Public Policy and U.S. and Regional Attitudes towards Climate Change
Conceptualizing Our Regional Environment (gCORE) 
Term Project, FALL 2011
This year’s gCORE term project will focus on climate change attitudes – both nationally and locally. As a program and individuals, we will research public attitudes about climate change and learn about likely climate change impacts to the Pacific Northwest (specifically Washington State).  Some overarching questions of interest:  
1.	What are the impacts of climate change, in particularly in Washington State?
2.	Do local public attitudes about climate change differ significantly from those nationally (“here” to be defined:  we limit our study to Olympia)?
3.	*Do local individuals believe that climate change is happening, and have an understanding of how climate change would impact them as residents of this region? 
4.	What concerns do local individuals have about climate change, or about government action or public policy regarding climate change?
5.	*What do local individuals believe can be done to mitigate climate change or climate change impacts?  
6.	*What changes, if any, have local individuals taken or plan to take in their lives as a result of their beliefs regarding climate change?
7.	*How have local individuals arrived at their beliefs and (if any) action plans regarding climate change? 
8.	What might be effective ways for people to learn about climate change and local climate change impacts?
Some of the above questions could likely be addressed using (quantitative) data surveys, but other questions require qualitative research – even to determine how best to go about subsequent quantitative surveys.  We thus anticipate students conducting the following kinds of research:

1.	traditional “academic” and bibliographic research,
2.	surveys with yes/no or lickert scale responses that can be quantitatively analyzed, and
3.	qualitative surveys where students interview subjects, transcribe, and interpret and report results.

The project has three goals:  1) students will learn about qualitative research methods (by participating in the design of a qualitative research instrument and conducting and reporting results of interviews) and improve their ability to research an environmental studies topic and report results of bibliographic and qualitative research both orally and in writing.  2) We as a program will discover (and possibly report on) local attitudes about climate change.  3) This work might be preliminary to other research (undertaken by faculty or students for their candidacy paper (Winter 2012) or their master’s thesis. 

The major (student) deliverables are:
1.	Results of survey and transcript(s) of Interview(s),
2.	A research report (5 pages minimum, 10 pages maximum), written individually) that includes background research into a relevant climate change topic, and an interpretation of (1), 
3.	An oral presentation of your results to faculty and peers, with a possible later public presentation.

Other expectations: Students will also be asked to:
1.	Participate in workshops to establish survey goals and objectives, and to develop interview questions,
2.	Read and provide feedback to drafts of two other student papers, 
3.	Provide feedback to all other students on their presentations, and
4.	Reflect on what they did and learned from the project in a project self evaluation.

Schedule: Project work is staged as below. Intermediate deliverables will include project idea submissions and discussions, a project proposal, draft of your paper, and presentation outline or draft.
1)	Annotated bibliography of climate change attitudes  (Weeks 5-6).  
a)	Using the library for research and Zotero for citations http://www.zotero.org/ (Week 5)
b)	Annotated Bibliography due Week 6.
c)	Continued research to be listed as bibliography in final paper.
2)	Background reading
a)	(Week 6) [Washington] Climate Impacts Group:  The WACCIA Report Read at least:  overview, Scenarios, Adaptation,  and at least 4 of:  Water, Energy, Agriculture, Salmon, Forests, Coasts, Urban Stormwater Infrastructure, Human Health
b)	(Week 7) Maibach, E., C. Roser-Renouf, A. Leiserowitz.  2009.  Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009:  An Audience Segmentation Analysis.  Yale Project on Climate Change and George Mason Universtiy Center for Climate Change Communication.
c)	(Weeks 7 & 8)  Qualitative research and interview techniques 
i)	Joe Cone and Kirsten Wiinters. (2011) Mental Models Interviewing for More-Effeective Communication. Oregon State University Press http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/h11002.pdf 
ii)	other reading as posted
d)	(Week 7) Evergreen’s Human Subjects Review (HSR) Process: http://www.evergreen.edu/deans/humansubjectsreviewapp.htm 
3)	Project Activities
a)	Attend lectures and workshops on climate change, qualitative data and interviewing (Weeks 6-8)
b)	Develop preliminary survey and interview questions (Weeks 6-7)
c)	Take survey on climate change; ask what we ourselves know  (Week 7)
d)	Determine and understand audience for interviews (Weeks 6-8))
e)	Finalize survey and interview questions, and interview script (Week 8)
f)	Conduct survey and interview (Week 8/Thanksgiving)
g)	Transcribe text of the interview (Week 9)
h)	Retake survey on climate change; what have we ourselves learned? (Week 10)
4)	Final Reports (individual efforts)
a)	Statement of topic and preliminary outline of paper, with bibliography (Week 8)
b)	Presentation planning (Week 9)
c)	In-class presentations and feedback to other presenters (Tuesday, Week 10)
d)	Final Papers due (Thursday, Week 10)
e)	Self assessment of Project Work (Thursday, Week 10)
f)	Report back to Interview Subjects (Evaluation Week)
Faculty evaluation of project work will be based on:  Timely submission of deliverables, participation in workshops and classes, and assignments.  Plagiarism is grounds for no-credit.  The evaluation will consist of a brief description and evaluation of the paper and presentation.  The following will be considered for the project evaluation; percentages are estimates of the relative importance of each criterion:
•	~10% - on-time submission of project assignments,
•	~20% - participation in workshops
•	~10% - how well the work  reflects learning and integration of program components and themes, and project content,
•	~50% - interview transcripts, presentation, and quality of final paper: content and style.