This issue includes two pieces on the idea of community building, both of which were collaboratively composed and which provide the reader with a sense of hopefulness in our ability to achieve greater results when we come together with a sense of purpose. “On Qualitative Writing: Building an Interdisciplinary Community of Practice” is a thoughtful and insightful piece about the challenges and rewards of forming a writing community, while “Working Together to Reduce Energy Costs, One Insert at a Time” is an uplifting story of Maine communities banding together in the pursuit of winter warmth. “Rearing Queen Honey Bees: A Bullet Journal” is a visually engaging piece that brings a long tradition of creative impressions to the forefront of how we visualize science, while also demonstrating the capacity building inherent in university-community partnerships. “Five year post-installation review of a heat pump water heater” is a data-filled presentation of the cost savings and energy benefits of a home heat pump water heater, demonstrating a commitment to openly sharing knowledge that every Mainer can find relevant and useful. “Agriculture in Maine” is an intimate portrait of Penobscot County farms and their resident creatures, and our cover artist has included several versions of her timely and surreal simulation of an undersea world confronting plastic pollution in “Cyanotype Impressions of the Atlantic Ocean in Maine.”

Individually, each piece in this issue can be seen as the author’s effort to confront important questions of our time; together, they demonstrate the power inherent in ���辱����’s mission of promoting impactful dialogue across disciplines and communities.��

Acknowledgements

Since our inaugural issue in 2017, we have been enjoying the learning process of creating and sustaining an environmental journal which depends on the dedication of a team of graduate and undergraduate students, faculty members, and our contributors from across the state and beyond. From debating the merits of submission deadlines, to the ongoing communications required between our editors and authors to prepare for publication, to the outreach involved for community integration, we’ve continued to refine our process behind the scenes. We would like to recognize the contributions of our 2018-2019 team of editors, including Chris Waite, Abby Novak, Karina Graeter, Jack McLachlan, Gwyneth Roberts, Clinton Spaulding, and Elyse DeFranco, who were the backbone of this issue. Dr. Dan Dixon is our faculty advisor and driving force behind the journal, while our outgoing Editor-in-Chief, Tyler Quiring, has expertly steered our ship for the last two issues. We are fortunate to have Tyler remaining on our editorial board while we transition to our next phase with Issue 4, with Clinton Spaulding and Elyse DeFranco taking the helm as Co-Chief Editors.��

As we move into this next phase, we ask that you help us with our mission by sharing this issue with others, and we invite all who wish to join us in building this community to contact us directly at spire@maine.edu.��

�����Գ���������,��

The Editorial Board

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¹Husson University, 1 College Circle, Bangor, ME 04401

ABSTRACT
Heat pump water heaters extract energy from the surrounding air and transfer that energy to a water tank in order to heat the water. This is a very efficient process compared with more common hot water heating methods, and can be used to reduce a home’s overall energy consumption. Despite modest installation costs, which are currently mitigated by a state rebate program, and typical payback times on the order of three years, this technology is not widely adopted in Maine. Here I present a data set consisting of a central Maine family of four’s electrical usage for the five years prior to the installation of a heat pump water heater, and the five years after installation. I find that, on average, the home annually avoided 2,072 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy usage, 1,405 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, and $311 in electricity costs after the heat pump water heater installation. Wider adoption of this technology would result in important environmental and economic impacts for individual families, and their collective action could also have large-scale implications.

1. Introduction

Of a home’s total energy consumption, approximately 14% is used for heating water (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2015a). Conservation of hot water, or any resource, will always provide the greatest ecological (and economic) benefit; honestly assessing and reconsidering our needs should always be the first action undertaken, second is then thoughtfully choosing to meet those needs in the most ecologically responsible way possible (Berry 2015). However, after all the end uses of hot water in a home have been truly reconsidered and minimized, the question then becomes how to most responsibly meet the remaining hot water demand. Some methods include electric resistive heating with a storage tank, gas with a storage tank or without (tankless), a heat pump water heater (HPWH), solar hot water heaters, and combinations of these methods. As the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and others, makes clear, we must rapidly transition away from fossil fuels in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. This makes a hot water heater that minimizes fossil fuel consumption over its entire lifetime (including construction and disposal) the most desired option (Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change 2018, McGlade and Ekins 2015). Moore et al. (2017) modeled different methods of heating water in Australia and found that a solar hot water heater coupled with a HPWH powered from a solar photovoltaic (PV) array had the minimum greenhouse warming potential. However, solar hot water heaters, which use solar radiation to either directly or indirectly heat water and then store that hot water in a tank, are not widely used in Maine, likely due to higher upfront costs, structural concerns associated with the rooftop solar collectors, potential shading issues from trees, and general unfamiliarity with the technology (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2015b). Compared with the most widely utilized hot water heating methods in Maine (which do not include solar thermal and/or solar PV as a part of the system), Hong and Howarth (2016) found that a grid-powered HPWH produced lower greenhouse warming potential as a result of the heater’s use, though their calculations do not include emissions from the heater’s construction and disposal (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2015b). Using different assumptions, such as including the effects of refrigerant in HPWHs, Moore et al. (2017) calculated gas hot water heaters (both tank storage and on demand) to generate less greenhouse warming potential than a grid-powered HPWH over the entire lifecycle of each technology. These somewhat contradictory studies suggest that further life cycle analyses comparing HPWHs to gas technologies are required. However, both studies found that switching from a grid-tied electric hot water heater to a grid-tied HPWH (both with storage tanks) was advantageous with respect to minimizing greenhouse gas emissions as a result of operation and over the entire lifecycle; this is the comparison under consideration in this case study, though only emissions due to operation are calculated.

