Once Upon a College

Saturday, February 23, 2013

New study adds concern to climate sensitivity, tipping point, debate

We'll discuss this in class when the appropriate chapter comes around:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/21/temperature-rise-permafrost-melt

Great happenings

Photo: A great shot of new solar PV array installed by ReVision Energy last year. Stolen from the Sustainability Office's Facebook page. (Thanks Sara!) Click to enlarge and see the full width.

It's been interesting around here lately.

Little Unity, the College That Could, has been in the national news again and again with our divestment campaign. Most recently, we're featured in a very breezy and millennial-targeted Rolling Stone article by Bill McKibbon (which you can access here).

I'm hoping that this coverage will bring in some new students for our degree programs, particularly Sustainable Energy Management (SEM), Sustainable Agriculture (SustAg), Environmental Policy, Law and Society (EPLS -- which I like to pronounce "eeples"), and Earth and Environmental Science (ESS).

These are the Unity College programs that collectively and individually address the particular specific challenges that climate change raises.

All our programs have some part of sustainability science, but these programs represent the key disciplines and transdisciplinary areas required for actually solving the problems raised by climate change and other sustainability issues.

It's not much good just thinking about it. Even advocacy is only part of the solution. You also have to get it done.

Specifically, we need to figure out what government policies and private enterprises could possibly do the very difficult and complex work of dramatically reducing the widespread use of fossil fuel in housing, transportation, agriculture, industry and commerce, and thus reduce climate emissions. Then we have to implement them, in new programs of government and private enterprise.

The first three programs I mentioned do these bits, collectively.

We also need to scientifically track our progress, as well as answer outstanding questions such as what the precise climate sensitivity to GHG emissions is (we think we know, but there remains some uncertainty) and where the tipping points are (recent evidence from Siberia suggests they are too close for comfort).

ESS does these bits, while also training students in general earth systems science.

It seems to me, in my relatively simple-minded way of thinking, that we've got it covered.

"Gotcha covered" as we say in Maine.

Closer to home, in perhaps more prosaic and practical mode, the campus farm plans are at last moving forward. A permanent livestock farm will augment our existing vegetable farm (which provides food to the cafeteria and the local food bank). The history of this effort, with a few false starts, has been complicated, and I won't go into it here.

Suffice it to say, there have been numerous efforts to break through the log-jam of college planning and build a farm on campus. Progress has been fitful. But now it seems we're almost at the finish line.

Or, more realistically, the start line. The point where planning and advocacy begin to be replaced by care and feeding routine and regulation and, most important of all, daily lessons in sustainable agriculture.

(Just back from feeding my own fat, very pregnant sheep, I need to express that I really enjoy this part. The Joy of Sheep.)

Of course, there have been lots of real and very serious lessons in the advocacy and planning stages of the farm, and students have been involved throughout, notably in the building of the barn, now beautifully kitted out and trimmed (by former student and Student Government President Jason Reynolds and his J-Build sustainable design-build firm), but more recently in planning out the livestock systems.

Here's an example. (Thanks, Shayne.)

If you build it they will come!

At least, that was the idea, back in the cold dark days before the Administration changed hands and the college made planning for a farm a budget priority. So, we built a barn.

Thanks to Sara Trunzo and Jesse Pyles and the SustAg students and many many others for making this old dream of mine a reality on campus. I feel sorry for all the students who wanted it so badly and have now graduated, but like I said, they learned lessons along the way (if only how to respond to, and work with, a slow-moving bureaucracy).

I'm very proud of the fact that after many years of fitful, isolated, and disorganized efforts this whole system of thinking and doing at Unity College is beginning to gel nicely.

I predicted this would happen, a very long time ago in college life (see this 2004 article here), and many generations of students have come and gone since, so this is a major personal vindication.

Now we just have to keep it up, don't we.

And perhaps expand it to students who would like to study at Unity College, but can't, for one reason or another, get here physically.

That would be the online/distance learning part, which I'm now directly involved in planning.

Unity College may one day soon have certificate and degree programs in sustainability that you can attend "from away."

Of course, there's no substitute for actually coming to Unity, Maine, so my own preference, and the idea I'm particularly advocating, is that our online programs include a short residency option which would allow online students to come to Unity College for part of the summer, see and work on our exemplary sustainable campus, and participate directly in the intellectual work of the college, if only for a short stint.

Think of it as a working vacation in sustainability.

Any takers?

Friday, February 22, 2013

National Park Service summer job

Climate Change Communication Paid Internships, Summer 2013

National Park Service (National Capital Region) &

George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication

Deadline: March 31, 2013

Description

The National Park Service (NPS) cares for special places saved by the American people so that all may experience our heritage. In this capacity, NPS is in a unique position to observe changes brought about by global warming, and to engage park visitors and neighbors in conversations about climate change. George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) conducts research on, and teaches about, climate change public engagement strategies.

