1 Summarize and report out on the results of the SKS exercise.

I did not attend the meeting synchronously and discuss that.

 

Develop a detailed Collaboration Plan for your team clearly articulating your Goals (small g and Big G), Roles, Procedures, and Relationships.

 

Team Name: _____Food Carbon Footprint____   Date: ___2021/3/23__
Goals	· What are the personal goals (small g) of each member on this team? (Team Member #1,#2, #3, etc) Make sure they connect to the DREAM on the Individual Profile. I want to help with the coding team in our project. My goal is to help deal with the data analysis and website building. · What is the Project GOAL (big G) we’re all committed to achieve together? We are trying to develop a calculator for the food carbon emission and make this a national, open-source model for other colleges/universities to use. Also, we try to report the high carbon emission of some types of food and we want to reduce the consumption of high-carbon-emission food by letting students aware of the problem. ·  Is our Project Goal scaled to our resources (dreams, materials, skills, differences, etc.) and constraints (assignment, time, skills, etc.)   Yes, we will leverage our resources like records from the Lehigh dining hall and the data we will analyze will depend on our data analyzing skills. We would also expect that we would launch our project on campus as soon as possible to reduce the limitation of the timeline and effect of Covid. · What are the metrics for success for what we’re producing? Short-term metrics would be the percentage of people who are satisfied with the action of the project, the number of students who get involved in this program, Lehigh dining hall staff’s feedback and records on the ordered food, and reduction of the order of high-carbon-emission food in a short time. And the long-term metrics would be the overall reduction of carbon emissions on campus, website views and satisfaction, percentage of students using the website, and the trend of various food sales records in the dining hall.
Roles	· Who is responsible for which deliverables? I am working on the coding team and help with the code. · Which deliverables require collaboration, subgroups & individual work? Who does each person depend upon to succeed? We are dividing into some subgroups. Some previous students are working with Lehigh dining hall to put the stickers while they would depend on the Lehigh dining hall stuff. I am working on the coding team so I would depend on the feedback from users. · Do we need a project manager to coordinate? No, everyone has different work and we could integrate them. · What are the deliverables each person is accountable to produce? I would provide the utility of the web.
Procedures	· Decision Making – What process shall we use: consensus, majority rules, deference to expert, default to the loudest, or? I think so far, our team have clear goals and plan. But if there is division-making, I think the majority rule would be great. · Effective Meetings – Focus on key, timely decisions together vs. status/update (offline); We are scheduling the meeting every Saturday to meeting with others, get the update, and reflect on our work. · Meeting roles: scribe, facilitator, timekeeper  We are meeting together to discuss our project. And I think everyone could be a timekeeper. · Communication – FTF: frequency, time, location; type of technology: (Googledocs, Hangout, etc.); expectations for responsiveness; ‘best time to work’ (AM, PM, weekends?) I think the range of a way is enough for every member to get some updates and do some works. Because there is a time zone difference, the best time to work and meet would be in the morning. And most people are available in the noon so 11 am would be the best time. We are currently meeting online because I am off-campus.
Relationships	· Team Diversity – What is the diversity on our team?  In our team, we have different members majoring in different majors like environmental study, computer science, and statistics. So we could work together and deal with different problems. · Team Name–What’s a team name that captures who we are and what we’re going to do? Exploring food carbon footprint and reducing carbon emission team

1. Develop an outline for your mid-semester presentations. What supporting evidence will you provide for each point? How will you boost your credibility every step of the way?

Who are you? Food carbon Footprint

What are you doing?

A brief introduction of our team mission

Where will you be doing it?

We will mostly focus on the stickers that we will put into the dining hall currently.

Also, we are building websites on the internet and will also post videos on Instagram to help promote and let more students participate.

Why are you doing it?

Lehigh’s dining halls like Rathbone and Lower Court produce a large amount of food daily and have not taken into consideration the toll the food production has on the environment. We have become more aware of the types of food that have a large carbon footprint and want to decrease the demand for them as quickly as possible by working with the dining hall.

How are you doing it? Credibility/validity – partners? funders?