A HPWH consists of two resistive coils inside a storage tank with a heat pump integral to the unit (U.S. Department of Energy 2018, General Electric Appliances 2018, General Electric Appliances 2012). In the heat pump portion, a fan pulls air into the heat pump where thermal energy is extracted from the air and moved into the water via a refrigeration cycle. The resistive coils heat the water by passing an electric current through the coils as in a typical electric hot water heater. In heat pump mode the water is heated only with the heat pump whereas in electric mode the water is heated solely by the resistive coils. In hybrid mode, the heat pump will heat the water unless a low temperature setpoint is reached and the electric coils take over—this typically happens when the hot water demand is too great for the heat pump to maintain the desired water temperature and the coils are needed to more quickly return the water to the desired output temperature. Other modes of operation may exist depending on the particular model.

Due to the efficient heating of the water using the heat pump, switching to a HPWH is predicted to save 2,690 kWh¹ of energy per year for a “typical” family of four (Energy Star 2018). In this case study, I present the actual energy savings by comparing residential electric data for both the five years prior to, and after, the installation of a HPWH in a central Maine home with four family members (two adults at the beginning of this study, two adults and two children by the end). I present this data set in order to provide additional information for Maine homeowners that are considering how best to heat water. Of course, the benefits and drawbacks of all water heating options should be considered and will vary by household—it is my hope that the results and references presented here, though limited by only considering one home, will prompt some homeowners to research HPWHs further.

2. Installation and Operation

In August 2013 I installed a 50 gallon General Electric Geospring hybrid hot water heater in an unheated basement directly beneath our home’s kitchen (General Electric 2018, General Electric 2012, Advanced Energy 2011).² The retail price of $1,050 was reduced to $450 after taking advantage of then-current state and federal rebates—similar models currently cost ~$1,000 – $2,000, and qualifying HPWHs are eligible for a $750 state rebate (Efficiency Maine 2019a). The location of the old electric hot water heater met all of the recommended clearance and space requirements of the HPWH, so I simply removed the old heater and installed the new HPWH in its place, utilizing the existing electrical and water connections. I performed the installation myself (with help from more qualified family members) and so did not incur an additional cost of a plumber installing the machine (which is difficult to determine because plumbing costs can vary greatly, but might be on the order of $300).

Typically, I leave the HPWH in hybrid mode, though on days when hot water demand is exceptionally high I place the HPWH in electric mode in order to speed up recovery (though this is rare, perhaps 10 days a year). I am always conscious of the slower recovery time when in hybrid mode, which naturally leads us to spread out hot water demand throughout the day in order to avoid lukewarm water, but I have not attempted to further decrease our overall demand beyond that at the beginning of the 10 year period. If demand becomes too high for the heat pump to keep pace, the electric coils will turn on and the subsequent increase in water temperature can immediately be felt—a more comprehensive explanation of the various modes and temperature setpoints can be found in the HPWH technical service manual (General Electric 2012). The nominal hot water temperature setpoint was fixed at 125° F throughout this study.

Spreading out our hot water demand throughout the day (such as by setting the dishwasher to run overnight) has been the only long-term behavior adopted. More thoughtfully engaging with our home’s hot water demand might be considered a drawback to installing the HPWH, and in practice going to the basement to (very occasionally) switch modes or perhaps waiting an extra 15 minutes before taking a shower while the water temperature fully recovers from laundry and dishes can be mildly frustrating (a contributing factor is likely purchasing a tank size that is too small for our family). However, these are minor inconveniences compared to the environmental and economic benefits described in section 3. In fact, better understanding, interacting with, and questioning our household hot water demand as a result of installing a HPWH can be argued to also be a benefit. A more comprehensive listing of the benefits and drawbacks of a HPWH, as well as other water heating methods, can be found online through a number of sources, such as Efficiency Maine and the U.S. Department of Energy, or by contacting a trusted local retailer (Efficiency Maine 2019b, U.S. Department of Energy 2018, Shapiro and Puttagunta 2016).

The only maintenance likely to be undertaken by the homeowner is to clean the air filter periodically, when alerted by a warning alarm from the machine. This simply entails removing the filter, easily accessible on the top of the unit, and cleaning it with hot water. For more complicated repairs, a 10 year limited warranty appears to be the industry standard for HPWHs. In the last 5 years, the only time that the heat pump in the HPWH under consideration here was unable to function (hot water was still provided by the electric coils) was a condition in which the temperature sensor in the evaporator determined that the evaporator was not frost-free. The company’s customer service representative was unable to give us the name of a qualified repairman in the area, but was able to send a new fan assembly since that was one possible cause of the error code. I replaced the fan and associated wiring, clearing the fault. However, the fault continued to come in periodically that month, as well as in the same month a year later, always clearing within a day or so on its own. I conjecture that no repairs to the machine were actually necessary, but that the environmental conditions in our basement were too cold and wet during those months to allow for proper operation (ambient temperature must be 45° F – 120° F for the heat pump to function); the fault has not returned for 2 years.

3. Results and Discussion

Figure 1 shows the average daily electrical energy use³ (kilowatt-hours per day, or kWh/day) for each month in the five years prior to installing the HPWH (red data) and for the five years after installation (green data).⁴ Each data point was calculated by taking the electrical energy (kWh) purchased each billing cycle and dividing by the number of days in the billing cycle—this information is readily available on the monthly electric bill, and should be accessible online in tabulated form as well. Average daily energy consumption was significantly lower after HPWH installation (t₁₁₆ = 5.897, p < 10^-7 for a two-sample t-test), a reduction from 31.3 ± 4.9 kWh/day to 25.7 ± 5.6 kWh/day (where the error bars indicate the sample’s standard deviation). Due to the observed 18% drop in electrical energy consumption correlating with the installation of a HPWH, I postulate that the HPWH was the primary reason for this decrease. This 18% reduction corresponds to a 5.6 ± 1.9 kWh/day decrease at the 95% confidence level.

