Letters From The Advisor

Students Co-creating a Pedagogy Workshop for CU Faculty

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 21:57:28 +0000

Students Co-creating a Pedagogy Workshop for CU Faculty Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/12/2021 - 14:57

Beth Osnes

As part of the course I co-teach with Helanius Wilkins-- Performance for Community Engagement-- we created a real-world opportunity for students to design and facilitate an online workshop for CU’s Center for Teaching and Learning. The stated learning objective for this assignment is “students will explore various skills that are useful in creating, facilitating, devising, or supporting performance within communities for public/civic/social issues.” We conceived of this project as being within our own CU community. We designed a class early this semester for them to collectively decide what issues they wanted the workshop to address and to name and describe the workshop. For that class period, the students had read the opening chapter to adrienne maree brown’s book, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds which addresses how humans seek to collectively create positive change within society, themselves, and for their planet. We utilized an arts-based methods to support them in this collective decision making. We drew from a piece of the writing in this book to inspire a moving meditation to center our work together. Helanius and I invited the mostly dance and theatre students to spread out in the studio and slowly move while forming the shapes of ocean waves with their bodies while listening as I read aloud the following words from page 16 of this book, “Together we must move like waves. Have you observed the ocean? The waves are not the same over and over—each one is unique and responsive. The goal is not to repeat each other’s motion, but to respond in whatever way feels right in your body. The waves we create are both continuous and a one-time occurrence. We must notice what it takes to respond well. How it feels to be in a body, in a whole—separate, aligned, cohesive,… connected.” After this, we provided various art making materials, such as colorful rolls of masking tape, plastic geometric shapes, string, colorful sheets of cardstock paper and scissors, and asked them to co-create an art piece in the center of the room collectively without speaking. We instructed that once we all felt that the piece was complete, we would all step away from our creation. After about ten minutes of arranging and cutting, folks augmenting each other’s designs, adding dimension by including the exercise balls stored in the studio, our master piece was complete. All stood outside looking in at what we had created. We reflected on this example of co-creation and examined strategies for working together that emerged, specifically asking students to draw upon the reading to enrich their insights.

Then we applied these insights to the class assignment for co-creating this workshop with our partner, the Center for Teaching and Learning. For the collective process of deciding what we would like to focus on in our workshop, we sat in a circle and each shared ideas, with scribes writing each single idea on a notecard of its own. After we were satisfied with the possible ideas put forth, we categorized them on the floor. Four themes emerged. We identified each of the four corners of the room with one of each of the themes and invited students to go to whatever themed-corner they felt the most affinity with. After each group considered and then articulated ideas for their theme, we came back together as a group and collectively co-created the following name and description for our workshop.

Silly Strategies: Cultivating Communal Wellness in the Classroom:In this session, we will create a participatory environment where educators will gain tools to promote a stronger, more responsive class community. The topics that will be addressed include moving through anxiety, creating authentic relationships, embracing silliness and fun, along with finding diverse ways of learning and demonstrating knowledge.

This process that we used in class to arrive at this workshop exemplified what brown calls “collective full-bodied intelligence towards collaboration.” In the following classes, we utilized class time to flesh out what activities student groups would facilitate in an online format to explore these themes. Students took on the role of organizing an outline for the workshop and assigning approximate amounts of time for each section. They devised solutions for having one section flow into the next.

This workshop was presented on Thursday, November 11 at 2:30pm to 3:45pm for 19 participants from a wide variety of CU departments. Students led the entire workshop and each of the 13 students in the class did some aspect of facilitation. One student led everyone in doing Body Tapping to relive anxiety, which consists of using two fingers to tap different points on the face and body while taking deep breaths. Another student led a scavenger hunt in which he gave one minute for everyone to find as many items that start with the letter “b” as we could. Students shared strategies for using diverse ways to engage with the material to demonstrate their engagement with class material.

The reception for the workshop by participants was extremely positive. Only two people had their Zoom screens turned off. “I am impressed with the level of supportive collaboration that the presenters are modeling for us!” Another chat message noted, “So impressed with the smooth flow and heartfelt collaboration.” Another asked in the chat, “Is your team available to run this workshop for others,” and offered to pay! Receiving advice and guidance for student wellness and engagement from students themselves truly made a difference, as each student brings lived knowledge of being on the receiving end of the teaching. In our discussion after the workshop, the students expressed great joy and a strong feeling of accomplishment.

