Finally, after three semesters of building towards the implementation of a product for our community partners, this semester is the one we have all been waiting for. Just last year, I finalized my “product” in the Research Teams class, which consisted of two smaller products, one for professors at SIUE and one for Heartlands Conservancy. For the professors, I created a document that showcased what exactly Heartlands is and what they do for their community. The information I provided was solely based on what I knew from my experience with them or what I could find online. However, this may not be the way that Heartlands wishes to portray itself to professors at SIUE. In order to ensure that I display Heartlands to my list of professors in the best light, I believe that it is crucial for me to speak with people from Heartlands on how they would like to be portrayed to students and professors on campus.
For the second part of my product, I created a list of professors at SIUE who teach science, ecology, or environmental science courses. I also included the individual courses that they are teaching this semester, a description of those courses, and the chairs of each professor’s department. Unfortunately, I feel like there is some more information that I could include in this portion of the product in order to give Heartlands an idea of which professors would most benefit from a collaboration. All in all, my work throughout this semester is going to involve going back in forth between two groups, SIUE professors and Heartlands, in order to determine what would be best for forming a connection between both of them. I have a long way to go, but I already have an outline for what I want to accomplish, so I know this last part will not be too difficult.