In the five year pre-installation period, where an electric hot water heater of unknown age (though dating prior to at least 2004) provided hot water heating, our household used a total of 57,187 kWh of electrical energy. In the five year HPWH post-installation period, we used 46,828 kWh, a decrease of 10,359 kWh. Annually, our average electrical energy usage decreased from 11,437 kWh to 9,366 kWh, an average of 2,072 kWh savings each year (18%). I currently pay $0.17 per kWh of electricity purchased, but that amount has risen over the ten years of this experiment. If I assume an average electricity price of $0.15 per kWh, the 2,072 kWh savings is equivalent to avoiding $311 in electricity costs annually. At the total purchase price of $450, the HPWH paid for itself in approximately 17 months.

It should be stressed that the decrease in energy usage in the five year post-installation period cannot be entirely attributed to the adoption of a HPWH. While no large, intentional changes to energy consumption patterns were made (except for installing the HPWH), there were certainly unknown changes that occurred and contributed—in unknown ways—to the results presented here. For example, while the basement where the HPWH is installed remains at a relatively constant temperature, weather effects may have played a minor role in increasing or decreasing energy usage. A child was born in month 19 and then another in month 54, both of which would tend to drive energy consumption up (which makes the resultant 18% decrease an even more robust result). A small outdoor heater to keep the chicken’s water from freezing has been used the last two winters, a chest freezer was added to the barn at some point during the ten years, some old appliances died and were replaced with more efficient ones, and a myriad of other variables contributed to the home’s energy consumption—a household is clearly not a laboratory, where single variables can be controlled and their effect measured, which is both a weakness and a strength to this data set. Due to the 18% average annual reduction in energy usage (clearly visible in Figure 1) that corresponds to the HPWH installation, we can postulate that the HPWH was the primary cause as it was the only “large” electrical change made around that time. However, future work should include a large study of homes in Maine that use HPWHs in order to quantify their effects in a statistically meaningful way.

In addition to energy and cost savings, the 2,072 kWh of electrical energy saved annually also has environmental benefits. In Maine, 0.678 lbs of CO₂ are released per kWh of electricity generated for the grid, which means the 2,072 kWh of energy savings prevents 1,405 lbs of CO₂ from being produced annually (ISO New England 2016). These results are presented in Table 1, including a per-capita correction that accounts for four people living in the household. It is instructive to place the 1,405 lbs of CO₂ not released into context. Considering that the United States is projected to emit 5,237 x 10⁶ metric tons of CO₂ in 2018, or 1.15 x 10¹³ lbs, it is easy to consider 1,405 lbs as being insignificant (Lindstrom 2018). Even if everyone in the U.S. switched to a HPWH, we might expect to annually avoid generating (351 lbs CO₂ / person)(3.3 x 10⁸ people) ≈ 10¹¹ lbs CO₂, or ~1% of the country’s total CO₂ emissions (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). It should be acknowledged that, even in the best case scenario, HPWH technology plays only a small role in addressing CO₂ emissions. However, we should also not confuse small with insignificant. It is impossible to identify all of the positive changes that may result from a simple HPHW installation, but some might include 1) considering a solar PV array for electricity to power the HPHW and other electrical loads with less fossil fuels; 2) looking into additional heat pump technology for home heating and cooling; 3) exploring increased insulation and sealing to keep the home at the desired temperature with less energy inputs; 4) recognizing that greater local, state, or national support (such as via various incentive programs) would enable others to undertake similar home improvements, and petitioning those in government that could institute such changes; or 5) becoming involved in government to ensure environmental stewardship is of the foremost consideration in policy creation. Any of these actions by this homeowner, or others influenced by this homeowner, might be considered small, but taken in their totality can amount to real, substantive change for the better.

The data presented in Table 1 compares actual electrical energy consumption before and after the HPWH installation. It is also instructive to compare the predicted energy consumption after the installation with the actual energy consumption post-installation. The blue curve in Figure 1 is a mathematical model, based on the actual pre-installation energy consumption, that can be used to deduce trends in our energy consumption and predict future energy needs (see Appendix 1 for details). The cyclical nature of the curve reflects our greater electricity needs in the winter (more lighting, heating, inside cooking, etc.) and lesser needs in the summer (the home does not typically utilize air conditioning). More surprising was the linearly increasing nature of this model; some unknown factors were causing our average electrical usage to slowly increase over time, an observation that was not apparent until this data set was originally plotted. With so many variables in a household setting affecting electrical consumption, it is difficult to isolate a singular cause of this increase, but it is interesting to note that post-installation the expected cyclical pattern persists but the linearly increasing one does not.⁵ This suggests that the linearly increasing trend may have been due to the previous water heater failing over time.

This simple model predicts a total electrical demand of 74,796 kWh over the 5 year post-installation period, or an average annual rate of 14,959 kWh. The predicted annual energy savings becomes substantially higher, 5,508 kWh, and the avoided economic and environmental costs follow suit (see Table 2). As mentioned in Appendix 1, we should use caution in relying too heavily on the predictions made by this model due to the complexity of the system—the 5,508 kWh predicted annual energy savings is more than double what a typical family is expected to see (Energy Star 2018). However, it is likely safe to regard the 2,072 kWh annual energy savings presented in Table 1 as being a conservative estimate of the actual energy savings provided by the installation of a HPWH in this home.

4. Conclusions

In this paper I have presented a 120 month data set consisting of a single home’s electric energy consumption before and after the installation of a heat pump hot water heater, in order to begin to quantify its performance. Using an actual home—with many unknown and uncontrolled for variables—does not allow us to conclusively say the energy reduction observed was due solely to converting from an older electric hot water heater to a hybrid hot water heater, though this conversion was the most likely cause since no other attempts (behavioral or structural) were made to reduce electric energy consumption. Keeping this in mind, I found that the home’s average annual electrical energy consumption decreased by 2,072 kWh after installation, which compares well with an industry estimate of 2,690 kWh. Furthermore, plotting the home’s energy consumption showed a previously undetected linear increase over time before the HPHW installation—reminding us of the value of trend analysis.

