Commissioned assignments in environmental policy.

Abstract

This paper outlines the communication process surrounding a commissioned assignment in an upper-level technical writing class. The commissioned assignment reflects the new interdisciplinary model of technical communication for environmental policy embodied in contemporary international environmental agreements, particularly the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. The resultant environmental policy report demonstrates that the commissioned assignment process is an effective and innovative form of experiential/service-learning. This process teaches technical communication, integrates different disciplinary backgrounds to teach environmental policy, and addresses important social problems through university institutions.

Introduction

The environmental challenges facing contemporary society are foreboding with perhaps the most serious threat coming from dangerous anthropogenic (human caused) interference with the climate system (Hansen, et al., 2005). Addressing these challenges requires not only more up-to-date knowledge of environmental problems and technical solutions, but new models for solving problems through education, policy and communication. In this respect, schools and universities have the opportunity and responsibility to lead society toward environmentally sustainable policies and practices (Uhl and Anderson 2001). Yet, most universities remain wedded to conventional models of education, policy and technical communication that constrain the powerful tools they offer for addressing environmental problems (Pearce and Russill, 2005). In particular, the ability of university students to impact environmental policy in meaningful ways and solve real world problems is often ignored (Pearce and Russill, 2003). Although precedents do exist for developing in-class and service learning assignments to address local environmental challenges, such as recycling (Gerth and Wilson, 1986); logging, tree planting, and "litterless lunches" (Fallis, 1991); land use and lake restoration (Gannon and Fairchild, 1983); greening university buildings (Pearce and Russill, 2003); and water safety (Ostroff, 1996), few address issues of environmental policy more generally. This paper outlines a technical communication process using commissioned assignments and experiential learning methods to develop a new model for teaching and involving students in environmental policy.

Background

Global climate change is among the most difficult of a new kind of environmental problem: those characterized by uncertainty, complexity and consequences spanning vast geographical and generational domains. Such challenges are no longer easily perceptible, regionally delimited, or politically tractable in the way environmental issues were in the 1970s and 1980s, nor are these older policy approaches able to address contemporary phenomena adequately (Grove-White, 2005, p. 21-22). International environmental agreements and policy tools have slowly developed to begin addressing this novel situation and, in this respect, the response to global climate change has provided an innovative approach for refiguring the relationship between technical expertise and public participation. In particular, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is responsible for providing quality scientific assessments on climate change through peer-review, is an innovative mechanism for scientific assessment by democratic consensus in service of global policy agreements (Agrawala, 1998). Still, we need to ask as Robin Grove-White (2005) does, "How well equipped are our public institutions--including our educational systems--for such developments? And more immediately, how well equipped are we as citizens for purposeful involvement in such processes of 'engagement'" (p. 23)?

To address global climate destabilization the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change called for the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations (UN, 1992). Realizing more definitive goals were required, parties to the framework convention agreed to set measurable limits to greenhouse gas emissions in the 1995 Berlin Mandate. Those limits were finalized in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding international agreement committing industrialized (Annex 1) countries to reduce emissions of the six greenhouse gases. Under the accord, the United States would lower the emissions below 1990 levels by 7%, Japan by 6%, and the European Union countries by 8% between the year of 2008 and 2012 (UN, 2001). Taking effect in 2005, almost no one is optimistic about the agreement and it is often noted that even if Kyoto goals were met, reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide would be an entire order of magnitude below those necessary to stabilize the global climate (Hansen and Sato, 2004). The main innovation, however, is not the specific goals but the policy process reflected in this novel approach to technical communication about global climate change. It is in this sense we need to ask whether public institutions and citizens are equipped to participate in this problem.

