SOCS325 Environmental Sociology
Week 1 Assignment
Activist Profile
Through this assignment you will gain familiarity with work being done by an environmental activist and consider the long-term impacts of his or her work.
Tasks:
Identify an environmental activist that is working domestically or internationally to create change.
Research your selected environmental activist.
You need to include the activist's information, including the following.
Picture
Name
Birth date (and death date, if applicable)
Town(s)/country
Education/employment
Biography, which shows why he or she is considered an activist for environment (a paragraph including information on the following)
How did they get started?
What kinds of visions do they have for environmental change?
What motivates them to continue in the face of adversity?
What do they get out of doing this?
Critical review of activist and their activism
Identify a contemporary environmental movement or success related to the work of this activist.
What actions seem to be most effective? Why?
What barriers did the activist run into? Why? Any recommendations to overcome these barriers?
How did this activist alter the course of the environmental movement?
What contemporary environmental struggles continue the legacy of this activist?
Quotes (at least two)
Every item needs to be supported by research. Use at least two scholarly sources and provide APA citation information.
Assignment:To share the information you find, you have to create an audio-video PowerPoint presentation. Your PowerPoint should be no more than 10 slides (one of which is a list of references in APA style) and should include APA style citations in the body of the presentation.
SOCS325 Environmental Sociology
Week 2 Assignment
Course Project Topic Selection
For the Course Project, you will develop an understanding of environmental racism and environmental justice by identifying a local community.
Tasks:
Define the concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice.
Research examples of environmental racism in America. Suggested examples include hazardous waste landfill, Warren County, North Carolina; Cancer Alley, Louisiana; Flint, Michigan; nuclear waste, Western Shoshone's Yucca Mountain; and so on.
Identify one local example of environmental racism.
Develop five sociological research questions particular to the example under study. Some questions to consider are the following.
When did it begin and what is its history?
Who is responsible? Who contributed?
Who is affected by environmental racism and how are they affected? Are poor and racially diverse communities affected more than upper class and white communities?
How does environmental racism affect local communities?
What are the impacts on the community with specific reference to social and health consequences on communities?
Why do many believe that more must be done to safeguard the rights of all Americans around environmental health?
How big of a problem is environmental justice?
What are some communities doing to address the problem?
Assignment:
Your assignment this week is to write a two-page APA paper (not including cover page and reference page; no abstract required) about the issue of environmental justice and racism affecting the local community. You will use the guiding questions provided under tasks to organize your paper. Complete a Reference page where you cite sources and/or websites in APA format.
SOCS325 Environmental Sociology
Week 3 Assignment
SWOT Analysis
This week you will examine a nonprofit organization working on environmental problems and conduct a SWOT analysis to assess success and potential improvements.
Tasks:
Identify a nonprofit organization. Some examples include Fibershed, Project Drawdown, Greenpeace, Earth Guardians, Cool Effect, Sierra Club, and One Tree Planted.
Having identified the nonprofit organization, conduct a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that dives into an organization's internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats. For the nonprofit organization, you should be able to identify, explore, and analyze the following.
Strengths are advantages internally at the organization. Examples include access to a large community of rabid supporters, celebrity endorsement (Links to an external site.), or especially skilled staff.
Weaknesses are shortcomings within the organization that may impact its ability. Examples include poor organizational structure, vacant key staff positions, and limited budgets.
Thoroughly explain at least two major strengths and two major weaknesses (review Chapter 9) of the organization. For each strength, discuss why this strength can be considered a distinctive competence for the organization. For each weakness, discuss what the organization could do to minimize that weakness. You should have a minimum of a full paragraph for each discussion of each strength and weakness.
Opportunities are external situations of which the organization can take advantage. Being able to spot and exploit opportunities can make a massive difference to your nonprofit's growth.
Threats are external situations that could negatively impact the organization. Threats are often completely outside of the organization's control. Examples include changes to laws or regulations in the region, economic recessions, rising taxes, and even changes to social media platforms.