The most important partners are Lehigh dining hall faculty and staff.

By bringing awareness to food with high carbon footprints, students will be more likely to choose low carbon footprint foods. By applying our project and pan, the production of foods that contain high carbon emissions will possibly decrease. And these high carbon foods usually cost much more than their alternatives. So one benefit for the dining hall faculty will be that we can help them possibly save cost and increase revenue. One of the members, Lauren, has already offered us help. She provided more information on the Lehigh dining hall and food system that we need. This helps us to have a clear vision and plan for our future work. Also, one of our plans is to make stickers and icons and connect them with each food. They can also assist us with that by providing access to that.

I believe Lehigh dining hall is also part of the Lehigh Sustainability Strategic Plan. So our mission could help them reduce excessive carbon emissions, thereby reducing environmental pollution. Also, the goal of Lehigh dining hall is to reduce expenses without affecting student satisfaction. And our project could lead to that goal by bringing awareness to food with high carbon emissions. We will reach out to them constantly. We are currently meeting them through zoom and sending emails to them, while we would meet and talk with them in person as we are going to make a soft launch of our project.

 

 

2 Develop at least 30 FAQs about your project.
Questions: What kind of questions might your customers, investors, and other stakeholders have about your work?
Answers: For each question, come up with a concise and precise response.

1Questions: What is your team’s goal?
Answers: We are developing a calculator for the food carbon emission and make this a national, open-source model for other colleges/universities to use. So we are trying to make the idea and implementation to be easily repeated.

2Questions: What is the purpose of the project?
Answers: We want to reduce the consumption of high-carbon-emission food by letting students aware of the problem.

3Questions: What has been done by your team?
Answers: We have collected the data we need to categorize the food by their carbon emission. We have made stickers and contacted the dining hall.

4Questions: What are you currently doing?
Answers: We are building our website and planning for our soft launch. We are also working on the logos, stickers and making them printed in the dining hall.

5Questions: What is the website doing?
Answers: The website is listing all the carbon values contained in each food you can find in the dining hall.

6Questions: What are those stickers? How do we use that?
Answers: Those stickers are filled with different colors and the colors can indicate the carbon value of the food. Students can identify the carbon value of each food by the colors.

7Questions: How can students participate?
Answers: Students could try to aware of those stickers and reduce consumption of that high-carbon-emission food. Also, they could participate in the survey and help us improve the project and plan.

8Questions: How can students use the website?
Answers: Students can look at the carbon value in each food on the website.

9Questions: How do you measure your results?
Answers: We will keep monitoring the records of food consumption from the Lehigh dining hall and compare them with the previous records.

10Questions: How did you collect those data?
Answers: We received most data from the Lehigh dining hall.

11Questions: How do you categorize the food by color?
Answers: Our team member developed an algorithm for the food ranking.

12Questions: How do you promote your project.
Answers: We are making posts and videos on Instagram.

13Questions: How will you improve your plan?
Answers: We will make the adjustment by feedbacks from students and records trends.

14Questions: Who are your partners?
Answers: The Lehigh dining hall staff and some students.

15Questions: What is your intended group?
Answers: All Lehigh students who eat at the dining hall.

16Questions: How do you convince the dining hall to help you?
Answers: Our project could also help them achieve sustainability plans and reduce some expenses.

17Questions: How do you get users for your website?
Answers: If students are interested in the food carbon footprint, they would be willing to use the website and find out the carbon value.

18Questions: Why will students notice or use the stickers?
Answers: I think these stickers are something that can bring novelty to students, and they would be curious.

19Questions: How do you ensure the accuracy of your calculator?
Answers: We will make our calculator more accurate by collecting more data, and these data would possibly from the faculty and staff of Lehigh dining hall.

20Questions: How do you get extra help?
Answers: We can also ask for help from the Lehigh sustainability team, and some of them might provide valuable data and reports.

21Questions: How do you attract more participates?

Answers: We would encourage more Lehigh community students and motive them by providing more interesting ways to participate. Posting Instagram is one of them, and our website could be more intriguing to those who are curious about the project.

