Podcast Grant Proposal in officially requested format (10/20/06):
Abstract:
The “Sustainable Compositions” initiative will satisfy many of the Economic and Workforce Development missions and goals, as well as those of the Thematic Initiative Fund overall. First, a partnership between Penn State’s Center for Sustainability, under the College of Engineering, and PennTAP, within the Penn State Outreach organization, bolsters the interactions and future opportunities between this academic unit and this workforce development unit. As a site for the concentrated production of knowledge and lessons about renewable energy, conservation, and alternative lifestyles, the Center for Sustainability can benefit greatly from an organization like PennTAP, which helps connect the isolated sources of knowledge with business partners that can benefit from them. All Pennsylvania businesses use energy and resources, which cost them money; thus, they can all become more economically competitive by internalizing the resources developed at Penn State’s Center for Sustainability. The Pennsylvania workforce can be further educated by the “Sustainable Compositions” initiative to change their own behaviors in the workplace, under the advice of their leaders, to improve the economic and environmental value of their work.
Regarding the Thematic Initiative Fund, our “Sustainable Compositions” initiative utilizes the growing set of expertise and knowledge among Penn State faculty and staff regarding sustainable energy and resource use and production. Additionally, upon demonstrating the success of the initial project in a particular sector of the economy, i.e. health care, this partnership can open the window to leverage more funding and opportunities, both inside and outside of Penn State, to empower the Pennsylvania workforce with economically and environmentally intelligent skills. For example, the podcast repertoire can be expanded to address Pennsylvania businesses in other sectors of the economy and different populations within these businesses (i.e. leaders, general workers). We can also use the initial project’s success to gain momentum in order to provide in-house training workshops regarding the techniques of sustainability and, the techniques of multimedia composition. Eventually, members of the Pennsylvania workforce themselves can contribute to the narrative of sustainability by posting their success stories on a podcast forum hub site that disseminates the original instructional podcasts.
The specific objectives of this project are several-fold. First, the Center for Sustainability will employ its volunteer rhetoricians, students, and energy & resource experts to develop at least two professional-quality, informative and exciting episodes of its “Sustainable Compositions” podcasts. These podcasts will include supplemental text and video footage that will accompany the audio presentation. Second, it will find and/or make appropriate Penn State or external websites (e.g. http://www.podcasts.psu.edu; http://www.odeo.com) to host the subscription feed that turns the episodes into podcasts. Third, PennTAP will consult with the Center for Sustainability during this process to target specific businesses in the health care industry about receiving and implementing the podcasts. Fourth, together with PennTAP and the Center for Sustainability, the business partners will monitor their performance regarding costs and savings, and data will be collected for reporting purposes. Business partners will be encouraged to provide feedback on which techniques succeeded and which did not.
Here we provide a background of the Center for Sustainability, PennTAP, and podcasting. The Center for Sustainability has been enacting and experimenting with a diverse range of technologies, techniques and skills, all towards the goal of advancing toward an environmentally and ecologically sustainable future. A result of community and student volunteers, as well as the work and help of prescient directors and managers, the Center now boasts a homestead and outreach facility that is almost entirely self-sustaining. Over 3600 square feet of gardens, a 5 kW hybrid solar-wind power system, locally harvested and reclaimed construction materials and hand-built structures, a black-water bio-filter system, extensive rainwater collection, and an active composting system all testify to the advances that the Center has realized in the past few years. Regular workshops, community visits and classroom projects enrich and expose the site, while internationally renowned competitions such as the Solar Decathlon help propel the Center and Penn State to the forefront of global sustainability.
PennTAP has been working as an arm of Penn State Outreach for over forty years, and boasts an extensive legacy of improving the technical and economic viability of Pennsylvania businesses. It was recently awarded for its successes in reducing the negative environmental impact of its clientele as well as dramatically increasing the savings that its partners enjoyed.