Thoroughly research and analyze two opportunities and two threats that this organization is facing. Each of these opportunities and threats must come from a force or forces occurring within a dimension or dimensions of the general environment within the organization's external environment. Include in your analysis an explanation of how each of the opportunities and threats will likely impact the company and why. Discuss how the organization can capitalize on the opportunities that are occurring from the dimensions from within the general environment and how the organization can neutralize the threats that are occurring from the dimensions from within the general environment.
Note: The critical thing to remember is that strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, and opportunities and threats are external situations.
Assignment:
Your assignment this week is to write a two-page APA paper (not including cover page and reference page; no abstract required) presenting a SWOT analysis of the nonprofit organization. The SWOT analysis should contain at the minimum a full paragraph for each discussion of each quadrant.
Importantly, discuss how the organization can capitalize on the opportunities that are occurring from the dimensions from within the general environment and how the organization can neutralize the threats that are occurring from the dimensions from within the general environment.
Complete a Reference page where you cite sources and/or websites in APA format.
SOCS325 Environmental Sociology
Week 4 Assignment
Course Project Annotated Bibliography
For this assignment, you will conduct research and produce an annotated bibliography to develop a sociological understanding of research questions connected to a local example of environmental racism and environmental justice.
Tasks:
A basic component of academic research is the annotated bibliography. The annotated bibliography is a list of the sources you have found so far. The list is in alphabetical order as it would be on your Reference page and includes a full citation for each source as it would appear on your Reference page. However, in addition, an annotated bibliography includes an annotation for each source, which is basically a summary of the source and some commentary on why the source is useful to your project.
Some steps to consider while developing your annotated bibliography are the following.
Brainstorm using your sociological imagination, course readings, and outside resources, and explain your thoughts about the causes of environmental racism within the United States. Why are some groups more affected than others? What are the consequences of environmental racism? What strategies are available to reduce environmental racism amongst communities within the United States? What about local communities specifically?
Revisit the five research questions you developed in the previous assignment.
Then find content from scholarly sources connected to the research questions. You must find at least one or two scholarly sources per research question.
As you research to find scholarly sources, you must (1) make meaningful connections with local examples of environmental racism in the previous assignment; (2) attempt to answer some of the questions asked above (causes, consequences, and strategies of environmental racism); and (3) ensure that there is direct connection to research questions.
Having identified a scholarly source, an annotated bibliography must be provided.
Assignment:
Your task this week is to complete an annotated bibliography that meets the following requirements.
Include at least five sources.
Include a clear summary of each research source. Explain what the resource is about so that the reader can get a sense of the article. Here you will want to clearly state the main argument or point and explain some of the topics and supporting reasons focused on in the text.
Include commentary on why the source is useful and what kind of evidence it adds to your project. Does it add a particular perspective or type of evidence? Explain why you are including it. Make a connection to the specific research question.
Each annotation should be around 100–150 words long.
Include a full Reference page, formatted in APA format, for each source.
SOCS325 Environmental Sociology
Week 5 Assignment
Environmental Movement Timeline
For this assignment you will create an historical timeline of the modern environmental movement (within or outside the United States) in order to have an understanding of the history of the movement alongside assessing strengths and limitations of each stage.
Tasks:
The timeline contains at least 10–15 events related to the topic being studied.
The timeline can be organized in the following time periods: 1500–1700, 1700–1900, 1900–1950, 1950–2000, 2000–present.
You will create a timeline that incorporates important early writing, the first conservation groups, disasters, legislation, community and nonprofit activism, and more. Within each time period, you can include the following.
Facts such as the Wilderness Act passed in 1964
Laws such as General Mining Act (1872)
People such as Edward Abbey who wrote Desert Solitaire
Agencies such as Bureau of Land Management
Stewardship by agencies and volunteer groups
Include some images such as "Earthrise," the photo that propelled the environmental movement and led to Earth Day
(When you use an image, you must include a citation and URL for the source of the image.)
As you develop your timeline, assess limitations and strengths of each stage to make meaningful connections with the development of the environmental movement.