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Open-Source Publishing with Students: Making Students Work Visible

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 18:43:03 +0000

Open-Source Publishing with Students: Making Students Work Visible Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/12/2021 - 12:43

Beth Osnes

As a part of the CAMPP (Collective to Advance Multimodal Participatory Publishing) team through ASSETT’s Innovative Incubator, I am taking a deep dive into student publishing through the creation of an Open Educational Resource (OER). CAMPP is investigating opportunities to establish a peer-to-peer support environment for faculty and students by creating a multimodal publishing collective that produces projects that meet academic standards and are open and accessible to the community at large. Open-source publishing offers a way to create materials with your students for non-disposable assignments that can have real world impact and add to student’s resumes. The creation of them can be a unique way to have students demonstrate that they have met the learning objectives for a given class. The work created by students through open-source publishing can also help make knowledge and materials more accessible to those who may not have library access to expensive journals and subscription-based materials. The project I have been working on with students is Enacting Climate, an open-source website for adaptations of top climate solutions accessible to 5th grade learners. The top 10 solutions will be available in Spanish as well. These adaptations began by students in a course I co-teach with Max Boykoff, Creative Climate Communication, in order to ensure K-12 students have access to top climate solutions in a format that is accessible, visually inviting, and inclusive. To prepare for this, we invited CU PhD School of Education candidate, Caitlin Fine—a former 5th grade dual-immersion English-Spanish teacher—to present to the class about how to approach creative climate communication with 5th grade students. She suggested the use of an online readability technology to check for reading levels. She also went over how to approach concepts so they could be comprehensible to 5th grade learners. We also introduced the idea of Universal Design, which resulted in stimulating creativity among our students and making our work more accessible. Our students were guests in a 5th grade classroom at University Hill Elementary School across from the UMC and received expert peer review from actual 5th grade students! Based on their feedback, our students adjusted and submitted their writing and suggestions for photographs and illustrations via Canva. By the end of the project our students had created wonderful first drafts of these solutions.

That occurred just before the pandemic in the Spring semester of 2020. It is now Fall of 2021, and we are getting these solutions actually published via a website, https://enactingclimate.org/. With the support from ASSETT, Inside the Greenhouse, and the Office of Outreach and Engagement, we were able to hire three of the students from that class to continue working on the project that summer. With Fine, we invited another PhD candidate with her in the School of Education, Daniel Garzon, to join the team working on these adaptations and translations into Spanish. Partnering with me was Patrick Chandler, a PhD candidate through Environmental Studies who was the TA for the course. We were working from an Open-Source publication put out by Project Drawdown, The Drawdown Review, that lists the top 81 solutions for reversing global warming. The need to be responsible, culturally sensitive and appropriate, scientifically accurate, and effectively communicative made this project a huge task to get over the finish line. No doubt, it was an ambitious project that kept growing as we realized it would be helpful to also add a glossary of key terms and a teacher’s guide. I will still certainly do Open-Source publishing with my students in the future, and I will also realistically ascertain how much it will take to actually take a classroom project all the way to publication—how many resources it will take to get it ready for publication, and how much effort it will take for me to get it over the finish line.

As a postscript to this conversation about creating an Open Educational Resource, I have since expanded my design for this site beyond simply providing access to 5^th grade top climate solutions. I received a ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ OER Creation/Adaptation Award and am now expanding this site to also function as OER course content for the Creative Climate Communication course. I will disseminate this site to other universities, schools, and centers that may want to use it as well. This site will host other equally Open-Source links and resources as well as a curated collection of student-generated activities, games, and skits for enacting the top climate solutions featured on the site.