22Questions: How do you cooperate with your partners?
Answers: By continuing to work with Lehigh dining hall staff, they will get to know our project more. We can cooperate better and establish more systematical solutions.

23Questions: How do you improve your plan?
Answers: We will gather opinions and reflection as much as we can and improve the project by leveraging those suggestions.

24Questions: Who are your advisor instructors?
Answers: Professor Morris and Professor Gross

25Questions: What are you going to do in your project?
Answers: We will talk to the Lehigh dining hall staff and get their permission and support to help us further our journey.

26Questions: How do you gather student’s opinions?
Answers: We would have to talk to students from the Lehigh community, send out surveys and ask them to help reflect their feelings and opinions. We will ask about their satisfaction and participation.

27Questions: What is the purpose of student’s participation?
Answers: Encouraging students to choose alternatives for food with high carbon emissions would reduce quantitative overall carbon emission.

28Questions: What is your measurement strategy?
Answers: If the high-carbon-emission food order like hamburgers drops 5%, we can’t simply assume it is effective unless we can see a constant reduction because the order varies slightly every month. The dining hall has records of food ordering, so we can simply achieve this.

29Questions: What is your goal after the calculator successfully being used on campus?
Answers: We will make this project used by other universities if possible and see if they can easily use it.

30Questions: How do you achieve the ultimate goal?
Answers: We will view and monitor the records of the dining hall’s order to keep track of them. The only difference is that we are going to reduce the carbon emissions first and then keep them stable.

1.What is your team’s data strategy? How will you acquire, apply, analyze, and visualize data for your project?

The main data source for our project is definitely from the dining hall. So we are going to especially focus on collaboration with the Lehigh dining hall and those recipes or records. Also, the feedback from students is also important. So collecting those data is another essential part of our strategy.

 

3 kinds of data are needed in the Food carbon Footprint project.

a. The carbon emission contained in each kind of food. This would have to do with the recipes and the ingredients. The rough data has been collected by previous students; they have listed most carbon value and ingredient weight of the food although in an informal unit. And I will help to make those data more clear by integrating them. My priority is to convert those data collected in a formal and identical format or unit to help visualize them afterward. For the visualization part, python programs will be developed to determine the level of carbon emission. Then we will categorize the food as green, yellow, or red to warn and inform students.

b. The most important part of this would be the records and recipes from the Lehigh dining hall. The recipe issues have almost been solved by previous students. Records will be needed to check the progress. We will request for the data record of sale from the time before Covid and then monitor the data after our launch to see the outcomes. If there is a constant decline in the consumption of high-carbon-emission food, we could assume that we have achieved the goal.

c. Students’ survey has been conducted and will be continued during the project to get feedback or information from campus students. The data of satisfaction could help to improve the project plan or find better ways to launch the project. And survey may also help us to see the allergens situation of overall students. Seeing a high satisfaction would be a push for our project.

 

2. What data will be needed for the short-term success of your project (thinking of the next 4-6 months)? What data will you track in the longer-term (2-5 years)?

In the short term, we will be dedicated to collect more data on the recipes and related values. Data like ingredient weights, carbon value, and overall carbon emission of more kinds of food are still needed.

Also, after the soft launch, we will pay more attention to the records of high-carbon-emission food consumption in the Lehigh dining hall.

 

While in the long term, we will focus on the records of consumption of high-carbon-emission food in the Lehigh dining hall.

The satisfaction survey from more students will continue to hand out and check the results and feedback.

Additionally, the webpage view would also be an important indicator.

 

3.What data will your project create and share? Who might use that data and how? Provide three compelling examples of use cases for your data.

The essential data we would create and share is the carbon value contained in each food and ingredients from the recipes.

Students can use these data to decide their lunch or food. We would provide data of carbon emission as well as a criterion to categorize them as 3 colors indicate their overall carbon value. Students or Lehigh staff could notice those stickers in the dining hall and possibly pay attention to the carbon value data to reduce the consumption of high-carbon-emission food.