Podcasting is the umbrella technique we will deploy in this initiative. It is a combination of well-established technologies: a) posting audio, visual and textual data online & b) allowing individuals to digitally subscribe (via an RSS feed) to these postings in order to be automatically updated of new changes or additions to these postings. Podcasting is an optimal medium for reaching modern business leaders and busy members of the workforce, because it essentially allows them to access information that they have decided is categorically interesting to them, while saving them the time of going out and searching for it every time a website or episodic series is updated. The health care industry is an ideal sector of the economy to begin this podcasting initiative with, because they often lack the time to search for texts and postings that might save them money and improve their environmental impact. As well, they consume a lot of energy and resources to perform their invaluable service to the Commonwealth; thus, there may be a great deal of room to improve their “green” performance and save their money without interfering with their service. (this bold section makes entire proposal too long...how to change that?)
In the context of today’s economic climate, where-in business leaders are often choosing to downsize or outsource their workforce in order to reduce costs, the health of the Pennsylvania economy and the Commonwealth as a whole depends on its businesses’ ability to integrate other cost-saving and environment-saving techniques and technologies. This need for alternative methods of economic and workforce development provides the rationale for reaching out to the workforce with knowledge already being developed at Penn State.
The Center for Sustainability and PennTAP will use the TIF support to make the highest quality podcasts possible, employing the most well-suited minds and technologies that Penn State offers. WPSU is interested in the success of this venture, as is the Colleges of Engineering, IST, and Liberal Arts, and will be receptive to similar projects to reach their own clientele, staff and partners.
As mentioned above, the anticipated outcome of this project is to deliver multiple episodes of a podcast series aimed at improving the economic performance of a specific sector of the Pennsylvania economy, the Health Care industry, by developing its workforce with stimulating educational material that reduces their energy and resource waste. In addition to the built-in TIF mid-project and terminal status reports, the Center for Sustainability and PennTAP will report at the end of the project upon the various aspects of the project: the success of the podcast development, the success of the targeted dissemination and reception, and the fiscal success of the clientele’s integration of the material (including accounts from the business partners themselves). Finally, we will deliver a proposal for requesting more funding to expand the scope of the podcast project, including more sectors of the economy and more skills, e.g. composition and podcasting skills.
There will be several quantitative measures of success. First, the actual development and podcasting of the informational episodes will be a fundamental measure of their successful creation. Second, we will encourage and request that the targeted business members continue to record their energy and resource costs before and after integration of the techniques included in the podcasts, and that they share this information with the Center for Sustainability and PennTAP. Therefore, we can all observe the actual fiscal benefit of different measures. Finally, qualitative accounts, by personal communication and by podcast, will come from the business partners in order to modify subsequent podcasts in specific ways.
The Center for Sustainability will continue the development of podcasts after this initial project, and pitch specific episodes or proposed versions to other organizations within Penn State & within the set of higher education institutions worldwide. Colleges and universities are potent locations for the dissemination of useful and educational information, and will be an excellent target for future podcasts. Funding requests will be directed accordingly, and guided by the director of the Center for Sustainability – Dave Riley – and the advising rhetorician on the project, Dr. Richard Doyle. Additional funding will be requested in the summer of 2007.
The lead investigator, James Rounds, will direct and produce the creation of the podcasts. He will provide and collect the content, and keep contact with PennTAP about the status of the business partners’ participation in the project. Wayne Figurelle will direct PennTAP’s coordination with the targeted business partners, help assess their needs and advise the Center for Sustainability on specific aspects of the business partners’ economic and workforce development that can be targeted for improvement. Dr. Richard Doyle will advise the creation of the podcasts, their rhetoric, as well as their incorporation into a host website. Additional personnel include student and community volunteers who will help advise and collect the content, as well as the official directors of the Center for Sustainability – Drs. Dave Riley and Andy Lau – who will similarly help advise the content.
Timeline:
Project start: October 1st: Generation of abstract plan to create practical sustainability podcasts.
Week 2: Partner with an outreach arm: PennTAP.
Week 3: Submit grant proposal.
Weeks 4-7: Collate ideas, data, advice, & research on developing “green” skills in
Pennsylvania workforce.