I conclude by reiterating that source reduction, in this case finding ways to lower overall hot water demand, should always be pursued first when trying to increase one’s environmental stewardship. Once that demand has been lowered as much as possible, it is my hope that the data set presented here will be helpful in assisting homeowners as they research various water heating options.

Footnotes

1. Units commonly encountered in the United States (kilowatt-hours, Fahrenheit, and pounds, for example) have been used throughout, instead of SI.

2. Note that this report is not an endorsement of a particular heat pump water heater and no such endorsement is implied. Though this report seeks to provide information to assist a homeowner in their research, responsibility for choosing a hot water heating option that best meets the home’s needs resides solely with the homeowner.

3. The HPWH does not provide any air heating for the home, which is heated primarily with a wood stove. In addition to the HPWH, the home’s electrical loading includes a washer, dryer, kitchen stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, lighting, and various plug loads.

4. The author will provide the data set upon request, and a copy of the data set accompanies this article.

5. It is not clear what is driving the magnitude of the variation around the mean (the standard deviation before installation is 4.9 whereas after installation it was 5.6). Due to the complexity of the system, there is no clear-cut reason why the post-installation variation is greater.

References

Advanced Energy. “GE Heat Pump Water Heater Report: January 7, 2011.”
https://www.peakprosperity.com/sites/default/files/content/document/files/geheatpumpwaterheaterfinaltestreportsealed.pdf (accessed January 23, 2019).

Berry, Wendell. “Less Energy, More Life.” Our Only World: Ten Essays. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015. 69-72.

Efficiency Maine. “Heat Pump Water Heater Rebate.” efficiencymaine.com (2019a).
https://www.efficiencymaine.com/at-home/heat-pump-water-heater-program/ (accessed January 23, 2019).

Efficiency Maine. “Heat Pump Water Heaters.” efficiencymaine.com (2019b).
https://www.efficiencymaine.com/at-home/water-heating-solutions/heat-pump-water-heaters/ (accessed January 23, 2019).

Energy Star. “Save Money and More with ENERGY STAR Certified Heat Pump Water Heaters.” energystar.gov (2018). https://www.energystar.gov/products/water_heaters/high_efficiency_electric_storage_water_heaters/benefits_savings (accessed December 30, 2018).

General Electric Appliances. “GeospringTM Heat Pump Water Heater.” geappliances.com (2018). https://www.geappliances.com/ge/heat-pump-hot-water-heater.htm (accessed December 30, 2018).

General Electric Appliances. “Technical Service Guide April 2012: GE Hybrid Water Heater (GEH50DEED).” https://www.manualslib.com/manual/767428/Ge-Geh50deed.html (accessed December 30, 2018).

Hong, Bongghi, and Robert Howarth. “Greenhouse gas emissions from domestic hot water: heat pumps compared to most commonly used systems.” Energy Science and Engineering 4, no. 2 (2016): 123-133. doi:10.1002/ese3.112.

Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change 2018. “Global Warming of 1.5 °C: An IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emissions pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.” ipcc.ch (2018). https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/ (accessed January 23, 2019).

ISO New England. “2016 ISO New England Electric Generator Air Emissions Report.” https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2018/01/2016_emissions_report.pdf (accessed December 30, 2018).

Lindstrom, Perry. “U.S. energy-related CO₂ emissions expected to rise slightly in 2018, remain flat in 2019.” eia.gov (2018). https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34872 (accessed January 23, 2019).

McGlade, Christopher, and Paul Ekins. “The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Fuels Unused When Limiting Global Warming to 2 °C.” Nature 517, no. 7533 (2015): 187-190. doi:10.1038/nature14016.

Moore, A.D., T. Urmee, M. Anda, and E. Walker. “Life cycle assessment of domestic heat pump hot water systems in Australia.” Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability 2, no. 38 (2017): 1-4. doi:10.1051/rees/2017043.

Shapiro, Carl and Srikanth Puttagunta. “Field Performance of Heat Pump Water Heaters in the Northeast.” U.S. Department of Energy (2016).
https://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/building_america/64904.pdf
(accessed December 30, 2018).

U.S. Census Bureau. “U.S. and World Population Clock.” census.gov (2018).
https://www.census.gov/popclock/ (accessed December 30, 2018).

U.S. Department of Energy. “Heat Pump Water Heaters.” energy.gov (2018).
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/water-heating/heat-pump-water-heaters (assessed December 30, 2018).

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “2015 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS).” eia.gov (2015a). https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/index.php (accessed January 23, 2019).

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Water heating in homes in the Northeast and Midwest regions, 2015.” eia.gov (2015b). https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2015/hc/php/hc8.7.php (accessed January 23, 2019).

Appendix

For the five years prior to HPWH installation, the average daily energy consumption (kWh/day) over each billing cycle (approximately monthly), when plotted as a function of time as in Figure 1, appears to linearly increase while being modulated by seasonal fluctuations.�� I thus postulate the following form for the daily energy consumption (E) as a function of time (t),

where the units of E are kWh/day and t is in months (t ≥ 1).�� The parameters {a,b,c,d} are to be determined; I immediately set the period of the sinusoidal modulation to T=12 since I anticipate those fluctuations to repeat yearly.�� The constants a = 26.51 and b = 0.16 are simply the y-intercept and slope of a linear regression through the data.�� The peak usage typically occurred within December, January, or February, so the constant d = 3 was next chosen so as to place the maximum of the sinusoidal piece in January of each year.�� The final constant, c = 3.44, was determined by minimizing the root mean square error between E(t) and the actual data.�� The final expression is

While this simple model captures the general patterns observed in the home’s electrical usage, care should be taken in relying too heavily on it for future predictions.�� First, it is not at all clear why the linearly increasing trend exists.�� This is a home, not a laboratory with variables that can be controlled singularly, and as such I can only speculate as to the reason.�� Since it is impossible to determine the trend’s cause, I cannot know how long into the future it might be anticipated to continue, if at all.�� Second, though the family’s only discernible behavior modification post-installation was to spread out the daily hot water demand, there may have been other changes undertaken that the family was not aware of, but that could have changed their electrical usage.�� Without fully understanding the underlying mechanisms driving the home’s electrical energy consumption, care must be used with the results from this model.�� Finally, developing a rigorous, statistically significant model is beyond the scope of this work.�� The model above is only intended to provide a first estimate of future electrical energy consumption.