Second, we will explore and visualize the data from students’ satisfaction. This will also be shown on the webpage, where people can see the progress and be attracted to the program. And the view of the webpage would also be an important indicator that can be used by ourselves to improve our porject.

Third, we will keep visualizing the records of high-carbon-emission food to make sure others, as well as ourselves, can see the progress and outcomes. This result could be seen by our instructing professors. And Lehigh dining hall staff could also use those data to decide on the recipes. For example, if they could see a constant decline in the consumption of food that contains high carbon value, they would possibly reduce the production of those kinds of food, which leads to our ultimate goal.

 

 

 

 

Here is Hangyi’s 5th blog.

 

1Based on your life experience, skills, and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

From my perspective, a great design process would contain the following 3 procedures.

1Brainstorming:

Firstly, I will list all the outlandish thoughts, plausible solutions, and related questions. And then, I will keep asking myself those questions and thinking and comparing about which solutions are better.

2Debugging:

After having all the unique thoughts and solutions, I will start to simulate the situation and find out potential problems. This process can help me figure out the potential problems and bugs within my plans and thoughts. For example, having a peer review is a great way.

3implementation:

The most important step is to start working on it and implement the outcomes. Practice helps me better check my effort and work. I will possibly be trying to implement what I have a design in the real world and see if it works.

4reflection:

The last and crucial step is to reflect on my work and outcomes. This process can help me find out better ways to improve my plan and lead to better work in the future.

 

 

 

2You have begun to talk to stakeholders for your project and will continue to do so going forward. For these conversations, list 10 hypotheses for your project that you will need to validate, and 10 assumptions your project is making, and the basis for those assumptions.

Hypotheses:

1 We would have to talk to students from the Lehigh community, send out surveys and ask them to help reflect their feelings and opinions. We will ask about their satisfaction and participation.

2 We will talk to the Lehigh dining hall staff and get their permission and support to help us further our journey. We will ask them what help and support they can provide. And request their cooperation.

3 We will keep talking with professor Morris and Gross and apply for the necessary help.

4 We will continue to make posts to promote and let more students know about our program. These students can also be our stakeholders and can provide valuable reflections and opinions.

5 We will gather opinions and reflection as much as we can and improve the project by leveraging those suggestions.

6 By continuing to work with Lehigh dining hall staff, they will get to know our project more. We can cooperate better and establish more systematical solutions.

7 We would encourage more Lehigh community students and motive them by providing more interesting ways to participate. Posting Instagram is one of them, and our website could be more intriguing to those who are curious about the project.

8 We will talk with other teams whose research direction is also food carbon emission and footprint.

9 We can also ask for help from the Lehigh sustainability team, and some of them might provide valuable data and reports.

10 We will make our calculator more accurate by collecting more data, and these data would possibly from faculty and staff of Lehigh dining hall.

assumptions

1The Lehigh dining hall staff can help us generate the stickers we need and possibly put them on each kind of food or provide help.

Basis: Our project could also help them achieve sustainability plans and reduce some expenses.

2 We can get many users of our website.

Basis: If students are interested in the food carbon footprint, they would be willing to use the website and find out the carbon value.

3 Our stickers can make Lehigh students interested.

Basis: I think these stickers are something that can bring novelty to students, and they would be curious.

4 We can find more valuable data from Lehigh dining hall and other possible resources.

Basis: After implementing the plan, we hope to see a change or reduction of consumption of high carbon emission food, and those data can be seen.

5 After we post our progress and related information on social media, more students can participate.

Basis: The followers could increase.

6Lehigh dining hall staff can provide some valuable records of the food consumption to help our check our outcomes.

Basis: If reduction can be visible, the records would be valuable.

7 Instructors and professors of our project would provide more support.

Basis: They help us keep on track and provide some necessary information.

8 Lehigh students would be curious or interested in the calculator we are developing and would be willing to use those stickers.

Basis: The stickers are essential in our plan, and those students would see the stickers in the dining hall soon.

9 Lehigh dining hall staff can keep implementing the plan.

Basis: They currently help us putting the stickers and possibly keeping doing that if we can make some impact.