~Week 8: Receive notification of grant status.
Weeks 9-12: Build 1st podcast episode, targeted towards health care industry’s energy use.
Week 12, December 15th: Complete 1st 20-45 minute podcast episode.
Week 13: Holiday break.
Weeks 14-16: Find appropriate websites to host RSS feed and post podcast episode on
them. Entreat PennTAP’s business partners to begin subscribing and monitoring energy costs.
Weeks 17-25: Develop second podcast episode, targeted towards health care industry’s
resource use.
Week 26: Check-up on first group of businesses’ reception of first podcast. Encourage
initiation of some techniques included in podcast. Complete second podcast, post to website(s).
Weeks 27-35: Develop additional podcast episode, addressing multimedia composition
skills and workforce development skills not included in first two podcasts. Begin collecting data from business partners’ internal cost audits.
Weeks 36-37: Assess success of initial podcasts. Write reports on qualitative and quantitative measures of project success.
Weeks 38-40: Compose proposals for additional funding.
Revisable text of the grant proposal:
Economic & Workforce Development Outreach TIF:
Podcast Series
Here we answer Penn State Outreach's request for salient economic and workforce development initiatives with a project that will help educate and excite the Pennsylvania workforce about positive aspects of sustainability. The Center for Sustainability at Penn State University, in cooperation with Penn State's Outreach arm PennTAP, seeks Level II support for its "Sustainable Compositions" Initiative. As per President Graham Spanier’s recent State of the University address, Penn State is rapidly moving to the forefront of the “green” field among large universities and institutions. As a leader in the global transition towards environmentally conscious practices and technologies, Penn State is also crucial to bolstering the economic viability and competitiveness of Pennsylvania businesses. Here we describe a plan to begin an episodic podcast series that will empower the Pennsylvania workforce with “green” techniques and skills, while encouraging business leaders to make feasible decisions that save them money, energy, and resources. With the Center for Sustainability as the "Sustainable Compositions" Initiative's figurative and literal studio, in partnership with PennTAP, there is great potential for improving the “green” performance of individuals and businesses in the Pennsylvania workforce.
The Center for Sustainability
The Center for Sustainability enacts and experiments with a diverse range of technologies, techniques and individuals, all towards the goal of advancing these components towards an environmentally and ecologically sustainable future. Over ten years old, the Center has evolved extensively from its beginnings at Circleville Farms in the mid-nineties. As a result of community and student volunteers, as well as the work and help of prescient directors and managers, the Center now boasts a homestead and outreach facility that is almost entirely self-sustaining. Over 3600 square feet of gardens, a 5 kW hybrid solar-wind power system, locally harvested and reclaimed construction materials and hand-built structures, a black-water bio-filter system, extensive rainwater collection, and an active composting system all testify to the advances that the Center has realized in the past few years. Regular workshops, community visits and classroom projects enrich and expose the site, while internationally renowned competitions such as the Solar Decathlon help propel the Center and Penn State to the forefront of global sustainability. Most uniquely, all the aforementioned resources and support contribute to the Residency program at the Center, which features a single Penn State student who attempts to live sustainably within the new and old techniques and technologies embedded in the Center for Sustainability.
An Ecopodcast
As public broadcasting moves from single stream media production to a multiplicity of more accessible and participatory techniques, the need emerges to make all kinds of news, events, individuals, and special interest stories available via new techniques. WPSU already makes a wide variety of podcasts available on its website, ranging from previous episodes of television series and special reports, to archives of national PBS and NPR podcasts. Penn State is also hosting podcasts, most of which constitute professor’s lectures, but which also include special reports and programs from various Penn State departments, including the College of Agriculture. Searching these archives, there are seven episodes on the WPSU site that mention energy conservation or renewable energies, including one “Pennsylvania Inside Out” report called “Energy Special” (03/31/06) that focuses on the topic; Penn State’s podcast site currently offers five podcasts related to agriculture, wildlife, gardening, and/or the “outdoors.” Of these five, all are non-episodic and none specifically or exclusively employ the message of sustainability.