The household energy use data used in this analysis is available here

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¹College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine.

SUMMARY
I created this bullet journal as part of my work as a Sustainable Food Systems Research Collaborative (SFSRC) fellow with the Sweet Spot Project during the summer of 2018. The Sweet Spot Project is a USDA-funded project on maple producers and beekeepers that involves the 91����’s Honors College and College of the Atlantic.

I started the project with the aim of researching queen rearing among honey bees and was paired with my community stakeholder, Peter Cowin. Our goal was to start a queen rearing operation from nothing, with Peter looking to potentially profit from queen rearing deliverables. My research focused on learning and understanding how to rear queen honey bees, what tools are involved, what skills are needed, and how knowledge is shared. As an SFSRC fellow, one of my responsibilities was to find a way to share what I learned throughout my research so that other beekeepers could use the knowledge that Peter and I co-produced.

My SFSRC teammates and I came up with the idea to prepare a bullet journal about my experience with Peter and the queens. This bullet journal contains my time logs from working with Peter. I included a queen rearing timeline, instruction on how to make a starter hive, the dos and don’ts of queen rearing, the dangers of disease, the benefits of queen rearing, and a grafting day checklist. I also included additional information I learned during my field work and my literature review. I include photos of my work as visual aids.

It was so much fun to record my queen rearing journey and to be creative in my delivery of information. My goal was to use colors and annotated journaling to make the lessons I learned while working with Peter easy and fun to absorb. My journal is by no means a step by step instruction manual for rearing queen honey bees, but an auxiliary guide for beekeepers to use to compare experiences. It was shared on the , which is search engine optimized and free to access.

I plan to use what I learned about beekeeping and sharing technical information during my time as a Sustainable Food Systems Research Collaborative Fellow in my next role as a Community Gardening and Agroforestry Facilitator with the Peace Corps in The Gambia.

Pages 16 – 20 of Rearing Queen Honey Bees

Page 16 transcript:��

A healthy warm cell. Worker bees have built the queen cell over an existing larva or egg to either supersede the current queen or prepare to swarm.

The same queen cell for scale. This is a healthy, good-looking queen cell.

Page 17 transcript:

Why Breed Queens?��

• Have colonies that suit your apiaries needs
  • Such as low swarming rates, high honey, wax, or propolis production, docile nature, low disease rates
• Product diversity (royal jelly, queens with desired traits)
  • Sell queens to beekeepers looking to requeen
• Advancing your beekeeping skills and knowledge
  • Get to know your hives and how to manipulate them while letting them function naturally

This queen has an excellent laying pattern

Page 18 transcript:

Final Log:

My work with Peter has been more rewarding than I anticipated. Although our last batch of queens did not yield results, I am confident Peter will continue rearing during following seasons. I learned a lot about myself as a beekeeper during this project, I’m patient and I like to take my work slowly; one of my favorite things about beekeeping is the community, and queen rearing has engaged me in unexpected ways. I never thought this work would extend so far past the Sustainable Food Systems Research Collaborative, but I leave for three weeks to serve in the Peace Corps. I look forward to sharing my queen rearing skills in The Gambia.

The plastic cells we use for grafting. We place about 12 per bar in the grooves.

Page 19 transcript:

A box of Sakatraz queens Peter ordered to requeen his southern paebages. He intends to rear from the stronger queens next season.

There were often more queens than we needed so Peter stored them in a queen bank to keep them healthy. Nurse bees tended to them without the queens killing each other.

Page 20 Transcript

Peter and I having our first lesson from David Ellis on queen rearing using the Doolittle Method.

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91����,��Orono, ME��04469

ABSTRACT
As authors, we are familiar with the “publish or perish” mentality often used to describe academic writing. Despite the centrality of writing to the academic world, writing can often present significant challenges especially given this increasing pressure to produce. Building upon the experience of attending a qualitative writing retreat, two 91���� graduate students were determined to start their own writing group to better engage with complex sustainability issues using qualitative methods. This writing group now meets regularly and has become a community of practice, holding members accountable and creating a space to help us engage with the research and writing process. In this essay we reflect on the process of qualitative writing and share our experiences as a newly formed writing group in overcoming challenges associated with writing, including how to write across disciplines, how to effectively engage with interdisciplinary research, and how to provide thoughtful feedback. In addition to creating a space for reflection and support, our writing group has led to the publication of journal articles and conference papers, the submission of grant and job applications, and the refinement of thesis chapters and research ideas. We encourage our fellow researchers to develop their own interdisciplinary communities of practice and write throughout the research process to be able to more deeply engage with sustainability challenges.

Introduction

In this essay, we describe our shared experience of building a writing community of graduate students. We weave individual stories into our shared narrative to describe how writing matters to us and how it has changed our experiences and relationship with research. The narratives here have helped us re-encounter writing as a crucial research practice, and we hope that by interacting with these stories, readers will enrich their own sense of the role writing plays in their lives.

