Parkhurst Dining Service
Jamie’s presentation was very enlightening in terms of the way in which it opened my eyes to food sourcing and ethics at UNE. He discussed the Farmsource program which was formed in 2002, essentially promoting local food sourcing and the “know your source” initiative. For example, dairy has no rbst and is sourced within 250 miles from the University. Meat comes from within 250 miles, and even local artisan producers are involved through Parkhurst and get to provide their food to our school. These artisans tend to be family businesses which I really was excited to hear because I love going to the farmer’s market in Scarborough in the summer and buying from local farmers. I absolutely love buying food which only has to travel a few miles and then ends up on my plate because it is better for me and for the environment. I noticed that Jamie had this passion as well when he was talking about his Forged Partners program, promoting sourcing from family-owned businesses and being able to get certain family-owned products into lots of locations – like the beef jerky.
I found myself a bit confused as Jamie discussed distribution models but I do understand that Parkhurst mainly utilizes the hub and spoke model where trucks go out and pick stuff up and then drop stuff off. The goal is that the truck is never driving empty. Distribution is the biggest obstacle for local sourcing specifically in rural areas and I can absolutely understand why. Ultimately, buying local tends to be more expensive but I find it to be well worth it.
The most fascinating part of Jamie’s presentation I found to be verified foods. He talked about the terms free trade and organic which seem to be more valid than terms such as free range or natural. McDonald’s announced that they would become cage-free, however consumers need to understand that this does not necessarily mean the chickens will have outdoor access. From my understanding, with certified organic, however, chickens must have access to the outdoors. As of right now, enriched cage-free is the most efficient system because all it really entails is taking away the cages, making it easy and cheap to convert to. The new up and coming issue we will need to be on the lookout for is Crispin which makes apples “not-browning”. This honestly really scares me and makes me want to learn even more about the food I am consuming and what it is made out of.
As I walk around in the dining hall now, I have a new outlook and deeper understanding of the food I am putting on my plate. I tell all my friends that UNE actually does try really hard to source its food locally and that we are lucky to have a food service that cares about removing chemicals from our food. I really appreciated Jamie’s presentation as food is something I care about and he answered a lot of questions that I had about Parkhurst dining service.
April 2, 2020 Check-In
Today Nicole and I had a Zoom with Alethea, transitioning into working on our project proposal, after presenting our case study before Spring break. Working all-online has certainly been challenging so far, especially in terms of the extra effort required to communicate with people – face to face is always my preference. We no longer have the option of calling up other schools to learn about their sustainability research and data collection methods. Thus, we were forced to slightly change directions and stick to what we know and what we can access for information, with Alethea still acting as a huge resource of ours.
First, Alethea suggested that we focus on collecting data on who is currently conducting research, rather than incentivizing more faculty to conduct research. This decision was made 1- because we need to know what is being done before we can look to expand research and 2- because there are not enough resources to look to expand research at the moment, especially with the obstacle of working remotely. We plan to propose that the Sustainability Office with help from Eco-reps will survey university researchers to see if their research involves sustainability or planetary health concepts. In regard to the survey that is part of this proposal, we plan to create criteria and definitions for sustainability and planetary health along with a checklist so that researchers will be clear on what they are being asked, and specifically they will be able to decide whether or not their research involves these aspects we are looking for. Collecting this data will allow the University to see how much research is being done on sustainability and planetary health, being as these topics are elements of what our school stands for.
When it comes to laying out the proposal, I will describe the process of what this will all entail (in my personal version of the proposal and Nicole will have her own). For example, I will say something like “The Sustainability Office with help from the Eco-reps and Alethea (give Alethea’s professional title) will survey researchers…”. For the next section on Objectives I will discuss metrics that can be used for this project, such as “By December of 2020 the office will have interviewed or surveyed 25 faculty members…”. By giving a time frame and amount, this will make this proposal more concrete, real, and implementable. As far as Justification, we talked with Alethea about connecting this proposal to UNE’s core values. The University is concerned with research and Environmental Stewardship so this would be the perfect project to support those concerns. In addition, I will look at the Strategic Plan on the UNE website, specifically looking for the 6 priorities that include being an environmentally-friendly school. UNE also prides itself on being rated green on the Princeton Review.
So… we will together be compiling criteria/ definitions along with a checklist and this will be attached to our final proposal.
This Zoom session was super helpful in terms of establishing a plan for Nicole and I going forward and clarifying any lingering confusions after completing our case study. I look forward to more meetings in the future as we begin to draft our project proposal.
