Guidelines for URP Campus Greening Projects

Guidelines for URP Campus Greening Projects

The goals of the URP projects can be summarized in three points:

To work on practical projects that minimize Rensselaer's negative environmental impacts
To learn the necessary skills to produce positive environmental change
To document your experience so that other people may learn from or continue the project in the future

To achieve these goals, the student is expected to meet three requirements:

Attendance at weekly EcoLogic meetings is mandatory (except in the case of a class conflict) to share your weekly progress with the group
Attendance at weekly or bi-weekly meetings with your team members and/or the Greening or Water Conservation Coordinator to ensure resolution of ongoing problems and to keep the project moving forward
A final report describing the project and any results

To make the most of the URP project, for the present and for the future, the final report will be added to the web pages of the Greening of Rensselaer Initiative. The goal of this document should be to effectively communicate the semester's experiences. For that reason, the paper is less of a test of your writing skills than it is a manual that teaches other people what you did and what you learned. The coordinators will work with you to make sure that your project is as usefull as possible.

The paper should answer the following questions:

What was your project?
Where did you start?
How did you plan the semester?
What could you have done differently?
What sources did you use for information?
What were the greatest obstacles to your work?
What was satisfying about this URP? What was frustrating?
What would you have done if you had more time?
If someome were to pick up this project next semester, what suggestions would yyou give him or her?
What is left to be done?

Remember, the goal of the paper is to produce something useful for your peers. This paper is not going to sit at the bottom of your file cabinet, it is going to be on the Internet for people at RPI and other schools to read and learn from.

That said, we do not mean to intimidate you, but rather to encourage you. You will be part of a much larger effort to green the red!

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