Qualitative research examines social problems by asking “how” and “why” questions to gain a holistic understanding of multifaceted phenomenon (Creswell 2013). Qualitative research also emphasizes the contextual nature of phenomena and encourages us to engage with people on their own terms and in their own world (Guba and Lincoln 1985). As novice researchers, academic writing can be difficult, and qualitative writing presents its own challenges. A rich description of the context is the basis of qualitative writing. Many writers, however, struggle with restrictive word limits in academic journals and have to cut parts that really matter when writing qualitative research (Pratt 2008). During qualitative research, data generation and analysis go hand in hand. When new questions arise, methods sometimes change during the study. Explaining why different methods were used while writing a paper can be difficult. The lack of knowledge of qualitative writing by readers presents another challenge. We get comments like, “I know it’s a qualitative article when I get to the end and don’t know what the point was.” Researchers should therefore carefully define the validity and reliability of qualitative data. Unfortunately, as the quantitative world tends to be the dominant approach to research in many fields, the importance of qualitative research has not yet been fully realized by all.

As young researchers focused on the human dimensions of sustainability challenges, we see qualitative and mixed methods approaches as critical to addressing the complexity of the issues faced by the people and places we study. Many of us realized that a quantitative approach alone would be too reductive to fully understand most sustainability challenges; however, a qualitative approach can be challenging in interdisciplinary teams. Not everyone is familiar with qualitative methods or analysis, making it difficult to integrate with other types of data. Qualitative writing is an ongoing process rather than the end-phase of our research, and analysis is highly iterative and individual rather than standardized. Communicating analysis decisions and results clearly with fellow team members and broader audiences is critical. Therefore, creating a strong foundation in our writing is important not only for communicating our results but also in thinking about and conducting our research. Different disciplinary comfort levels with qualitative research and writing can be a hindrance to effectively engaging with “wicked,” or complex, sustainability issues, which cross disciplinary boundaries and are hard to define, let alone solve (FitzGibbon and Mensah 2012). These problems are multidimensional and require a range of studies and solutions using both quantitative and qualitative research. Rather than being two opposing approaches, we view quantitative and qualitative approaches as complementary to environmental research and hope to create connections between the two approaches through our research and writing.

Inspired by a qualitative writing retreat several members attended, the authors formed a writing group, a “community of practice” (Wenger 2011), to help address the challenges of qualitative writing while deeply engaging with complex sustainability issues. We suggest that groups like ours have enormous potential to support collaboration across departmental lines, with important implications for interdisciplinary, solutions-oriented sustainability research. We urge graduate students to consider writing together to build bridges, strengthen skills, and grow as scholars. In this essay, each of us has reflected on the potential of this collaboration to shape our research and writing. The following sections share our experiences, beginning with how our group formed and our purpose, an outline of our structure, and descriptions of how we address writing across disciplines and for interdisciplinary audiences while providing thoughtful feedback. We conclude by discussing the importance of a qualitative writing group and how writing throughout our research shapes our research and writing processes.

Journey to a Writing Retreat

“I was in Nepal when I first heard about the qualitative writing retreat from my advisor. She emailed me saying she was considering sending myself and another member of her lab, Lydia, to this writing retreat. She concluded with, “Let me know what you think.” It had only been a day since I returned from the Upper Mustang region to my home town of Pokhara. I had spent nearly two months doing field work for my thesis project in the Upper Mustang region of Nepal where I lived in nearly complete isolation without internet connection. The last time I contacted my advisor was when I was in Jomsom, two months prior. After finding out about the writing retreat, part of me felt like I needed a break. Not another trip! However, I embraced it as an opportunity to push myself to write about the data I had just finished collecting.

I arrived back in the United States with only a week to prepare for the writing retreat. During the first week of August, Lydia and I set off for Asheville, North Carolina. The organizers picked us up, and North Carolina’s beauty unfolded before us as we journeyed to our destination nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For a moment, when I saw the crest of mountains rising over us and cattle grazing in nearby pastures, I felt like I was back in Nepal. I was so excited that I couldn’t help it, and I began to take photos and videos! To reach the writing retreat we crossed a trickling stream and climbed a little mountain. At the top, we were greeted by a big wooden house framed by prayer flags waving in the cool breeze. I was not expecting to see such flags here in the United States, as they are traditionally symbols of praying and blessing in my country, Nepal. It was such an absolute delight being there that I could not describe it in words. The setting made me feel like I was home again because of the welcoming and familiar atmosphere.”��–��Sandesh

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“Meeting our instructors and other participants from different disciplines was an amazing start to our writing retreat. We were thirteen academics at different stages in our careers from different institutions and disciplines and representing at least three different countries, but we were united by our focus on qualitative research and the struggles inherent to this research process. One of the best things about the writing retreat was being in a space where the only expectation was to write. I learned a lot about myself as a writer–how much I can write in a condensed amount of time, my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, that I actually enjoy writing, and I now understand the value of writing continuously throughout the research process. We often think of writing as something you do at the end of your research to share results, but by continuously writing, not only are you making progress on your final product, but you are also (1) clarifying your research ideas and results, (2) being critical of yourself and the research process, (3) reflecting and learning from the process, and (4) growing as a writer and researcher. This powerful writing retreat experience inspired the creation of our fledgling qualitative writing group at the 91����.” – Lydia

Beginnings: Creating a Community of Practice at the 91����

Our interdisciplinary writing group – comprised of six graduate students working on human dimensions of environmental issues – began in 2018. All writing group members initially met while taking a qualitative data analysis class on campus. After attending the writing retreat in North Carolina, Sandesh and Lydia reached out to former qualitative data analysis classmates involved in sustainability research. The resulting group formed from a shared recognition of the challenges of qualitative research and writing and a desire to work through these challenges collectively rather than alone.