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Quality Teaching Initiative From One Department’s Point of View

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 21:15:24 +0000

Quality Teaching Initiative From One Department’s Point of View Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/14/2021 - 15:15

Beth Osnes , ASSETT Faculty Advisor , Professor of Theatre

What if a criterion for effective teaching was assessing how much energy was created in the room? It may be that for the teaching of African Dance, that could be just the thing. In community with all departments within the College of Arts & Sciences, we in the Department of Theatre & Dance are creating our Quality Teaching Initiative proposal this academic year. I imagine many departments feel as though they approach teaching uniquely and in a variety of ways within their own department. For example, in our department we have identified three types of teaching: (1) Embodied Technique for dance, voice, and movement; (2) Design, technical knowledge and art of design; and (3) Classroom-based teaching of history, theory, literature and contemporary practice. We are just beginning to co-create different types of evaluation for teaching for different types of classes. In doing this, we will adopt, adapt, or author creative methods for assessment. All along the process, we will check in with our colleagues to consider what measures we are willing to accept. Each member of our faculty is already an inclusive teacher in so many unique ways. We will investigate what evidence we can identify to assess and celebrate that. Our hope is that the evaluation process itself will be nurturing and help each of us as instructors to develop into more effective teachers. As a department, we are committed to being anti-racist teachers. An article entitled “The Post-Pandemic Pathway to Anti-Racist Education: Building a Coalition Across Progressive, Multicultural, Culturally Responsive, and Ethnic Studies Advocates” from May 2021 argues that it is impossible for educators to be student-centered and focused on the whole student, including social and emotional needs, without also being anti-racist. We are excited to braid the Quality Teaching Initiative into what we identify as our departmental learning objectives and outcomes along with our anti-racist work. Along the way, we will focus on generating inclusive, goal-oriented, and scholarly teaching assessment rubrics. While other departments may not work at the same pace, our ad hoc committee has developed some goals for the coming year. We will take the fall to acquaint ourselves with the challenge ahead, do a resource assessment and gathering, welcome in outside expertise, do research, share workshops, and map out how to create a first draft to present to the faculty by February 2022. Then based on suggestions and desires of our other colleagues, we will make improvements on our plan and work to get it approved by our entire faculty by April 2022. By May 2022 we should have a proposal for our divisional dean for how we will evaluate teaching. I am grateful for the guidance we have received from ASSETT and the Quality Teaching Initiative team along the way. I see this entire process as a way to become more intentional and ultimately more invigorated and satisfied as an educator.

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Letter from the Advisor - April 2021

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:55:51 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - April 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/20/2021 - 12:55

Make Grading Fun Again: Grading Green Fashion

Whereas grading can often seem an arduous task, I was actually excited to grade this assignment this new assignment for sustainable fashion. This semester I, along with co-instructor Max Boykoff and TA Patrick Chandler, created a new pedagogical tool for exploring sustainable fashion for our Spring of 2021 upper-division under-graduate Creative Climate Communication course. For this assignment students were asked to visually communicate within their circle of influence how sustainable fashion can positively influence the environment and be aspirational. Each student created a sustainably sourced outfit (thrifted, hand-me-down, recycled, dumpster dived, clothing swapped, sewn from repurposed cloth…) as an expression of their personal style. They created a photo or video of themselves modeling this outfit while wearing a full-body Lycra green suit underneath. They were challenged with adding a pro-environmental personal message to this photo or video and post it on some form of social media or communication platform. There were asked to reach at least ten people within their circle of influence and document any responses or feedback received. Finally, they were asked to write an overall personal reflection on this once this example of Green Fashion was created, documented, disseminated, and responded to. This assignment addresses many key issues surrounding the science and art of what makes for effective climate communication.

Making pro-environmental fashion behaviors aspirational by showing them as influencing the norm for group behavior (Markowitz, 2014, page 71-2).
Students as trusted messengers of climate within their circles of influence (https://www.bu.edu/ise/2019/04/16/trusted-messenger/)
The Power of Ten as a framework for suitably scaling sustainability and climate action in response to the rapid need for transformation of systems, policies, and behaviors (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9ed0/pdf)
Sustainable fashion as essential for reversing global warming given the fact that “if the garment business were a nation, it would be the fourth largest climate polluter on Earth” (2018).
Avoidance of emotional numbing by audiences through immediate, local solutions available to individuals and communities (Markowitz, 2014, page 32)
Visual communication through metaphor, such as Green Fashion, which helps translate abstract concepts into familiar terms

This assignment in a class of 44 students was able to reach over 3000 people with a vibrant, personal message inspiring Green Fashion and sustainable fashion behavior. Given the incredibly significant environmental impact of the fashion industry, it is essential for our survivability to radically reimagine our relationship with clothing. Our students are perfectly suited to this charge as powerful agents for change. This non-disposable assignment acknowledged that our students creative work in our courses can be towards authentic positive impact. It was a real treat to see the fun they had doing this assignment, to get a glimpse of their personal style, and to see how their circle of community received and responded to their messages. Their written reflections on the process completed the learning goals for the assignment by guiding them in critically engaging with the actions and outcomes of the assignment and their personal experiences throughout. And, it was a joy to assess their photos and written reflections, which was rejuvenating for us as educators.