Toward the end of your timeline, examine the role of this environmental movement in a rapidly changing world.
Use at least three scholarly sources and remember that you need to cite these sources to give them credit for their information.
Assignment:
For this segment of the course, you will create a timeline—a highly visual, creative, and insightful way to assess the role of this environmental movement in a rapidly changing world.
For this assignment, you may use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. You must include the following elements.
10–15 events
Clear and specific descriptions of events included
At least three visual elements
Three scholarly sources
APA format
You will be graded based on the rubric below.
SOCS325 Environmental Sociology
Week 6 Assignment
Course Project Mitigating Environmental Racism
For this assignment, you will identify and weigh the effectiveness of strategies that serve to mitigate environmental racism and work toward environmental justice.
Tasks:
This part of the Course Project expects you to address aspects of environmental justice by considering the following questions.
What has the community done?
What have allies from outside the community done?
Describe the policies in place at the local, state, or federal level that address environmental racism at the local and national levels.
Identify some beginning ideas about how an intervention could occur at the individual and systems level (i.e., micro, mezzo, or macro level).
What are the barriers?
What has been achieved?
What are the failures and setbacks?
What recommendations do you have?
Assignment:
Your assignment this week is to write a two-page APA paper (not including cover page and reference page; no abstract required) about the strategies that serve as an intervention to mitigate environmental racism and work toward environmental justice. You will use the guiding questions provided under the Tasks section to organize your paper. Complete a Reference page where you cite sources and/or websites in APA format.
SOCS325 Environmental Sociology
Week 8 Assignment
Course Project Infogram
For this assignment, you will use your Course Project materials to create an infogram to create awareness about the environmental issue surrounding the local community.
Tasks:
An infographic is a highly visual representation of information, data, or content that is intended to quickly communicate information to an audience. As a quick visual representation, Gillicano and colleagues (2014) suggest that an infographic is easily comprehended and read in less than a minute.
Effective infographics tell a story. Smaller than but similar to a poster, an infographic often communicates a central argument, topic, or thesis focusing on the overall patterns, themes, or salient points. There is an introduction, main argument, and conclusion (Canva, 2017). Each element (text, graphics, data representations, etc.) meaningfully contributes to communicating an accurate and concise presentation of information. Much like an essay, an infographic is often the end product of a research project or inquiry process.
Assignment:
In Week 8, you will submit an infographic on the topic of environmental injustice in your local community. The following evaluative components will be used to assess your infogram (Matrix & Hodson, 2014; Schrock, 2012; Texas Education Agency, 2015).
Content: accurate and detailed information is provided and supports the thesis/argument/purpose
Focus: All content (visual and textual) concisely complements the purpose of the infographic
Visual Appeal: Fonts, colors, layouts, & visual elements meaningfully contribute to the infographic's ability to convey the overall message
Argument: The infographic effectively informs and convinces the reader of its intended purpose
Organization: Information is systematically organized and supports readers' comprehension of the main message
Citation: Full bibliographic citations are included for all sources referenced
Mechanics: The infographic is free of spelling or grammatical errors
References:
Canva. (2017). Infographic design. https://designschool.canva.com/how-to-design-infographics/
Gallicano, T., Ekachai, D., & Freberg, K. (2014). The infographic assignment. A qualitative study of students' and professionals' perspectives. Public Relations, 8(4), 1-22. http://prjournal.instituteforpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014GallicanoEkachaiFreberg.pdf
Matrix, S. & Hodson, J. (2014). Teaching with infographics: Practicing new digital competencies and visual literacies. Journal of Pedagogic Development, 4(2). https://www.beds.ac.uk/jpd/volume-4-issue-2/teaching-with-infographics
Schrock, K. (2012). Infographic rubric. http://www.schrockguide.net/uploads/3/9/2/2/392267/schrock_infographic_rubric.pdf
Texas Education Agency. (2015). Rubric for infographic or poster. http://cte.sfasu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Rubric-for-Infographic-or-Poster.pdf