We meet twice per month, even when things get complicated. This is because our writing group is a place to focus on the reasons we are pursuing graduate school, to reflect carefully on our ideas, and to engage deeply with other environmental scholars. We represent a range of disciplines, from sustainable tourism and forestry to anthropology and climate change policy, and we study an even broader assortment of subjects that range in scope from binational conservation along the US-Mexico border to climate change risks in Nepal and climate financing at the United Nations. Our collaboration is a “community of practice” (Wenger 2011), a place where we learn to write and research better by practicing together. It is also an interdisciplinary collaboration – a place where we regularly cross boundaries and expand our thinking to topics, perspectives, and approaches that are outside of our own backgrounds.

Goals of the Writing Group

The purpose of our group is to (1) hold ourselves accountable and commit to making progress on our writing by (2) creating a constructive environment to support each other through the challenges of writing. We started by agreeing upon some ground rules. Our first rule is that the minimum submission is one sentence. Most of the time, if we start by writing a single sentence we end up writing more, but this alleviates the pressure that we often place upon ourselves when writing to produce, which can be overwhelming, and as a result, lead to limited progress. Six is a large writing group size. To make space for a careful review of everyone’s writing we decided to meet twice a month and review three pieces of writing so that each person submits one piece for review per month. Another rule is, “you can leave the group at any time and come back – no questions asked.” This is because being a graduate student is challenging. Deadlines emerge – seemingly from nowhere – or we are suddenly accepted to conferences for which our papers, posters, and presentations are, shall we say, requiring further development.

While we are all currently situated in academia, any form of qualitative writing can be reviewed in our group–manuscripts, conference abstracts, grant applications, cover letters, or opinion editorials. We might not be familiar with specific methods or topics presented in these writing pieces, but our shared focus on sustainability and knowledge of qualitative writing means that everyone can evaluate the quality of the writing and the clarity of the ideas. In addition to improved writing, this group has developed other valuable skills, such as reading, writing, and editing outside of our disciplines; collaborating and learning as part of an interdisciplinary team; and overcoming the challenges of writing to strengthen our shared goal of tackling sustainability challenges.

Why we started, and what makes us stay

“It’s 8:30 pm on a Tuesday. Like most weekday evenings, I’m sitting in an over-sized��chair in my living room – a cup of tea on the table, my dog curled up at my feet, and a laptop in front of me. And like every other graduate student in the middle of a semester, I have homework to complete, presentations to prepare, manuscripts to edit, and what feels like a million other deadlines. I also feel like I may be fighting a cold, and perhaps going to bed early would be beneficial! But instead of focusing on any of those things, right now I am choosing to devote my remaining intellectual energy to our writing group. It’s times like this when I realize how important our group is to me.” – Brooke

The camaraderie this group offers is important to our members. Building on our previous relationships in classes and other academic networks, we were eager to build a supportive and fun dynamic. Many of us were nervous to share our work with others, particularly within the walls of academia, and having a safe space to share ideas is incredibly freeing. However, this is not the same as having friends read our work. Friends may simply say “this is great” or “this is interesting,” and add little else, either because they don’t understand qualitative writing or they don’t want to hurt our feelings. Members of this group have the ability to critique qualitative writing in a thoughtful, constructive, and supportive manner, thus creating a space to help improve our writing without bruising any egos. As one group member said, “I know I’ll receive supportive, respectful, critical feedback from everyone even if I am proposing a wacky idea.” Many of us work from home, are engaged in field work, and lack collaborative “labs” to regularly engage with others, which can be isolating. Having regular meetings helps us get out of our own heads and into a collaborative space, allowing the transfer of ideas across disciplines and creating a space for interdisciplinary dialogue.

This writing group forces us to reflect, which can really shape research ideas. As young scholars, we often don’t create this time for ourselves. Being immersed in this writing group space makes time for this reflection, often while in the company of others who understand where we are in the research process and are (or have been) in a similar spot themselves. Even when we get swept up in coursework, conferences, and teaching, the writing group reminds us of the importance of writing, reading, and reflecting.

The added structure this group provides has also been important. With flexible schedules and self-administered deadlines, making progress on writing tasks can be difficult. Several group members struggle with the “write/delete/write/delete” cycle that prevents us from making progress in the pursuit of perfect writing. This group helps prioritize writing because we know that group members are expecting to read our contributions. This keeps us accountable, and continuing to work on smaller writing tasks throughout the semester will benefit us all in the long run. As one group member said, “Sometimes getting things onto paper is the hardest part of writing for me, and this group gives me the extra motivation to create.”

We don’t just share our writing with this group, we also share our knowledge of how we think about writing, researching, and interpreting results – processes that help us develop a strong foundation as academics and practitioners. The kinds of writing we share vary widely, from grant drafts regarding rural Maine’s reuse economy to conference abstracts about livelihoods in the mountains of Nepal. These pieces of writing expose us to new ideas and ways of thinking about sustainability research. This group also provides a space to talk about our roles as graduate students, researchers, and teachers at the 91����. We believe this will ultimately lead to new ideas about how to make our writing more accessible, transdisciplinary, and creative–outcomes that will help ensure that our research is read, understood, and used by diverse audiences.

