We had two guest lectures from Parkhurst dining come into class, to discuss how the dining service provides sustainable food for campus and their other venus. The main lecture had created the sustainability coordinator position for Parkhurst, which he currently holds. The job is to create the standards that Parkhurst will follow. Currently, they are using STARS as well as their own assessment which should be published this year or the next.
Secondly, he goes out and finds local farms and family-owned farms to see if they can potentially work together. They also work with forged partners which focus on the family and good intentions that drive them to produce what they do. They make sure that their products come from mostly local farms; for dairy and produce, it is family farms up to 250 miles away and for meat then the farm is at least 500 miles away.
The biggest take away from the lecture was knowing your source. Parkhurst works hard to make sure that the food in our dining halls has come from the most sustainable sources. If you are more aware of where your food was grown and processed it is going to be a more sustainable choice because we can track its life until it’s on your plate. It is our duty as consumers to understand where our food comes from if we want to see positive changes in the food industry.
Self Reflection on Communication Process for online learning
With switching to online learning communication is important so that everyone is on the same page as to what is due as well as what is expected and when it is expected. My strategy for communication has been emailing if I have any questions on our assignments, as well as coming to the zooms that are offered on Fridays during what was our old class time. These zooms are chances to ask or talk about the final project and here where your peers are at with the project. These are useful as sources to see where your classmates are at as well as some type of face to face interaction to stay sane. This way of communication has worked well for me so far, I understand what is due and when and I still feel a connection to the class and my classmates.
Self Reflection on Project Manger:
Hannah and I at the beginning of the semester sat down and opened up our project manger Asana and we laid out what parts of STARS we had to look at and fill in and placed our goal dates for each credit on STARS to have complete so when it was due we would have had everything done without cramming. It was our first time using Asana and since we were together working on each topic at the same by breaking up each part of the credit we worked on each assignment tab together. One of us would be the main sender of emails to receive documents but the other was reviewing and helping write the email. However, because we are learning out to use the tool we did not properly set up tasks and the subtask for each credit. So we have set up a zoom call where we will screen share and to clean up the Asana and fill in detailed descriptions of how we worked through STARS.
Using this tool was useful because it helped set up each credit in STARS in a more digestible and less overwhelming way. However this tool is not my preferred way of setting up group projects, but I see how it can be useful if it was used for a very big and longer-term project with a large group of people, like if the project group was over 10 people. This has been a good learning experience in the importance of adding a detail explanation for tasks. I would rate Asana 3/5 it needs to not be as confusing to use as a first time user. I felt very restricted as to what I could do with setting up the flow of assignments.
Here is a screenshot of our Asana before we corrected the way we filled it out.
Here is screenshot of after correcting Asana:
Self Reflection of E-portflio:
Making this e-portfolio has been a useful experience and a good way to start practicing online presence and creating marketable skills. I enjoy the flow and set up I have of the pages. Writing reflections on the tasks we have been assigned has been a good way to review what we have completed and to review what I have learned which helps with making what we learned more meaningful and memorable. It is nice to see what the work we have completed in the class in writing and not just with grades, it shows a much more tangible demonstration of the work. This page is something I will probably try to keep up and update so I can have something to show that sums up my time as an undergraduate.
Reflection on Extra credit zoom panel on the upcoming environmental movie Titled: Unbreathable: The fight for healthy Air
This film that was shown was their rough draft however it was very moving and I thought well organized and if their goals are to call attention to how damaging pollution is to our health and not just the environment the message was very clear. I also really appreciated how they made sure to call out the faults of those who should be protecting those in lower socioeconomic situations. But it also showed that the average citizen can make and be the change they want to see.
Overall I enjoyed the movie as well as the panel discussion afterwards there was a lot of great statements made, and I learned a lot. I also agree with one of the panel members who said she wants to use it in classrooms, this is something all young people should be made aware of as well as what power they have to make change. Secondly another theme was knowledge is power which a different panel brought up frequently. Which is very true if citizens have the knowledge of what is happening to them by these big chemical industries and how it is a=going against their rights they can use their knowledge to have the power to protest and demand a change. Because no one should have to be breathing air and unknowing or knowling know that it is slowly killing them.
