And change projects across all classes result in some great things

Best student projects ever this semester with 'change' project incorporated across the curriculum.

My favorites (so far) are a video on waste (too large of a file to insert here, but featured problem and what you can do steps), a video on the human equivalents for animal industrial farming, another video on body shaming, and a vegan/organic dinner party (picture below).

The only thing I will do to improve next semester is even more (there are already some) incremental reflection/change/mindfulness components to each assignment.  The garbage collection assignment was already a massive success so I don't see why each assignment cannot have some sort of 'doing' component to raise awareness, engage, and leave me (and the students) less depressed about systemic/institutional social problems.

Change or teach/create projects across ALL classes

All classes now incorporate the importance of personal efficacy, culminating in the 'personal/group impact change' or 'create/teach' projects and presentations as capstones.  Each student (alone or in small groups) will need to develop a project for change and report the results or create a means of teaching about needed change and report the results.

The goal is to add creativity (literature suggests it is sorely lacking in education) and personal efficacy to topics that are otherwise often 'soul crushing' or engender a sense of hopelessness.

Starter ideas are embedded in the project description on Talon, but new ideas arise daily.  In response to "Miss Representation," students were wanting to make projects to reach out to media outlets and politicians to state their frustrations.  They were also willing to come up with ways to share the documentary with others that might foster greater awareness (and hence the power to change!) of the social forces acting on us.

8th Annual (but my first) Dubuque Sustainability Conference- Day 2

For today's blog, I'm going to write around the session descriptions to capture the most information.  After further reflection on yesterday's sessions, I'm also going to send Scott Ermer an e-mail to inquire about training programs in rooftop and stormwater management through rain gardens, 'living roofs,' and 'floating islands.'  With the golf course industry 'belly-up' and interest in water conservation, it seems that Kirkwood may want to start training programs to get people ready to assist with water catchment and rain gardens.

SESSION 1:  "Part 1: Big Ox Energy will describe how a private/public partnership will convert high strength wastewaters, sludges and solid organics into renewable natural gas for injection into an interstate/intrastate natural gas pipeline grid. The project under development will take in wastes both piped in and trucked in for anaerobic digestion. The project broke ground in May, 2015. Its upper Midwest location is in the center of America’s industrial-scale food manufacturing and processing belt. Meatpacking and processing plants, fruit and vegetable canning, cereal manufacturing, and breweries produce hundreds of tons of waste each day that create a disposal challenge, which this project aims to solve.

Part 2: Converting over 1,400 tons per year of food scraps from local restaurants, schools and supermarkets into renewable natural gas fuel, electricity and value-added lawn and garden products, the Nebraska Organic Waste Resources (NOW Resources) Project is Lincoln, Nebraska’s first commercial food waste-to-energy program. The project will provide enough renewable energy to fuel a dedicated CNG trash truck, while making the partnership a net exporter of electricity and creating compost and liquid fertilizer as byproducts. The project is a partnership between Uribe Refuse Services, Inc., and Nebraska Organic Waste Energy, Inc., and is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Nebraska Environmental Trust."

In addition to this session, I spent an hour talking to the Big Ox crew.  They showed me the schematics for their Wisconsin facility and explained they only need big stakeholders in Cedar Rapids to sign on to be able to build a facility in our area.  With a facility in our area, they would be in a position to divert animal, agricultural, and human (including packaging and food scraps) waste from Kirkwood into concentrated, liquid fuel for use in car fleets, etc.  The compressed gas they produce as fuel can be used in modified diesel engines including school buses!  Their greatest success (it seems) thus far is in South Sioux Falls where industrial waste was overwhelming municipal services (including water treatment facilities in Sioux Falls, IA.  Unfortunately, cities like Des Moines already have tax payer funded, oversized nitrate processing water treatment facilities and cannot afford to now invest in diverting industrial and agricultural waste.