There is a glaring hole in this list, where a regular and episodic podcast can neatly fit in, to explore sustainability and what Penn State and Pennsylvania community members can do in the workplace and at home to conserve energy and resources. There are several reasons why this will be a valuable tool to the Penn State workforce. First of all, the podcast’s aim will be to inform and excite members of the workforce to implement immediate actions and behaviors that can easily reduce energy and resource consumption in the workplace. This will save Penn State money – a lot of money. If even 10% of the workforce audience implemented half of the techniques we publicize, the grant money awarded to the project alone will be paid back in a short amount of time. Second, a campaign such as this to make the Penn State community more ecologically literate will give even more weight to the claims that Penn State is “Making Life Better” and fulfilling its leadership role in the world’s transition to non-destructive, sustainable lifestyles. The implementation of these podcasts will also help Penn State exceed its goals of reducing energy consumption years ahead of schedule, and clear the way for even more impressive transitions into the future of energy and resource use. Third, these information streams will make more visible those components of the Penn State community that are already pioneering “green” techniques, such as the Center for Sustainability (CfS). As the co-producers and leading voice for changing our energy use patterns, the Center for Sustainability makes good on President Spanier’s promise that Penn State is a leader in the field of “green” innovation. Increasing the visibility of the Center among the Penn State community will be a great service to Penn State and the CfS. Essentially, the resources of Penn State will be more available to itself, and improve its internal communication and performance in various measures of cohesion and conservation.
The episodic podcasts will be directed towards the urban workforce audience in the great state of Pennsylvania. Podcasting as a means of communicating information will target an essential audience of urban goers simply because of the nature of the medium. While walking to and from work, or by utilizing public transportation, the urban workforce will have ample time to digest the important dialogue of personal sustainability in a more relaxed fashion than a written directive from his or her respective administrator. Employers can instead direct their employees to the Center for Sustainability’s website to upload a new episode of the sustainable podcast series. An employee can automatically download the new episode and listen to it in his or her own free traveling time. This new approach with actual voices of concern will strengthen the pathos of the cause and in turn will indefinitely have a collective impact on a particular company or organization’s need to cut costs using simple sustainable methods.
And How…
There are several ways to undertake the podcast production process. Our workforce development plan will activate both members of the Penn State community and the Center for Sustainability. The podcasts will be available on the WPSU website, the Penn State site (podcasts.psu.edu), the Center for Sustainability site, as well as branch campus websites and independent sites available to the world (i.e. www.odeo.com). Accompanying material will be available to augment and enrich the audio and/or video material constituting the original streams, including textual resources, web-links, lists of conservation tips, additional stories and news articles. This online component will make the development initiative easily accessible and available to the community. Importantly, using the flexible and participatory webpage format of “wikis”, Penn State community members will be able to comment on the podcasts, while also being able to actually contribute to the various components of the podcasts. This workforce development initiative will even provide monthly podcast training workshops that will empower the Penn State workforce to contribute to future podcasts their personal accounts of successes and failures in energy conservation efforts. These workshops can take place at the Center for Sustainability, or on campus in the podcast-enabled classrooms, and will be lead by volunteers and staff of the Center for Sustainability and other outreach organizations in order to provide the training in podcasting sustainability, further increasing the visibility of the Center for Sustainability. One volunteer, English Professor Richard Doyle, pioneered the use of wikis in the English department teaching and writing programs as Director of Composition from 2004-2006, and is eager to contribute to this initiative.
The "Sustainable Compositions" initiative meshes with all of the criteria articulated for Level II support. Sustainable Compositions will highlight Penn State research in sustainability, enhancing PA constituency access to university resources, such as the Center itself, as well as the knowledge produced by the various disciplines investigating sustainability at Penn State. So too will this project create an interdiscplinary center (online) and working group for the collation and distribution of knowledge related to sustainability. The project helps fulfill most if not all of the Outreach Thematic Initiative Fund’s overarching goals, as the web presence will help forge and build on connections between Penn State, industry and the Pennsylvania community.