Markowitz, Ezra, et al. (2014). Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication. Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University, p. 32.

Siegle, Lucy (2018) ‘Ten ways to make fashion greener’ The Guardian June 24.

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Letter from the Advisor - February 2021

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 23:12:22 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - February 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/22/2021 - 16:12

Highlighting Undergraduate Student Contributions to ASSETT Innovative incubator

I invite you to watch this video in English or Spanish on how to create a Moving Mural. This was created by Elise Rosado, one of the undergraduate students supporting the Innovative Incubator. Elise and I worked together to create a video that introduces the medium of the Moving Mural that animates a visual message within the larger context of a public performance. I contributed the images, video, and a script, and Elise brought her narration and editing skills to create this lively and highly engaging video. She even translated the narration and created a version in Spanish. She was sure to include subtitles on each version to increase accessibility of this resource. Her animated illustrations throughout the video cleverly enhance the aesthetic of this public performance medium, the Moving Mural.

I take this opportunity to share my enthusiasm for the excellent work being done by the team of undergraduate students who are supporting ASSETT’s Innovative Incubator. As an ASSETT Innovative Incubator member of the Collective to Advance Multimodal Participatory Publishing (CAMPP) group, I have been working with other faculty and ASSETT staff to explore multimodal publishing collaborations with undergraduate students. Each of us within our group are designing and implementing mostly open-source online offerings that feature the incredible work of our students. Personally, I feel like my own approach to teaching has been invigorated by this notion of creating non-disposable assignments. As someone who works in sustainability and climate change solutions, this approach doubly appeals to me. I have been designing my courses to include student contributions within this larger Open Educational Resource (OER) that I am developing. I am creating an OER for creative climate communication entitled Enacting Climate: Creative Classroom Activities for an Equitable, Survivable and Thrive-able Future. This video created by Rosado will be included within this OER as it feature student work with the Moving Mural, one creative activity for enacting climate solutions. This video highlights how the Moving Mural celebrates and amplifies the importance of supporting young women from around the world in achieving a high school education. Supporting women’s education and access to family planning is among the top solutions for reversing global warming.

Since the work of ASSETT is supported by the Arts and Sciences undergraduate students for A&S undergraduate students, it is a pleasure to celebrate the participation and contributions of A&S undergraduate students to ASSETT initiatives. Congratulations, Elise, on your excellent work!

Warmest Regards, Beth Osnes

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Letter from the Advisor - November 2020

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 17:53:02 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - November 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/16/2020 - 10:53

Beth Osnes

Opening the Window to How Technology Can Support Access to Education

Since our last newsletter, I received word from a former student who I advised as an honors BA student in Arts & Sciences, Daniel Oxenhandler. He and a team of collaborators had recently completed a film. The driving questions for the film include how learning in the internet age might be re-imagined and, as the internet continues to grow and evolve, how will it impact the future of education? These questions are at the heart of The Open Window, a documentary film exploring the relationships between learning, technology, culture and society.

Amidst all the ways COVID-19 has impacted our relationships with the internet and with one another, the creators hope that the film provides some insight and perspective into how we might collectively re-imagine education and learning in the internet age, and how we may even reflect on our relationships with the internet altogether. On October 29, 1969, the internet was “born." On October 29, 2020, Daniel’s team officially launched their film online. In the spirit of open learning and knowledge that the internet was built upon, they’re excited to share the film for free and open viewing at http://openwindow.cc/.

After watching the film with my family, I was deeply stirred and inspired to ponder the fundamental ideas of information, education, access, curiosity, and equity. For those born throughout the world who have the spark of curiosity in them—especially when born into a female-identifying body—how do they get to express, follow, and nurture that? I loved how the film introduced the viewer to these young Indian women’s lives and minds. I loved getting to know the thought-leaders driving this alternative view of education. I will carry this film in me as I continue as an educator, an activist who works mainly with young women, and as mom of daughters. To contact the team who made this film, reach out to team@openwindow.cc.