The second session regarding Lincoln, Nebraska features a much smaller-scale process of separating food waste from packaging and then using AD to turn the product into natural gas for a fleet of waste trucks.  The process is less capital-intensive, but smaller scale and focused on food waste with hand sorting from packaging.  On the plus side, this project is replicable by a variety of entities within the city.  The organizers also recognize the need for increased education regarding food waste on the front end.  They wish to educate regarding nutrition needs and the perils of food waste in addition to better conversion to energy and diversion from landfills.

Unfortunately, both solutions are designed to work within our existing food and agricultural production rather than challenging the production of waste in the first place.  That said, until we have reverse deleterious trends in production, diversion from rivers and landfills is better than nothing.  [The Big Ox folks and I discussed the sad irony of the Des Moines Register front page articles (side by side) regarding reclaiming water use via recreation and the increased nitrate levels in said waterways.]

SESSION 2: "This presentation examines the relationship between the environmental consequences of sprawl development patterns and the economic viability of the places we build. Current research has uncovered an alarming disassociation between the perceived economic growth of suburban development and the true costs attached to such investments. The take-away from the talk will focus on urban design principles supportive of strong environments and economies from the scale of the region to the scale of the street. The financial numbers behind the impact of the physical characteristics of a place and its economic performance will be the lens through which these principles are studied. Case studies will include a comprehensive land use and transportation master plan for the greater metropolitan region of Chicago and the redevelopment of Main Street Broken Arrow, OK."

I think the above session is a nice complement to the keynote yesterday about the problems associated with sprawl and the new demand (and cost savings) associated with the 'old' model of live and work in place town squares.  The presentation also addresses reclamation of buildings rather than demolition as a means to supporting sustainability.  Additionally, reclamation adds jobs and commercial potential.

The awesome part of this presentation is meeting Peter Ruklic of 'undependentRockIsland' who suggested paradigm-shifting videos about walkable cities and environmental discussions wrongly focusing on wilderness rather than cities.  I haven't had time to view the longer videos he referenced on youtube ("Strongtown Curbside Chat Pondering Idaho" and "Cities for People, John Gehl (from Melbourne, Australia)," but I am super excited to see "Walkable City" by Jeff Speck.  This is the video Peter mentioned that challenges us to look at city use as central to environmental concerns.

The noon keynote includes discussion of how love for place can motivate grassroots activism and community development.  I think 'love of place' is an important intangible (also implicit in current class changes), but tricky for a student population that may wish to leave home.  That said, I think 'home' comes in many forms for our current students and hopefully a 'love of Kirkwood' can be engendered with personal connections and also potential for student-led campus actions and physical transformations.

Unfortunately, the conference in general has failed (as have most) to articulate a shared definition of 'sustainability' (something I discussed with NICC's President at lunch yesterday).  Likewise, we've failed to note that we cannot sustain these sick systems, but rather need to deconstruct them before creating newer, saner, humaner, and potentially 'sustainable' ones.

AFTERNOON MOBILE TOUR: "The Catfish Creek Watershed Management Authority was created in 2012 to educate watershed residents, farms and businesses about the resource an impact their actions have on water quality and runoff and complete projects that improve the quality of the diverse 57 square-mile watershed. The Water & Resource Recovery Center, a $67 million project, harnesses biogas from anaerobic digestion to use for heating and cooling generation, collects high-strength waste from nearby food processing plants, and makes biosolids, which were previously considered waste, available for fertilizer on local farm ground. This tour will include examples of the watershed management's agenda and a tour of the new W&RRC."

The afternoon tour was actually pretty cool.  The first part featured what I didn't even realize was Dubuque's waste water treatment (commercial and residential) facility near the Mines of Spain.  The facility features anaerobic digesters that produce 75% of the current energy needed to run the plant and may soon expand to include methane from food scraps as well as production of liquid gas for use in City of Dubuque transportation fleets.

