Series: Sustainability and You

Sustainability & You Series

Over the course of the fall 2015 semester, students in Jennifer Pipitone’s Environmental Psychology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sustainability course carried out a semester project entitled “Sustainability& You.” The project was designed to give students insight into the human-environment relationship, constraints of behavior change, and to provide them with some experience in behavioral observation and data collection.

Each student researched current environmental problems, then committed to adopting an environmentally responsible behavior (e.g. using reusable water bottle) related to the identified problem. Over two months, students used journals to record challenges/rewards in meeting their goal of consistently carrying out their behavior across different settings encountered in their daily life. Students also created a tracking system to assess the overall impact of their behavior (e.g. number of plastic water bottles saved).

The project was intended to culminate in a final paper, which was scaffolded over the course of the semester. However, as a means to improve their skills as scientific communicators, Jennifer collaborated with S– USEJ WAC fellows, Kaitlin Mondello& Rebecca Fullan, to support students in converting their final paper into the blog posts that follow over the next weeks.