On a related note and in the spirit of critically examining the internet itself and digital spaces, I share an acknowledgement that was used in a meeting I recently attended through video conference on Zoom as part of a research working group on ecology and performance through the American Society for Theatre Research. After each person in the working group had introduced themselves—many including land acknowledgements for the indigenous people and nations who occupied the land upon which their institutions were built—the convener of the group also shared this acknowledgement for the digital place we were meeting on for our meeting:

Since our activities are shared digitally to the internet, let’s also take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technologies, structures, and ways of thinking we use every day. We are using equipment and high-speed internet not available in many indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the art we [make] leaves significant carbon footprints, contributing to changing climates that disproportionately affect indigenous peoples worldwide. I invite you to join me in acknowledging all this as well as our shared responsibility: to make good of this time, and for each of us to consider our roles in reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship.

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Letter from the Advisor - October 2020

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 18:33:58 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - October 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/12/2020 - 12:33

Beth Osnes

My offering as the faculty advisor for ASSETT is simply acknowledgement and gratitude for all that you are doing to survive and thrive through the challenges wrought by COVID.

If you are a student, thanks for your patience with your instructors as they get all the features of Canvas in working order, figure out how to use breakout rooms, and adjust their material to an online modality for teaching.

If you are a staff person, gratitude to you for all the new responsibilities you are shouldering in addition to your usual workload, your ingenuity, forethought, and support of education.

If you are an instructor, thank you for quickly transitioning to all online teaching with grace and agility.

To all, remember to take good care of yourself in regard to this increased amount of interface with technology. To maintain my well-being, I have walked the neighborhood around my house more than ever just get out and refresh myself between Zoom meetings. I can report from my walk this morning that the turkey vultures who reside in a tree near 7th and College have departed for warmer digs for the winter. The college women who live across from me have a new puppy. A Steller's jay seems to have come down from the mountains for the fall and is eating the sunflower seeds my neighbor sprinkled near her yard this morning.

Just as you thrive in all you offer through your use of technology, also be sure to refresh yourself away from it as well. Personally, I offer up the slow walk and observation of the natural world as a regenerative respite. As a part of ASSETT, I extend my warmest wishes for your continued support of education through technology and the maintenance of your well-being.

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Letter from the Advisor - August 2020

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 18:05:34 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - August 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/17/2020 - 12:05

Beth Osnes

Over the summer, Nii Armah Sowah and I created a lesson plan for a brave space activity that supports productive dialogue and helps to cultivate brave spaces in our classrooms. This resource is open source and can be used in any educational or organizational setting—online conferencing or in-person—to put anti-racism and equity into action. We developed this over the years as co-teachers of Performance and Community Engagement through the University of Colorado Department of Theatre & Dance. This lesson plan is included in our online platform associated with our class under our “toolbox” tab through BuffsCreate.

In this lesson, we recommend a useful tool for teaching with technology, Padlet, which allows students to co-author their responses to various prompts. We offer free use of this lesson plan to anyone who might find it useful for supporting productive dialogue about anti-racism and other relevant social issues with respect and courage. This lesson plan supports an instructor in facilitating the co-creation of a class’s own guidelines for critical engagement on challenging issues. In alignment with Universal Design for Learning, we will soon have a version of the reading that accompanies this lesson plan—"From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces”—that is fully accessible. We are working with Anna Reid in the Digital Accessibility Office to get the reading ready and posted soon to our BuffsCreate site. Ensuring all course materials, such as reading assignments, are accessible minimizes barriers to learning and reduces the need for individual accommodations and helps to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to participate. We offer this open educational resource to the public domain as a part of CU’s initiative to support free use and repurposing of information produced by this public institution.

Download the "From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces" lesson plan (.doc)

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Letter from the Advisor - Summer 2020

Anonymous — Fri, 01 May 2020 19:18:24 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - Summer 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/01/2020 - 13:18

Beth Osnes

Communicating Serious Content in Fun Online Forms

One of my great pleasures that is part of my research and creative work is working with a group of Boulder middle and high school girls known as Young Women’s Voices for Climate. We meet weekly and use arts-based methods for climate action and vocal empowerment through SPEAK, which I co-founded with Chelsea Hackett.