The second portion of the tour featured something near and dear to my heart (especially after getting my first ever infection from water): The Catfish Creek Watershed.  The executive summary provided reveals that all five branches of Catfish Creek exceed nitrogen and phosphorous (something the City waste treatment facility is looking at extracting to reduce 'dead zones' downstream and save on phosphorous mining for fertilizer use which is expected to be depleted in less than 50 years) levels.  Additionally, many branches exceed E. coli acceptable levels as well.  As a result, Swiss Valley:

is working to reclaim stream beds to prairie (to absorb rain), working with area farmers (including paying for 75% of run-off remediation via State and Federal grants), and implementing rain gardens to deal with storm run-off:

8th Annual (but my first) Dubuque Sustainability Conference- Day 1

Who knew my hometown would have such a well-organized conference with so many sessions of relevance to Sociology of the Environment.  Full sessions are listed here, but today's plan includes the sessions on Engaging Neighborhoods through Arts & Culture (fits nicely with my new 'creativity' in educating model), What's New with Green Infrastructure, and Using the Livability Index to Gauge Your City (of particular interest with new assignments asking students to 'grade' or create 'report cards' to assess their communities and campus, which they seem to really love and could make as semester-long independent projects).

Tomorrow's plan in includes (in addition to the breakfast and lunch keynotes), sessions on Bringing Waste-to-Energy into the Mainstream and The Point of No Return: Examining the True Economic Costs of Sprawl.  Tomorrow also includes a tour of the Catfish Creek Water Recovery System (designed to deal with run-off and amend water pollution).  This is an additional, two-hour mobile tour of the water recovery center so I'm hoping to have some pictures from my phone to post tomorrow as well.

I already spent the morning making connections with anaerobic biogas folks willing to come to Kirkwood for a free assessment of how waste from various parts of the campus (including Agriculture) could be converted into energy.  Turns out federal grants pay for the initial assessment.  I've also gathered details on 'living roofs' and spent quite a bit of time talking about the future of solar power.  The folks at Eagle Point Solar are doing solar farms in Kalona and relayed that current 'dollar for dollar' trades exist with Alliant and MidAmerican per federal law, but that completely off-grid options are a likely reality in the near future (with 10 year-lasting battery banks soon to be offered at less than $5000 a system).

smART [sustainability+madison+art] wants to create community in the room as well as in the community (by asking us first 'what is your story?').  The presentation reinforces class changes I've made to slow down material and make nametags based on the arguments that it takes time to build trust and relationships.  [The latter is their main takeaway.]  smART is based on just communities, healthy planets, and healthy societies using individuals as agents of change.  This also fits nicely with individual change models.  It turns out that only 10% of the population needs to be convinced that a new behavior is good in order to create a societal 'tipping point' in favor of that change.  At Sustain Dane, children work together with residents to create art that is positive and builds relationships and trust.  Elite artists combined with residents from diverse communities to plan community art projects and all participated in the production to grow community.  [Frankly, I think we could try a project like this with diverse student groups at the beginning of a semester to produce art for some area of campus.]  Importantly, the organizers have started by asking the community if they have interest and building a coalition (door to door) for community interest.  The program can also be done with a medium other than art but following a few helpful tips.  Presenters note we need community and social pressure (not just individual 'shoulds') to make real change.  We need to be talking with all involved to align goals from the start (ideally making fewer assumptions each time) and be flexible in response to the needs and wants of the community (how can what we want to achieve partner with what the community wants).  I think there's also application of this to climate change or industrial agriculture or any other social problem profiled [creating a group mural to depict some element of homophobia might also work for the LGBT Studies class].

Our noon luncheon included a presentation highlighting the demand for walkable communities by Millenials along with the warning that talent will dictate location for businesses in the future.  The transportation expert recommends RETURNING TO THE OLD in order to solve today's problems.  He suggests walkable, attractive city centers near transportation hubs to attract young folks rather than continuing the suburban sprawl characteristic since the 1920s.  (E.g., Dubuque's River Walk below.)

