Students: Cate Adams, Emma Clopton, Isabelle Spirk, & Julie Wright 

Southside Permaculture Park

Blog 5 Prompt Responses

1)  Does your work require IRB approvals…right now? At a later stage? If Yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy. If No, explain why you don’t need IRB approval and identify situations when you might need IRB approval.

Currently, the Southside Permaculture Park team is not seeking any IRB approval for our projects. We plan to expand on systems design plans that have been developed over the years and do more nature-based research, looking into soil health and how regenerative agriculture impacts human and plant health. Perhaps down the line, we may consider surveying the Bethlehem community for further research on ways permaculture ethics and principles and urban green space could impact daily life. We may potentially need IRB approval if we decide to conduct research on understanding diets within the local region and asking members of the Bethlehem community to openly mention their consumption habits, food source, and overall physical and mental well-being. This would help our project define where food is being consumed from, how often, and how what is being consumed impacts health. 

2) Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

The design process for the permaculture park includes first contextualizing the current state of the project.  Understanding what past teams have accomplished as well as any challenges and shortcomings they faced will help our team to plan moving forward.  After the context of the project has been established, our team will identify constraints, define metrics, and consider externalities that will help us then set our goals.  Turning our ideas into goals, which must then be followed up with action, we must make sure our goals are measurable.  Setting our goals will allow us to envision short and long term productivity.  Once the agenda is defined, execution of the project will require identifying and capitalizing strengths of individual group members.  Execution will then also call us to engage outside sources, including the stakeholders below.  A priority of team engagement of the local South Bethlehem community relies on expanding our network.  As plans become reality, we will measure and revise our design.  Making this design process sustainable, the heart of permaculture and creative inquiry, is pivotal to the longevity of our project.    

3) Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them.

Users: The Bethlehem community, in particular the southside. Users range from young children, their teachers, and other adults who reside in the local area. 

• Descriptor Variables: a majority of southside residents are a part of the BIPOC community, which socioeconomically is of lower status. 
• Geographically, users will be mostly within the urban area of Bethlehem.
• Values: Users value learning about permaculture principles and ethics and how they can be integrated into their own lives and practices. 
• Use Occasion/Usage Rate: Users would most likely be directly involved with the permaculture park only periodically, in their spare time. Although, a long connection would hopefully be established.
• Price Sensitivity: Users will be interested in engagement with little to no monetary cost.  The Bethlehem community and local organizations will work together in a mutually beneficial way through, most often, volunteer capacities and efforts.

Lehigh University: The park is located on Lehigh University property, which means park use must adhere to any guidelines set by the university. 

• Community engagement: Lehigh administration is notorious for not engaging in relations between the university and Southside Bethlehem, which is exactly the area the park aims to target. 
• Student body: The on-campus park provides Lehigh students with an opportunity to learn more about permaculture and building partnerships. A handful of students have already reached out with interests in permaculture to discuss how they can get involved in the project. 
• Risk management: The university has strict guidelines about risk management that are intended to protect the safety of students and the university, which means that some elements of park projects may require extra steps to get approval.
• Education: A research institute, Lehigh may have an interest and responsibility in the park as a site of education and research. 
• Brand: Although officially named the Southside Permaculture Park, the park is owned by Lehigh and represents the brand of the university.

Environmental Organizations: Environmental interest groups, including enviornmental justice and conservation groups, are ideal partners for the permaculture park.  

• Size (Region): Environmental organizations on a local scale (including regional branches of national organizations)
• Values: Environmental organizations have shared values with our project of environmental ethics and sustainability.
• Motives: Environmental organizations will be interested in partnering with a project linked to a major university to certify credibility and take advantage of the wide platform.
• Interests: Increasing social networks to include students and even engage the broader community.
• Occupation: Operating in a professional capacity, environmental organization work involves bureaucratic processes.

4) Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model.

• Monitoring and evaluating the amount of traffic the permaculture park receives both on-site and virtually
• Maintaining relationships with the local community and partners past initial meetings to cultivate long-term connects
• Observing the productivity of yields and benefits to ensure they exceed time and labor