10 Other Lehigh team whose research direction is also food carbon footprint can cooperate and generate more ideas.

Basis: Recently, another Lehigh environmental research team connect us.

 

 

 

 

Here is Hangyi’s 4th blog.

 

Review the six focus areas in the Sustainability Strategic Plan 2030. Identify and describe in detail how your project aligns with one or more of the focus areas. Be sure to think outside of the box. Each project aligns with more than one focus area, although it might not be immediately obvious.

 

1. Climate Action: One of our project team’s goals is to reduce food carbon emissions, which would be a cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Excessive emissions and the use of carbon have caused greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect. In our project, the goal is to have students aware of carbon emission in food, and they are encouraged to have less-carbon-emission food. By tracing the food carbon footprint and reducing the carbon emissions of food, we can detect and reduce them. Finding alternatives for foods that contain high carbon emission is also the same idea as “using renewable energy sources,” and this process is also like energy conservation.

 

2. Educational Experience: One thing our team is trying to do is to build a webpage that could inform students of the environmental cost of their lunch.

We are also definitely going to collect and analyze data from Lehigh dining hall records to make sure everything is on track and even find new ways to improve the process.

As we are implementing our plan, research will be conducted and focus on the Lehigh dining hall food system and food ingredients.

 

3 Campus Operations: Our project will provide new and innocent ways for campus operation. By tracing food carbon footprint and identifying high carbon emission foods, Lehigh community and dining hall are able to reduce the production and save costs as well as increase the whole foods. Additionally, high carbon emission foods, like hamburgers and cheese, are mostly harmful to student’s health. By bringing awareness to food with high carbon footprints, students will be more likely to choose low carbon footprint foods. In this way, the overall well-being of the university could be improved. After implementing our project, we expect to see a quantitative decrease in the consumption of high carbon emission food, the overall campus carbon emissions, and a more reasonable food structure in the production.

 

4 Health & Wellness: this one is the tightest to our project.

As mentioned above, high carbon emission foods, like hamburgers and cheese, are mostly harmful to student’s health. So these kinds of food are usually given a red icon or sticker, which is a “warning” for students to eat less of these foods. If the consumption drops by a large percent, it is reasonable that the dining hall will provide and produce less of them. It would be a virtuous circle. This improves the food structure and choices provided by the school and guarantees the health of all Lehigh communities. As a result of our plan, we expect more students to be aware of the food choice, not only for decreasing carbon emission but also for their own body health.

 

 

Identify the key Lehigh University-based and external stakeholders for your project. For each stakeholder:
Describe what their interest in your project might be.
What resources might they provide?
How does your work further their goals?
How might you engage with them?

 

1. Lehigh dining hall faculty and staff (most important)

By bringing awareness to food with high carbon footprints, students will be more likely to choose low carbon footprint foods. By applying our project and pan, the production of foods that contain high carbon emissions will possibly decrease. And these high carbon foods usually cost much more than their alternatives. So one benefit for the dining hall faculty will be that we can help them possibly save cost and increase revenue.

One of the members, Lauren, has already offered us help. She provided more information on the Lehigh dining hall and food system that we need. This helps us to have a clear vision and plan for our future work. Also, one of our plans is to make stickers and icons and connect them with each food. They can also assist us with that by providing access to that.

I believe Lehigh dining hall is also part of the Lehigh Sustainability Strategic Plan. So our mission could help them reduce excessive carbon emissions, thereby reducing environmental pollution. Also, the goal of Lehigh dining hall is to reduce expenses without affecting student satisfaction. And our project could lead to that goal by bringing awareness to food with high carbon emissions.

We, as a team, will reach out to them constantly. We are currently meeting them through zoom and sending emails to them, while we would meet and talk with them in person as we are going to make a soft launch of our project.

 

2.  Instagram

This is not a formal way to describe it, but we actually use Instagram as well as other social media, and our effort could also slightly make an impact on Instagram.  Instagram provides a platform for our promotion, while our account, as an influencer, makes the platform more dynamic. We will constantly make posts to show our work process to actually “engage with them.”