Cost is reduced in all forms (travel time, roadways, etc.) by rebuilding city centers that reflected the 'old time mainstreet' model of mixed use residential and commercial.  His presentation was exceptionally sociological in the sense that our suburban sprawl did not arise out of thin air.  We began to zone for residential only, create arterial roads, and invest only in transportation related to the automobile.  Almost as importantly, I was privileged to spend lunch chatting with President Liang Chee Wee from Northeast Iowa Community College.  I was tremendously impressed with his personal and professional philosophies, vision for the college, and caring about the students.

My first afternoon session details floating treatment wetlands and water resource management.  From the brochure: "Floating Treatment Wetlands are an innovative environmental solution that "biomimics" nature’s wetlands to pull unwanted nutrients and pollutants from the water. The island matrix and plants provide important surface area for microbes to colonize and help manage phosphorus, nitrogen and total suspended solids in the water. Covered with plants that grow roots down below the islands, the infrastructure helps restore wetland habitat, pollinator plants, and the beauty of native plants."  

This reminds me of the larger matrix of wetland and grey water resolution at Oberlin College that is capable of completely converting bathroom waste into water clean enough to be used on edible plants.  In this case, floating wetlands are intended to deal with overloads of nitrogen into the watershed.  You need not retrofit and can actually add in increments and to scale to remove nitrogen in harmless gas form and to sequester phosphorous.  The floating islands are modeled after peat bogs in Wisconsin.

My second afternoon session relates to now having students 'grade' or do 'report cards' on various social issues on campus and in their communities.  I would like to have students try the livability index, but also to consider creating one for Kirkwood as an individual project.  Students could ask for assessment by peers and then propose solutions to the college.

See and feel

In the midst of more of this, all I can say is that I think it's more important than ever to change our society and our educational system so that we are really *seeing* each other.  We can do better for each other, but perhaps we have to first look at our own hurts and to have someone validating those hurts (*seeing* us).  We can deescalate sometimes, we can "see," we can really get to know rather than demand, etc.  We are an angry society, but we don't have to be.

Real change from student input and Professional Development offerings

In an Introduction to Sociology assignment to find examples of symbolic interactionism, one student commented on the ubiquitous pink from a baby shower recently attended.  The discussion transitioned to the history of pink and blue as gendered colors as well as additional examples from today's world.  Another student raised her hand and said "like on the webpage right behind you."  Behind me on the overhead projector was the Talon login page and a picture of boys wearing Kirkwood blue and girls in pink.

To model the personal change projects for the last fifth of the semester, I decided to e-mail several folks at Kirkwood to see if there were alternative pictures.  After sharing the choices with my students and finding it difficult to find images that were truly representative of the diversity of the student body, another student said "why not use the Kirkwood eagle."  Brilliant idea.  Marketing came up with a new login page featuring the eagle, which fits nicely with both 'Eaglenet' and 'Talon' and still allows for pictures of representative students, activities, and campus facilities on the regular Kirkwood.edu homepage.

Lovely.

Also lovely was approval for Marti from The Tapestry to speak to faculty and staff during professional development days in November.  We are excited by the possibility of greater faculty involvement (from across the trades, music department, etc.) as well as student volunteerism.

Last 'lovely' from today was a student in LGBT Studies who said, following a set of questions about gender roles, "my head is spinning...is it supposed to be."  Yes.  Yes, it is.  :)

Connections with the community and future service to the college from The Tapestry

Marti from The Tapestry time and furniture bank has been kind enough to speak to four of my classes about community and the mission of The Tapestry.  We met during my professional development year and spoke about possible collaboration.

Phase one is to have her present to my students.

Phase two will hopefully be student participation (possibly as a part of their individual change projects) with The Tapestry.

Phase three is a hopeful presentation by Marti to the greater Kirkwood faculty and staff about involvement with the non-profit.