Seven interns will have the opportunity to work with 4C, NPS park staff and the NPS’s Urban Ecology Research Learning Alliance on climate change communication projects at National Parks in the Greater Washington, D.C. area in the summer of 2013.
Qualifications

The 10-week internships are open to graduate students or exceptional rising senior undergraduate students studying in any relevant field. Students must be attending a U.S. accredited college or university and must be legally allowed to work in the U.S. All interns must pass a Federal government background check.

Please indicate in your resume and cover letter your experience or knowledge on the following::

-Background in communication, marketing. journalism, social science, or environmental sciences

-Experience with social media in an organizational context

-Volunteering or volunteer management experience

-Outdoor education, interpretation or natural resource management experience

One intern will serve the multimedia production needs of the intern team. This individual should have a background in visual and audio media, including photography, videography, sound/radio production, and/or graphic design. If you would like to be considered for this position, please indicate so in your cover letter.

Dates, Duration, and Location

Internships are full time (40 hours per week) for ten weeks, running from June 17 to August 23, 2013, with the possibility of extension through early September for individual interns if there schedule permits. All work will take place in the Washington, DC metro area. Housing is not provided. Having a personal vehicle is strongly recommended but not required

Stipend

Interns will be paid $250 per week, paid biweekly.

How to Apply

Applicants should submit the following materials (combined as one PDF file with applicant’s name as the file name) to jrolfere@gmu.edu with “NPS4C:[Applicant Name]” as the subject line: (1) your resume or CV; (2) your undergraduate and/or graduate transcript (unofficial is acceptable); (3) a one page cover letter discussing your specific interest in the internship and highlighting your qualifications. The cover letter should also contain the name, contact information, and nature of the relationship (e.g., professor, employer) for two individuals who may serve as a reference. Inquiries regarding this internship may be directed to jrolfere@gmu.edu. Applicants will be notified by mid April if they have been selected.

Deadline for all application materials: March 31, 2013

Diversity

The NPS and 4C seek a diverse cohort of interns. Applicants with diverse backgrounds from under-represented groups are encouraged to apply.

Please complete the distance learning survey

Dear students:

If you've heard the buzz, you know your Unity College faculty and administration are considering adding opportunities in online and distance education.

This might include (but is not limited to):

Having online courses of our own that you can take while on break or during term time
Requiring more online material out of class time, such as the "flipped" classroom ideas used in Dr. Phillippi's General Genetics class, where you study the course lectures on video in your own time and work on problems in class
Allowing Unity College credit for partner institutions' online courses (after a quality control check). An example might be these Teacher Education courses here:
Allowing students to take an exam for credit after taking a non-credit-bearing course online, such as these ones here
Creating online or partly online certificate, bachelor's and even master's degree programs in important new areas such as sustainability science
Being able to "attend" Unity College from away, or while in another country.
Other (countless) possibilities with new technology

Some of these options would allow you more choice, more time to do a job outside of school, or save you some money on tuition. But on the flip side, this is "Americas Environmental College" where we do our best to be "hands-on and minds-on." We also must protect the academic integrity and employment value of the Unity College degree.

So we want to know what best to do.

Of course, we want to hear from you about what you think about all this. We'll be holding some focus groups around campus later this term, and some of you will be invited to join, but all of you are invited to fill out our survey.

The survey can be found at https://docs.google.com/a/unity.edu/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An721mV8y-nydHRtTTR0YllaaXBKN2hVQmxkRUlISFE&usp=sharing

Please fill it out and tell us what you think. We'll use these data to help us decide what best to do, and what the priority is.

NOTE: the survey is intended to be anonymous, but some of you are the only student or one of only a few students in a very small major, particularly the old (pre-2012) majors. If this is you, and if you don't want it to be possible to identify you, check the "Prefer not to answer" option.

Thanks for helping out.

Mick Womersley
Chair of the Distance Learning Task Force

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Dear students:

A short follow up: Many thinks to the many students that already completed the survey.

One minor glitch: If you have a private Google account, you'll need to sign out and sign into to your UC account (UC username and email password) to complete the survey.

One student asked why we need to know what major the survey respondents are. The answer is, if students from any particular major were more (or less) enthusiastic about distance learning options, we might use that knowledge to prioritize our efforts. But, if you know you're the only student in a small major, or one of the last students in a pre-2012 curriculum revision major, and you wish to remain perfectly anonymous, you may click "prefer not to answer."

You might also like to tell us we should concentrate efforts in a non-major area (e.g., general education, computer science, math, or English), or in some kind of completely new programming. Use the open-ended question at the end of the survey.

Thanks again.

Mick

Link to survey: https://docs.google.com/a/unity.edu/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An721mV8y-nydHRtTTR0YllaaXBKN2hVQmxkRUlISFE&usp=sharing