In conclusion, a podcasting initiative spearheaded by the Center for Sustainability and WPSU will provide an invaluable service to Penn State, the Pennsylvania workforce, and to the world at large by making the efforts of energy conservation and sustainability at Penn State more accessible and available. It will inform and empower the community, while also reducing the costs to Penn State of “Making Life Better.”
*************
THINGS THAT NEED TO BE DONE QUICKLY
-Budget
-Timline
-Redirecting partnership focus from WPSU to PennTAP; Penn State to Pennsylvania Workforce
-Focus of pitching to healthcare industry?
-Urban focus for podcasting
-Feedback loop? make process cyclical - podcast to audience to feedback to podcast
-training for people to create loop; in house education, workshops
-avoid rhetoric of "community development"
-support letters for project
Sustain-o-nauts:
This is a small grant - up to 15,000 - but we could easily put something together that would pilot a Sustainability Certificate program for Penn State staff and folks entering the workforce, with the econaut acting as the trainer. The goal would be to teach a group of staff at penn state some of the core principles and practices of sustainability so that they could bring that knowledge into the infrastructure and the system. What do you all think? I'll bet Dave Lettero can share some ideas with us about his current gig in Oregon teaching sustainability to low income families.
The only challenge may be in finding an outreach partner, which is required by the grant. The list of partners is here:
A world campus partnership could be possible but getting a quick response is a priority and they are often slow on the uptake. The proposal needs to be only three pages and is due October 20. If we collectively think this is a good idea I can enlist some students and get 'er done by the due date. It's a three page lottery ticket...
Also: Dave, I understand that you are putting together some information and might want some feedback composing and editing? Let me know and I can help along with some students.A good way to collaborate on documents is to post them to a wiki so we can share. I am posting this to
rich
Goals:
Goals
their needs with Penn State resources and engaging other external partners.
• Identify and facilitate opportunities for partnerships between University units
statewide and other economic and workforce development organizations.
• Identify and capitalize on funding opportunities where Penn State can add value.
• Disseminate economic and workforce development information.
• Strengthen relationships between Penn State and:
Key state and federal government agency officials
o
Other economic and workforce development organizations
o
Other post-secondary institutions
o
Organizations representing key industry clusters
o
Penn State Office of Government Affairs
o
• Become aware of University activities and impact related to economic and
workforce development.
• Articulate and promote the University’s role and contribution to economic and
workforce development in Pennsylvania.
Level II Support (Not to Exceed $15,000)
Level II funding will support the following types of initiatives/projects that support one
or more of the overarching goals stated above:
• Creation of interdisciplinary centers or working groups involved in Economic and
Workforce Development related activities;
• Creation of tools or services to enhance access to university resources that can
support the university’s role in Economic and Workforce Development in the
Commonwealth.
The Center for Sustainability at Penn State University seeks Level II support for its "Sustainable Compositions" Initiative at Penn State. The Center will host a series of monthly workshops to compose multimedia composition tools about sustainability and create a multidisciplinary web presence organizing industry, research and community resources for sustainability. Monthly podcasts, videos and texts will be freely distributed over the worldwide web, and will feature ways to integrate sustainable energy, air and water practices into everday life at work and home. The workshops will offer Penn State students, faculty, staff and community members the opportunity to work hands-on with free multimedia audio, video, graphics and text softwares to create dynamic and effective content for distribution on the World Wide Web. At the same time, participants will learn the basic principles and practices of sustainability, concepts and techniques they can then teach their colleaguies, neighbors and families.
"Sustainable Compositions" meshes with all of the criteria articulated for Level II support. Sustainable Compositions will highlight Penn State research in sustainability, enhancing access to university resources such as the Center itself as well as the knowledge produced by the various disciplines investigating sustainability at Penn State. So too will this project create an interdiscplinary center (online) and working group for the collation and distribution of knowledge related to sustainability. So too does the project help fulfill most if not all of the overarching goals, as the web presence will help forge and build on connections between Penn State, industry and the community.
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