Universities have been very slow to accommodate themselves to this new situation despite producing knowledge recognizing the problem and often contributing expertise to the IPCC policy process. Penn State, a leader in this respect, is a good example of slowly adapting societal institutions, as greenhouse gas emissions of the University are at levels of increase exceeding the U.S. as a whole. This lethargy created enough concern that Penn State scientists researching global climate change signed a "greenhouse gas pledge," which concludes: "Our familiarity with the scale, severity, and costs to human welfare of the disruptions that the climatic changes threaten leads us to introduce this note of urgency and to call for Penn State to take a leadership role in early action to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions via the most cost-effective means." (Pearce and Uhl, 2003). An association of students, faculty, and staff committed to promoting ecological responsibility at Penn State called the Penn State Green Destiny Council (GDC) began to focus on ways of addressing the climate scientists' concerns. More specifically, the GDC holds that universities are key participants in addressing global climate change through participatory processes that model authentic sustainable practices for everyday life. It is within this context that the GDC commissioned a document on climate change, the Kyoto Protocol and Penn State from a technical writing class.

Experiential Method for Technical Communication

The Penn State Leonhard Center Technical Writing Initiative has a formalized commissioned assignment program dedicated to promoting an organized dialogue between writing teachers and technical professionals [1]. As a form of experiential learning, the program enables students to write texts actually required by local technical agencies and businesses. An experiential perspective is employed, in part, to address the concern of some engineering students that an English department's technical writing course is irrelevant or at least unrealistic (Smith, 1998). Moreover, such methods have unique dimensions well suited to developing the more participatory aspects of technical communication embodied in international environmental agreements.

Experiential methods require three general phases of educational activity: lived experience, critical reflection on that experience, and synthesis through communication of the value of relevant experience to third parties. In developing an experiential learning method for climate change education, Pruneau et al. (2003) explain the interrelation of these phases:

   the learner actively experiments instead of being on the receiving
   end of others' experiences ... In the following step, in a group,
   individually or with a teacher, the learner has some reflection
   time to construct his or her own meaning and information
   from the experienced events.... the last step consists in informing
   third parties of the experience's value or in sharing what has been
   understood. (Pruneau et al. 2003, p. 433).

Although focused on young teenagers, Pruneau et al. (2003) developed a number of operations aiming to educate on global climate change through observations of local community relevance. The point here is not simply to reiterate peer-reviewed scientific findings in a local context but to form a perspective of the future modified by human activities, "in which teenagers are invited to visualize the potential elements that might make up their lives in the future, and reflect on the effects of those elements" (p. 431). In this sense, the project not only advances the better aspects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change perspective, but it is well suited to environmental policy projects more generally. Relevant aspects include: 1) carrying out a local study on the indicators and consequences of climate change, 2) speaking with scientists to form an opinion, 3) using graphic representations, 4) developing group action to address negative consequences of climate change, and 5) communicating their knowledge to third parties.

Each of these aspects is reflected in the commissioned assignment for environmental policy, as a class of 24 students was asked to create a "Kyoto-Primer" as part of a senior level English Technical Writing course. Acting as a sponsoring agency, the GDC formally commissioned a technical communication report on climate change policy in its consequences for the university and local community. The writing teachers and GDC then collaborated to determine jointly the types of writing adequate for the report as well as appropriate standards for evaluating student work.

The students consisted of junior and senior engineering, mathematics, and science students of both genders, all largely unfamiliar with the issue of climate change. The assignment was introduced by the instructor and the class divided into six groups of four students, with each group being responsible for a section of the report: 1) What the Kyoto Protocol is, 2) What Global Climate Change is and what causes it, 3) The Kyoto Protocol and the world: emissions, compliance, and ratification, 4) How the Kyoto Protocol could benefit the U.S., 5) The Kyoto Protocol and higher education, and 6) The Kyoto Protocol and Penn State.

A scientist from the GDC came to the class to give an hour-long summary presentation of the six topics and answer any student questions. This provided students with an introduction to the work of the GDC, climate change, the Kyoto Protocol and what it had to do with them and the University. Each group was also provided with background reading material on their specific topic by the GDC and a list of University contacts (primarily climate scientists, renewable energy engineers, and ecologists). They were then asked to produce approximately three pages of work (1500 words) and told that the document they created would be used to influence environmental policy at their University. The end of the assignment read "Remember: This document will be used by the Green Destiny Council and will be read by members of University Administration, so it must be professional, thorough and interesting!"

