Final Evaluation

Get ready, blog readers, this post is going to be a long one. Because it's time for....drumroll please...the final evaluation!

1. Explain how the trayless dining campaign followed or deviated from the steps in a social marketing plan as outlined below.
a. campaign purpose
b. campaign focus
c. target audience
d. competition
e. objectives
f. marketing mix
g. implementation plan
h. evaluation plan

I think we mostly stuck to the steps of a social marketing campaign, or as least as well as we could given the constraints of being in a class, dealing with barriers in communication, etc. We began with our campaign purpose (increase campus sustainability) and voted on our focus (trayless) and then brainstormed our target audience, competition, and specific objectives. Although we have an implementation plan (part of our proposal to dining services!) the specifics of the marketing mix to the students haven't really moved out of the ideas stage yet, probably because we haven't gotten permission from dining services yet. And we have to try going trayless before we can have an evaluation plan, although we could have evaluated how well what we've done so far has worked (which is sort of what I'm doing right now!) From a very informal survey of my friends (and by that I mean comments that they have made to me) there has definitely been an increase in the number of people voluntarily going trayless in the dining halls, which to me means all this hulabaloo is at least going somewhere! And the reception of our proposal by dining was also very encouraging to me, although it remains to be seen what they will actually do.

2. Create an evaluation plan to evaluate the success of the trayless dining campaign. How will you determine during and after the campaign that it is going according to plan and has succeeded or met with limited or no success?
First off, we need to get dining services to accept our proposal to have a trial period of trayless dining. Then, I think it's going to come down to two factors: how much of an environmental/financial benefit this project actually has, and what effect it has on customer and worker satisfaction. For the former, we need figure out a way to actually collect data--how much food waste declines, if students are actually taking less food, if the dishwashers can be used less as a result of trayless. For the latter, I know that Tufts prides itself as having high customer satisfaction in the dining halls. I'm not sure exactly how they measure that (is it based purely on the surveys they send out?) but they obviously already have a metric for measuring this, so it shouldn't be that hard. Similarly, we will need some way to measure what new stresses this switch creates for dining workers, as dining services can't run an effective business if it only has disgruntled workers.

3. How has learning about your own behavior choices enabled you to better understand creating change? How has learning about behavior and psychology affected your conversations about environmental issues with others (friends, family, peers, etc)? Consider the effect of cognitive dissonance, the behavioral challenges, group discussions, and learning of why behavior happens.

The psychology aspect of this class was very important to me, and what I think really set it apart. It is one thing to just spout out what people "should" and "shouldn't" do, which I feel like is what environmental literature/groups do most of the time. I think that it's only by treating people's behaviors as rational and legitimate that you can go about changing them. This class certainly changed how I approach environmental discussions with others--instead of treating people like I'm bestowing upon them some great wisdom by telling them to turn off the lights, I actually stop to consider why they might be acting the way that they are and what the most effective strategies might be to get them to change. But perhaps more importantly than just changing my interactions with others, this class allowed me to take a look at my own behaviors and see if I was really practicing what I preached. Especially in the case of the behavior challenges, these activities forced me to really feel the cognitive dissonance instead of just pushing it away like I had done in the past. And outside of just environmental decisions, I think this knowledge has helped me to become more self-aware.

4. Has your knowledge of environmental issues increased? How? What are you more aware of now than you were at the beginning of the class?

I think that this class has increased my general knowledge of environmental issues, and made me more comfortable with my ability to have an intelligent and informed discussion about environmental issues. But more important than any specific knowledge is my ability to seek out and evaluate environmental literature. There is always going to be a new or revised statistic for exactly how much carbon we're putting out into the atmosphere, so memorizing that won't do you any good. But through this class I've learned how easy it is to research issues that I am interested in, but to not trust the first source I find. Which is something I've always known, but somehow seems to go out the window when I see some scathing statistic. So as much as we complained about those critical thinking worksheets, it seems like they really did help.

5. What do you think are the most reliable sources of information? In what ways do you assess the accuracy and bias of information sources?
I didn't even realize that was the next question! Just made that great segue all on my own...Anyway, my scientist parents and several professors have taught me that the most reliable sources of information are peer-reviewed scientific studies. However, as I don't have the time or level of concentration to read a 50-page study every time I want to learn something, published commentaries about said studies are usually okay too. To assess the accuracy and bias of information sources, I usually ask myself two questions: Who wrote this, and why did they write it? If there is some agenda behind the piece, it is usually biased.

6. Do you feel that having a community of like-minded people to talk to motivates you to work towards creating a change? Where do you seek out these communities? How useful was the class in creating a community for you?
Yes, having a community of like-minded individuals definitely inspires me to work towards creating a change. It amazes me the difference in the reactions toward my "environmental" actions between my different friend groups. For instance, the people who I lived with last year, aka just a random sampling of the Tufts population, tend to think of me as a slightly crazy vegetarian hippie and so they write off some of my ideas/requests to make environmental changes as "oh, she's just being Rachael again..." which tends to be really off-putting and sometimes hurtful, even when they don't mean to be. But when I bring these same ideas to my friends that did wilderness support staff with me, they are more prone to agreeing with me, or at least starting a discourse about why I think X, Y, Z. So I think it helps to find a community of people who might not be specifically interested in environmental issues, but are at least more likely to be receptive to them. While I don't see myself as immersed in the "community" of this class, it did help me in a couple of ways. First, it helped me to see people that I already know in a different light. These relationships ranged from a close friend to a friend of a friend, a teammate to a first-semester freshman year classmate, but in each relationship my view was changed in a positive light because I now know I can count on those people in a new way, for support in making a change. And I also know those people will be there to keep me in line if I ever start slipping in my behaviors. Moreover, I was inspired by the range of people that took this class. All years, all with different interests and backgrounds. It inspires me to believe that there are more envrionmentally-minded people out there, maybe not taking action yet, but with the right prodding they will come out of the woodwork.

7. Do you think you will continue to shift from saying to doing? If yes, explain how you think you will maintain your enthusiasm.
Yes! I'm excited to continue shifting from saying to doing. I recently was elected the environmental officer for TMC, the tufts mountain club which is one of the largest clubs on campus. So I'm hoping if I can think of some really great environmental projects and execute them well, I will have a lot of manpower behind me. That role is also meant to be sort of a liason to ECO, so I went to the last two ECO meetings of the semester. In the past, ECO frustrated me--it was a club that I wanted to be a part of, but it kind of seemed all over the place, not run very well, and a little too extremist for me. So my solution last year was to just stop going to the meetings, as I thought they were a waste of my time. But re-infused with a sense of idealism and my own ability to get things done, I went back, and provided some ideas for projects for next semester--and volunteered to lead those projects. I suggested that we have a "Tufts Green Dorm Room" program like the one they have at Brandeis (that I learned about at the Eco-Reps symposium!) and ECO was really excited about it. So over winter break I'm going to contact the Brandeis girls that came to the symposium and see if I can get some more information about how to do that at Tufts. I'd also like to have some more official role, through an environmental job or internship, possibly this summer or (although it might be too late for this) next semester. Regardless of what happens with that, it looks like I have good potential for maintaining my enthusiasm!

Well that was a marathon of blogging! Lastly, I'd like to thank Dallase and Tina for creating and teaching this wonderful class. I really can't thank you enough; I truly believe that this experience has shifted the path that I'm on for the better.