Course Description

You have been asked to help the Crawford County Solid Waste Authority prepare an innovative curriculum for fourth - sixth graders in Erie and Crawford County. The Solid Waste Authority is actually just one of three agencies that is working on this project. The second is Earth Force a national organization that empowers youth to make environmental changes in their communities. Earth Force has eight regional offices, one of which is the Erie/Pittsburgh office. (By the way, the Director of the Pittsburgh Office is an Allegheny ES graduate, Wendy Ruano '98). The third is you. In fact, you are responsible for doing most of the work.

This Junior Seminar will proceed as if you are an environmental consulting group. You will be assigned research tasks and be expected to search through the literature, the web, and the community for solutions to the problems you have chosen to work on.

Your goal is to develop

• a curriculum
• resource notebook
• Web page
• CD ROM

The trick to making your products a success is to create a curriculum that is NOT filled with the answers to the question of how to reduce waste in our society. Rather, it is to create a curriculum that directs ten- to twelve-year-olds in such a way that they figure out how to reduce waste in their communities. Think about it. That's a much more challenging prospect than just writing a report for a professor.

Your reports, i.e., your curriculum, notebook, Web page, and CD will be presented to the Crawford County Solid Waste Authority and representatives of Earth Force on Wednesday April 14th, 2003 at 4:00 P.M. Reserve the date now.

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Criteria for a Good Report

(generated by students listed above.)

1. Facts supported by lots of high quality references.
2. Clear synthesis of information.
3. Multiple persepctives: be sure to analyze several angles of each problem.
4. Look at other case studies that are similar to what you are doing.
5. Well organized.
6. As concise as possible.
7. Supply visuals to support design work or data gathering.
8. Proof read. Write clearly.
9. Explain technical terms.
10. Make it interesting.
11. Give options where appropriate.
12. Be positive. Don't list all the things that went wrong with your research.
13. Prepare more than one draft.

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Schedule

All reports to be prepared as both written and graphical (or PowerPoint) format. You will also present your data for feedback and critique to the rest of the group. Deadlines may be adjusted as the semester proceeds.

Deadlines for Curriculum Reports

First draft completed by February 3

Second draft completed by March 2

Third draft completed by March 31

Deadlines for Senior Comp Proposals

• Begin by reviewing the Department Guidelines on the ES Web page.
• Choose less than or equal to three comp questions AND review two comps done by ES students by February 17
• Comp Proposal, First Draft of Introduction and Methods completed by March 12. This includes:
  
  • Introduction and literature review of at least 15 references
  • Methods
  • Timetable
    
  • Expected results
    
  • Review of two earlier comps
• Comp proposal, Second Draft completed by April 23.
• Presentation of Comps will take place in March and April.

Due Dates subject to change.

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Grades will be based on class participation, i.e., the quality and intensity of your critique of other's presentations (20%), your report (60%), Comp first draft, Comp second draft (10% each).