The completed sections from the students in the writing class were sent electronically to the GDC and compiled into a single document, complete with a list of specific policies for the University to follow if they wished to become compliant with the Kyoto Protocol. The final professional report was twenty-four pages long with eighty-two mostly peer-reviewed references supporting policy recommendations tailored to the university context. The final document entitled, "Global Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and Penn State University: From Part of the Problem to Part of the Solution" (Green Destiny Council, 2004) was then made available both in print form and online to interested administrators, faculty, students and media outlets.

Outcomes

The commissioned assignment enabled the GDC to produce a professional policy report within a single semester, something the organization did not have the time and personnel to accomplish alone. It was posted on the Internet as a template for other university groups interested in encouraging their schools to become Kyoto compliant. It became the centerpiece of a student run environmental communication campaign at Penn State, complete with a student produced companion DVD. The "Kyoto Now!" campaign advocated for Penn State to become compliant with the Kyoto Protocol by 2012, the year the protocol expires, and consisted of an assortment of initiatives to publicize recommendations in the report: a letter co-signed by over 2,000 Penn State students to the President of the University, a speaker series on the science of climate change; a faculty panel on the UN and the Kyoto protocol; a free concert on Earth Day; the signing of an enormous hundred-foot petition, a penguin in the homecoming parade [2]; and a referendum question on the Undergraduate Student Government ballot asking students to donate an extra $2-3 per semester for the purchase of renewable energy for campus.

Perhaps the most concrete environmental result of the report was an expansion of the Guaranteed Energy Savings Program (GESP) and increased renewable energy. The GESP is a program that utilizes energy service companies (ESCOs) to find energy conservation measures that promote both environmental and economic goals (Pearce and Miller, 2006). The Kyoto primer not only recommended such actions and detailed their feasibility, but set a broader context in which such changes became common sense rather than administrative flat. The university is also planning to increase its alternate electrical energy purchase to 10% from the current 5% from wind power as advocated for in the document. The commissioned assignment provided a body of fact and a resource for campaigners in explaining the complex science and policy implications revolving around climate change and the Kyoto Protocol.

The commissioned assignment also used experiential methods that typically create positive impact for the students undertaking the assignment as part of their class. Most obviously, students benefited from a broader and deeper knowledge of one of society's greatest modern environmental challenges and gain facility with experiential learning methods for future projects. It is of particular interest to note that several joined the Kyoto Now! Campaign.

This study used commissioned assignment methods that have been previously shown to provide positive learning outcomes for the students outside of enhanced environmental literacy (Smith, 1998). These studies have been limited and future research is necessary to examine the effects of commissioned assignments on providing motivation, learning meaningful writing skills, collaboration strategies (goals, communications, and logistics), and student understanding of the complexities of writing for an actual audience in real situations.

Summary

This work demonstrated the commissioned assignment process is (1) an innovative and effective form of experiential learning for teaching technical communication, (2) able to integrate different disciplinary backgrounds to teach environmental policy, and (3) useful for addressing important social problems through university institutions.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jordynn Jack, Jessica Raley, and the students who participated in the commissioned assignment for their help and contributions.

References

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Joshua M. Pearce, Clarion University of Pennsylvania

Chris Russill, University of Otago, New Zealand

End Notes

[1] For more information on the Leonhard Center Technical Writing Initiative see http://www.engr.psu.edu/lctwi/

[2] This was done to raise awareness of acute effects of climate change, like displaced penguins from the Prince Edward Islands off the coast of South Africa, whose food supply is threatened by recent temperature change.

Joshua Pearce, an assistant professor of physics at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, coordinates the applied sustainability program. Chris Russill, a lecturer of communication studies at the University of Otago, teaches environmental communication.