sustainability Plan for OWU

Tuesday January 27

• select vision statement focus group
• select interview focus group
• select content/actions focus group
• read Farley and Roseland books, chapters 1-3 in each (by next tuesday)

Goal Thursday: one page summary including vision statement and content/action categories (and descriptions) to distribute to interviewees. Schedule of available interview times and questions.

Vision Statement Focus Group: Mira, Bridget, Jayne

Interview Focus Group: Jeff, Lily, Ali, Cindy, Sarah

• schedule for interviewing priority faculty, staff, students
• questions for interviewees
• estimated time required for interviews
• online form (Google Drive) for entering responses

Content/Action Focus Group: Thomas, Christian, Ryan, Mary, Jackson

• evaluate content/action categories (add categories, split up categories) and develop a few more details about what is included in each category
• brief description of content/action categories

Results: Thursday January 29

Draft Vision Statement

As a liberal arts institution, Ohio Wesleyan University strives to lead the local and global community in progressive sustainability initiatives through educational, technical, and social means. Human welfare relies on a healthy planet, but harmful practices and the depletion of natural resources have damaged that equilibrium. We are committed to collaborating with the faculty, staff, students and surrounding communities in order to apply environmental theory into practice through a series of goals. Sustainability means a continuous effort to implement environmentally conscious habits in our daily lives. These efforts are necessary and need to be adaptable and persistent throughout OWU’s presence in the community. It is important to understand the cost and funding required to implement sustainability initiatives. However, these are investments in our future that will ensure the conservation of energy, monetary cost, and environmental health.  This is the start to the formal introduction of a new culture at OWU, which strives to be to be visible, educational, and effective for a positive impact on the environment.

Draft Content Groups & Actions

1. Climate & Energy (Mary, Christian, Jayne)
2. Grounds & Waste (Mary, Christian, Jayne)
3. Water (Ali, Bridget, Ryan)
4. Dining (Ali, Bridget, Ryan)
5. Transportation (Jeff, Mira, Lili, Jackson)
6. Purchasing (Jeff, Mira, Lili, Jackson)
7. Teaching, Education, Research (Sarah, Thomas, Cindy)
8. Co-curricular & Community (Sarah, Thomas, Cindy)

Draft Actions (in each content group)

Curriculum
Community
Education
Financial
Coordination

Work to do:

• Add as much content as possible, questions, ideas, whatever

Draft Interview Questions

1. What is your vision of sustainability at OWU?
2. How have you been involved with sustainability at OWU?
3. What would be the benefits and challenges of OWU having a sustainability plan?
4. What do you think the challenges will be?
5. How can we incorporate sustainability into OWU culture?
6. How can we make sustainability more visible? Communicate with faculty, staff, and students?
7. What areas of OWU do you think could become more sustainable and how?
8. Who else should we talk to?

Work to do:

• Schedule interviews by Friday January 29 (Doodle Poll)
• Include draft of Vision Statement, Content and Action Groups
• Google Poll for entering interview questions: in shared folder (Interview Questions – Documentation)