Along with CU students Lianna Nixon, Jeneé LeBlanc, and Sarah Fahmy, we worked together to create an online gallery exhibit entitled Recipes for Change, which was originally designed to be displayed at the Boulder Public Library Canyon Gallery in May 2020, now moved to an online platform due to the library closure because of the pandemic. Don’t forget to check out the music video of them as rapping fruits and vegetables at the end!

As the Faculty Advisor for ASSETT, I share this example of an online gallery to help spark ways you might guide students in creating an online platform for whatever you are teaching. BuffsCreate could be used as a platform for this type of a project. We used this exhibit to share arts-based approaches focused on food to help reverse global warming. It may seem a bit frivolous when perusing the exhibit, but this online platform is being used to creatively communicate a solution that can ensure our survivability as a species.

By partnering with Project Drawdown, we are focusing on top climate solutions. The term “drawdown” refers to “the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline (The Drawdown Review, page 2).” According to Drawdown’s 2020 revised list of the top solutions for reversing global warming, Reduced Food Waste is the #1 solution and a Plant-Rich Diet is #3. (For the scenario that seeks to reach drawdown in 2060, see The Drawdown Review, page 86, available for free download at https://drawdown.org). In scenario number two (The Drawdown Review, page 88) in which projections of top solutions are based on achieving drawdown by the mid-2040s, Reduce Food Waste is #3 and Plant-Rich Diets is #4. By adding the total CO2 and equivalent greenhouse gases reduced and/or sequestered by these two solutions--according to either scenario-- focusing on food is clearly the number one solution for reversing global warming!

Online platforms that feature fun and creative communication strategies can effectively communicate important content. I wish all of you and yours good health and a vibrant adjustment to whatever integration of online learning we employ in the future.

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Letter from the Advisor - March 2020

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Letter from the Advisor - March 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/09/2020 - 00:00

Beth Osnes

Highlights of Student Multimodal Participatory Publishing

Through my participation in ASSETT’s Innovation Incubator as a member of the Collective to Advance Multimodal Participatory Publishing (CAMPP) group, I have been exploring multimodal publishing collaborations with undergraduate students. A recent collaboration was with a visiting geology student from Middlebury College, Emmet Norris.

In the fall semester 2019, Emme served as an intern for Inside the Greenhouse, helping with preparations for the Drawdown Learn Conference Oct. 18-20, 2019, at the Omega Institute. His open curiosity, clear communication skills, and follow-through made him an exemplary partner in this work. He served as an enthusiastic thought-partner in conceiving how to present the materials for our open educational resource entitled Drawdown, Act Up! for creatively engaging students in communicating drawdown climate solutions. Emmet worked with CU’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research Outreach and Engagement Director, Ami Nacu-Schmidt, and me in designing the grab-and-go curriculum so that it is visually appealing and easy to follow.

CU graduate students deliver a plenary performance on the final night of the Drawdown Learn conference in October 2019. (Photo: Patrick Chandler)

Emmet attended the Drawdown conference with me and a team of CU graduate students (from Education, Theatre, and Environmental Studies) who are associated with Inside the Greenhouse. In addition to our planned workshop, we arranged for a plenary performance on the final night of the conference (see first photograph). We also engaged in several spectacle performances that popped up at various locations throughout the conference. Emmet was a willing participant as a blue butterfly symbolizing transformation, much like the transformation humanity is being asked to undertake in order to reverse global warming (see second photograph). He brought delight to all of his interactions, his facilitation during the workshop, his many performances, and to our shared conversations processing all that we were experiencing at the conference.

Emmet Norris (right) performs as a blue butterfly representing the theme of "transformation." (Photo: Isabel Cousins)

Emmet’s upcoming graduate research focuses on the transport and fate of chemicals on the earth’s surface using isotopic and chemical methods. He researches carcinogenic chemical behavior in groundwater from industrial sources, the deposition of dust from global arid regions in high alpine soil systems, and organic aerosol production from agricultural burning. He is primarily interested in how modern climate change and human activity impact biogeochemical cycles and thus human health. He plans to continue studying aerosols, specifically investigating modern atmospheric dust systems, and how they are affected by, and affect, human society. He is applying for graduate programs to continue his studies this coming fall.

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