Here is a photo from our Zoom today, as Alethea answered our questions:
April 13, 2020 Meeting with Nicole
On Monday, Nicole and I Facetimed in order to go over a plan for our final project. This meeting has been documented on our Trello board. Since we both need to draft our own versions of the project proposal, we thought it made sense to discuss a general outline for the proposal together, and ensure that we are on the same page as far as logistics. First, we split the survey into two part, so I would be drafting the portion about planetary health and Nicole would be covering sustainability. Together, we will draft questions based on the criteria of each question. We decided that we would be focusing on the project description as well as the objectives, justification, and measures of success first. These are the major parts that need to be completed before we can really nail down the other specifics. During this meeting we came across many questions (mostly specific to our own project) and we wrote them down to get clarification from Alethea. We sent the email and that concluded our meeting. Now to start the project!!
April 16, 2020 Project Proposal Drafting Process
Following the meeting that I had with Nicole, I started researching for my Project Proposal draft. I did not use a very organized method, instead I just filled in the parts that I knew the answers to right away such as the location section. Usually I like to dive into tasks in a more organized fashion but I felt that this was more of an assignment where I thought “well, I need to start somewhere and just get writing”.
I do not feel as though the project was hard, but for me it was difficult to get clarity on the details of our project. Some concepts I was unclear about such as are we looking to survey all faculty conducting research or just those who are full time professors, assistant professors, etc.? I also could not find a good explanation of what an Eco-rep is at UNE and the page on the UNE website was not working. Therefore, it was tough for me to decide whether to have the Eco-reps carry-out the surveys (not really knowing what they are) or to have work-study students do the surveying. Based on my knowledge about work-study student jobs on campus, I felt as though this would be an appropriate task for them to perform for a few hours each week. These parts of the project made me uncomfortable because I don’t like making decisions based upon my best guess or a gut-feeling.
There were also some parts of the project that went surprisingly smoothly. For example, I thought that the justification and the example portions would be the most difficult because I knew that for those sections I needed to be very thorough and provide a lot of specifics. However, I knew exactly where to look when it came to finding information for these sections so it was actually so smooth to write. For the examples I used the links provided by Alethea in order to compare our proposed methods of research data collection to other Universities.
Here is a photo of the methodology portion on STARS (accessed through the link that Alethea provided):
I was able to use this information and compare it to the methods that we were proposing for the survey. As for the Justification, I knew that I was going to rely on the UNE mission statement, as well as the Core Values, and the Strategic plan so that was actually relatively easy to look up and plug in the important parts that pertained to our project and that would strengthen our cause.
I think that if I could do this project again (although I know it is still not totally done), I would try to clarify the details with my partner in advance. I am someone who really dislikes procrastinating so I often get really stressed out working in groups when the other person does not want to get started. Finally I had to make some decisions on my own which I would have liked to have talked about in order to make the best choice possible.
Overall, I am really happy with my Proposal, especially given all of the obstacles that have been thrown my way recently with the transition to online learning. I dedicated a lot of time to this and it makes me want to really fight to get this Proposal actually approved and taken into action!! I am excited to hear feedback and revise my Proposal so that it can be as good as possible.
April 24, 2020 Project Management Tool Review
~ Trello ~
Nicole and I chose to use Trello because I have experience using it from my job last summer. I shared a Trello board at WEX with my coworker and we would use it to organize our work flow, assign tasks, and simply keep track of the various projects we had going on at any given time. I knew that it was a very basic project management tool that was not overly complicated with tons of features and it met our needs.
Trello is great for very basic task lists. It is broken down into “Things to do”, “Doing”, and “Done”. I find that it is easier to read simple lists when organizing tasks and thought that for Nicole and I’s needs, Trello would be perfect. I like the very simple layout of the board – there are not buttons all over the page, unnecessary words everywhere and it is just a very clean design. When I make lists I like to keep the items on them very short and sweet, as I find it can be overwhelming to write long descriptions for each thing that needs to get done.
Here is what our board currently looks like:
I chose green since this is a Sustainability board!
The main aspect of Trello that was an issue for me was difficulty labeling who was assigned to each task. I decided to create a new column for a “key” so that Nicole and I could distinguish who was supposed to do each item on the lists. This worked fairly well, but definitely would not have worked well if there were more people involved in the project. May be there is a feature for labeling/ assigning tasks that I just could not easily find?
The other issue I noticed with Trello is that I could not assign due dates anywhere other than just putting it in the description of the task that needed to get done. I wish there was a way to add a separate label on each task for the date that it is due because I think it would draw more attention to it and be more organized overall. I know I said that I like how simple Trello is and now I am complaining about how it is TOO simple, but it is hard to find a happy medium. Just a couple more of these features would have been nice for organization purposes, while still not being too overbearing in terms of complexity of the tool.
