Author: jdeboe (Page 1 of 5)

As I am approaching the end of the semester, I am beginning to wrap up and perform the final steps of my research project. I have just sent out the survey I made on community organizations over a week ago to exactly 40 professors at SIUE who teach science or ecology courses. Currently, I have only 10 responses in total, yet I believe that these results alone are going to set a precedent for any other professors who decide to participate. Many of the answers that I have received on my survey have been relatively similar, with only 1 or 2 outliers. It appears that the majority of the participants are in agreement on what roles community organizations could play on campus, whether that is giving lectures to students or advertising volunteer opportunities. Unfortunately, these participants do not speak for the majority of SIUE professors, so until I get more responses, I will simply analyze the current ones and look for trends. 

Most of the questions I posed within the survey allowed the participants to share their experience with and feelings about community organizations. For example, when asked what classes they currently teach or plan on teaching at SIUE that benefit from involvement with community organizations, many of the participants simply said “None”. However, courses in Geography and Anthropology were mentioned as possibilities. While these responses were not extremely significant on their own, it was what their responders went on to say which caught my attention. The same participants who offered solutions for the first question later mentioned how they had students doing community service work for community organizations in the past. The majority of the responders, regardless of any experience with community organizations or lack thereof, had a positive outlook on these groups and the impact they can have on the lives of students. But when the question of “How is this beneficial to Heartlands?” comes up, there are two specific questions that I like to look at. First off, how would the professors utilize these community organizations in class? Most of the participants said either through lectures or networking with students. Beyond that, there were several topics that professors had brought up when asked what courses could benefit from a community organization lead, such as climate change, forever chemicals, and urban farming. Even though my number of responses is rather low, I am able to notice patterns in responses, which could change or remain constant as more participants decide to join. 

The second half of the semester has just begun, and the time to collect data is slowly decreasing. In this next week, I will make adding more participants my priority by resending the survey to the professors who I have not received a response from. The biggest issue with the trends I am currently noticing is that I have no idea whether or not they will hold up as I get more responses. I want to be able to give Heartlands a reliable product that will allow them to partner with students and professors at SIUE in order to push their projects forward. Right now, I simply need to ensure that I get the most answers possible. Then, and only then, can I begin decoding the data. 

Recently, my research into local sites aimed at solving water equity issues in communities has proven unsuccessful. While the sites that I have found in and outside of Heartlands have offered great opportunities for community involvement and volunteering, they still fell short of my goal of giving young adults a reason to be interested in water conservation. I want to give Heartlands a way to connect to people within my age range who are willing to invest some of their time into aiding conservation organizations that work in their region. Now, I have decided the best way to reach this goal is to cut out local sites and connect Heartlands to young adults through SIUE instead. 

SIUE has a large number of students who fit the “young adult” age range. Besides meeting this criterion, there are many students who currently take classes related to ecology and water resources as well. In order to reach these particular students, the method I am going for is to reach out to the professors of these courses and have them connect the students to Heartlands. I created a list of 40 courses that would either mention or teach concepts related to ecology. Among the many core subjects were anthropology, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, and environmental science. Even though not every course listed will go about teaching ecology, I made sure that the outliers were at least related to a type of science. Afterwards, I found the professors who will be teaching each course next semester, which brings me to my new product for this project. 

My plan is not to sign each professor up for a specific program or give them a site to visit. Instead, I merely want to set up contact between these teachers and Heartlands Conservancy, so that they have a list of potential SIUE professors. All I need to do now is separate the professors who are interested from the professors who are not, which I will be doing through a survey. Using the list I have just come up with, I plan on sending the 40 professors a survey that questions their interest in working with community organizations on water equity issues. Some questions ask about the professor about their experience working with community organizations while others ask the professor how they believe their students could benefit from partnering with local organizations. After I receive responses from the professors, I will send these results to Heartlands so that they will know which teachers they can collaborate with. 

In the end, Heartlands Conservancy will have a long list of professors at SIUE that they can partner with in order to connect to an even longer list of young adults. Although it is unfortunate that my original plans for this project did not turn out the way that I expect, I believe that my new product will prove a lot more useful to Heartlands in the long run. As I have stated already, the sites that I found were engaging, but not motivative enough for the average young adult. If I want to get people my age involved in water conservation, finding those who are already interested in ecology and introducing them to Heartlands is the best approach.

Throughout this first semester, my project ideas have gone through a decent amount of change. In the beginning, I had hoped that my research would revolve around visiting sites that are displaying an area of water equity issues that I could encourage young adults to get engaged in. However, finding sites that both relate to my topic and match my goals has proven to be rather challenging. I am currently in the process of restructuring my project in order to match the sites that are available. The sites that I did find originated from different sources and were vastly different from one another. 

Originally, I found several organizations that promoted their contributions to fixing water equity and agriculture issues. The first organization I came across was Open Space STL, which advertises themselves as the first conservation group in the St. Louis region. What stood out to me about this organization was that its environmental programs had led to the creation of several green spaces, including Queeny Park, Bee Tree County Park, and Castlewood State Park. My goal is to promote their volunteer opportunities with watershed planning and river restoration to young adults. Fortunately, even if young adults in the St. Louis Region are not influenced enough to participate in these events, Open Space STL also hosts fundraisers in the form of auctions and boating events. The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District was another organization I found that often hosts events related to stormwater and wastewater through Project Clear. On top of that, I found Tower Grove Park, which acts as a site for both public activities and conservation efforts. 

I decided to also look into sites that Heartlands Conservancy had a direct connection to, so my community partner could help me spread the word to young adults. The difficulty I ran into on this portion of my research is being able to connect these places back to my main goal. I found several public sites, which mainly consisted of parks or attractions for people who lived in the same area. While these sites are good for people who are looking for natural spaces in their region, they do not give the young adult population anything to participate or engage in. Eventually, the Heartlands website took me to newer sites that were bought by or given to Heartlands Conservancy. I originally thought these sites would be better, since there is still lots of work that needs to be put into them. However, they were not made open to the general public, and attempting to set up a tour date is an extra step that the average adult my age is not going to take to get involved. 

In the end, I want to find sites that Heartlands is involved with, because I know that will make it easier for future research. Unfortunately, I am not confident that the sites I found on their website will truly make adults my age want to take action. The organizations I found outside of Heartlands would match my goals for the project, but it would be a lot harder to promote them on my own. Through these next couple weeks, I will work on revising my topic and finding sites that best match my ideas in order to begin advertising these causes to adults my age.