I am rating Trello a 4/5 because I think it is a great tool and I love the layout and simplicity, however I just wish it had a couple more of those basic features I needed for this project such as due dates and assigning tasks. I can say with certainty that I will use this tool in the future, especially because this is already my second time using it so clearly I like it enough to use it more than once! I am not sure that I would use it again for complex projects with a lot of moving parts or various due dates and lots of project members. I honestly think it would be a great tool for myself to use, creating lists of tasks I need to complete around the house – just very simple, independent projects. This is a great tool that I would recommend, however something like Asana might be better for more complex projects.
April 24, 2020 ePortfolio Review
E-portfolio has enhanced my learning from the UNE sustainability initiative project by allowing me to document and reflect upon my work. I am a big fan of reflecting on the things I have learned because it allows me to think about what I did well and areas that I should try to improve. Using ePortfolio has been a great tool because it also allows me to document all of my work in one, organized place. I am able to look back at meetings I’ve had, screenshots I’ve taken, and remind myself of what I should be working on next. I think that for projects like this one with a lot of moving parts that need to be tied together, ePortfolio is a great resource, similar to the project management tool, that helps to stay organized. The project management tool helps to record and keep track of little tasks, but ePortfolio allows me to write freely, as much or as little as I want, and to reflect on my experiences throughout this project. For example, it was a really useful communication tool because I was able to record all of the conversations I had about the project so that I could go back and look at my posts to remind myself of details that were discussed. I used this a lot when drafting my project proposal. I also liked being able to go onto Alethea’s site and check out various rubrics for assignments, in a similar fashion to Blackboard.
I don’t really see myself using ePortfolio specifically in the future. I think that it has been a great tool for this class and project but in the future I am not sure exactly how I would use it. I like all of the computer skills I have learned through using it but it’s really a way to record work and I am not sure what I would record, but of course this depends on my future job. I think ePortfolio is great for creative people, especially artists or writers, because it gives them a place to store and share their creations.
Overall, I am very thankful that we learned about project management in this course as well as getting some experience with ePortfolio. Even if I don’t use ePortfolio in the future, I learned about how to put together and design a basic website of my own. I also wish that I had taken this course prior to my job last summer because then I would have already been familiar with Trello! I wish that from my time at UNE I became more accustomed to programs that are commonly used in offices because I feel as though other classes do not provide nearly as much exposure as this one.
May 1, 2020 Case Study Process
The process of selecting a case study for this project was a bit rocky for Nicole and I. That being said, we ended up finding a couple of great ones to use in the final project proposal. We thought that Dickinson would be a suitable choice because it is a relatively small, liberal arts school like UNE. However, the two schools are drastically different in that Dickinson’s main focus as an institution is on sustainability, making it more comparable to Unity as we have read about. I got excited when reading about Dickinson and I think my aspirations for UNE got the best of me in terms of being realistic and I jumped the gun a little bit on that one. The biggest issue is that the programs and infrastructure that Dickinson has in place is not something that UNE could implement.
Moving forward, we searched for schools that had research methods that we would be able to replicate or at least perform something similar at UNE. Ithaca and Humber Colleges had sustainability data collection methods that UNE could really utilize. We still used STARS to find these schools but really only paid attention to what their research methods looked like to ensure that they would be implementable. Both schools used a similar tactic to surveying where they defined sustainability and then relied on faculty members to report or determine if their research involved sustainability.
Although the case study selection process was a bit daunting, we ended up finding a couple of great ones that I think can be used as awesome examples for UNE. These schools don’t have a crazy large sustainability program and they went about performing their research in a budget-friendly way. Thank you to Alethea for setting Nicole and I on the right track and giving us some better criteria to help us select schools that are much more similar to UNE in terms of sustainability research capabilities.
May 1, 2020 Final Drafting Process
I worked extremely hard on my first draft of this project so I was very happy with the feedback that I received. I feel as though I really utilized the opportunity of having a first draft and receiving feedback so that I could perfect my final. I did not want to have to make lots of edits to my final draft as I knew the end of the semester is always a crazy busy time and why do more work later if you can do it right the first time? I really appreciated the feedback that I received and I got some great clarifications on questions that I had. For example, I had some confusion about what an Eco-rep is versus a work-study student and and I found out that they are one in the same. I made some minor changes so that this would be clear in my proposal. I also added a bit to my justification because it is important to note that UNE would be receiving a ranking or standing for sustainability if they were to complete STARS. By carrying out this survey, it would help in the completion of STARS and if UNE scores well, this is something that the school can use for recruitment. As we learned from reading about Unity college, potential students love to see that a school is sustainable and this actually partially influences whether or not they go to the school.
Overall, I am proud of the way that my project proposal turned out. I made all of the suggested edits and read through multiple times to ensure that my work was the best it could be. I had a lot of fun working on this project even though it was stressful at times when things did not seem to be working out. I hope that down the road this survey process is something that UNE with utilize because I truly believe that it will help the school in many ways.