Crossing Boundaries and Building Bridges: Writing across disciplines

“I study how used consumer goods are distributed in rural Maine, and what impact this distribution has on communities, economies, and the environment. Throughout my Ph.D. program I’ve worked hard at narrowing and honing my ideas so that I can break them into bite-sized questions that my dissertation research can answer, but it’s also critical to me that my work connect to policy and practice. To do so, I have to write for community members, policy makers, and scholars outside of my discipline and beyond my own relatively narrow focus – something I am learning by practicing and receiving feedback from an interdisciplinary team of peers in this writing group.”��– Brie

Communicating for those outside of our discipline isn’t always easy. The jargon, assumed knowledge, and received wisdom within our disciplines can make communication with other audiences challenging. Breaking down these disciplinary “boundaries” (Cash et al. 2002) is both challenging and important for us to communicate with stakeholders, policymakers, and each other. It’s perhaps no coincidence that we meet at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions–a place on campus that encourages cross-disciplinary collaborations to solve sustainability challenges. In this group we have to ask seemingly silly questions to unpack unfamiliar ideas. How do loons come into contact with lead fishing tackle? What is the governance structure in Nepal? Is the United States still a part of the Paris Agreement on climate change? Yet far from derailing our conversations, these discussions about what we mean and how we communicate ideas add richness and clarity to our writing. Stepping back to the principles underlying our research helps us think carefully about how it is read, understood, and used. Our interdisciplinary writing group is one step toward building a scholarship that is capable of addressing complex sustainability challenges because it allows us to engage with each other’s ideas, despite the boundaries (Hart and Bell 2013).

Our group understands that writing is not just a final stage or an end-product, but rather a thread that is woven through the entire research process (Ely et al. 1997). As such, by changing the audience we write for we find that our perspective on our research changes too. In communicating our work to other early-career scholars, we think about the broader impacts of our research, highlighting the stories and narratives that make our research important and accessible to others. Each of us is committed to the idea that our research and writing should help solve real-world sustainability challenges. To do this work, we need to write things that others understand, no matter their academic background. In this group saying, “what do you mean here?” is an opportunity to explore the meaning and importance behind our research for a broader audience. It also helps me connect loons and rainfall in Nepal, winter snow in Maine and bats in the US-Mexico borderlands, and international climate finance with used consumer goods in Maine. When we write for an audience outside of our own specialties, we make a case for the importance of seeking connections between diverse bodies of sustainability research.

Reading Carefully: Engaging with interdisciplinary writing

“While we often hear about the importance of promoting a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration, how do we put this into action? A writing group composed of students from different disciplines provides an opportunity for such collaboration. The group dynamic holds us accountable to each other. We have created an intentional space, a safe space where we deeply engage with each other’s research. As graduate students, we are keenly aware of the pressure to produce scholarly articles for publication. The familiar adage, “publish or perish,” floats through the halls of every department in every university, a mantra that follows us throughout our academic careers. In his blog “Learning for sustainability in times of accelerating change,” Arjan Wals addresses a growing concern with academic writing, which he describes as “everybody is writing, nobody is reading, which means that everybody is writing for nobody” (Wals 2018). Who is actually reading our articles? One great thing about our writing group is that we can be sure that at least a handful of others will actually engage with our work. What a relief after so much effort!” – Sara

Our group approaches reading as a process of active reflection. Rather than skimming to digest key points, we read each other’s work closely and carefully to provide meaningful feedback. We are learning how to interpret different approaches to qualitative research, as well as diverse approaches to environmental issues. This, in turn, influences how we interpret our own research making it more robust and transferable outside of our academic silos. The members of our group are in four different departments, but we are united in all working to unpack and address various environmental issues. We have found that sustainability research cannot be contained by a single disciplinary silo and requires interdisciplinary teams if there is to be actionable progress.

Because we meet on a regular basis, we have grown familiar with one another’s research topics, which makes it unnecessary to summarize, explain, and condense our research. A commitment to meeting regularly allows us to see how our research continues to develop and transform. We save time by knowing each other’s work, making it easier to contribute meaningfully throughout the research process. This proves helpful in providing useful feedback on how to best frame our writing for different formats (e.g. a journal article compared to a policy brief).

Repetitive engagement with colleagues from various disciplines is an opportunity to learn about research that we may not otherwise encounter. The group compels us to step outside of our areas of expertise. We continue to learn from each other. We continue to build camaraderie and grow closer both professionally and personally. Through the process of active reading, the group inspires us to try new writing techniques and encourages us to be more confident and creative. In an atmosphere where we scramble to produce more without the guarantee that anyone will read what we write, this group encourages us to take a moment for each other. It is a reciprocal relationship that builds professional skills (e.g. someday serving as a journal editor) and helps all of us to become better writers, researchers, and collaborators (McGreavy et al. 2015).

On Editing and Providing Feedback

“Every two weeks I open a peer’s document containing pages and pages of their hard work. These documents represent significant investments of time and mental energy that seek to translate untold hours of fieldwork and analysis into a coherent piece of writing. My role is to think through feedback that can support them in refining this piece of writing. It is a challenge and a time intensive endeavor. Ahead of our meetings, if peers submit longer pieces, it is safe to say that I need to put aside a couple of hours to really engage with their work. So, why dedicate this time to contributing to other people’s work through editing? What do we have to contribute as scholars from different fields?”��– Anna

The first reason we engage in this time-intensive process might be a selfish one—editing other people’s work helps to make us stronger writers. It helps build confidence as writers as we think about how we can draw on our own knowledge and skills to clarify ideas and strengthen arguments. This process also makes us familiar with each peer’s model of writing, which can serve as much needed inspiration in times of writer’s block. Editing other people’s work also encourages us to reflect on our own writing, especially when we start to see that questions we ask of others might be just as useful to ask of ourselves. When exchanging edits, there are many recurring questions we ask each other (i.e., Can you give a specific example?, How does this connect to broader work in the sustainability field?) and this process helps us realize how to ask them of ourselves during the writing process.

We dedicate time to editing because we see our interdisciplinary group as an asset rather than a liability. As one writing group member described, “the lack of familiarity with the details of a specific field’s concepts and theories helps us find weaknesses in an argument and easily points to ideas that are unclear. It also helps us attend to the ‘big picture’ implications of a piece, such as the significance of the research—the most important part—and how it might offer solutions to real-world problems.”

This group has re-envisioned some of the stereotypes of editing. While the over- and under-use of commas has been a point of discussion, taking a red pen to grammatical errors is not our goal. Rather, we focus our comments on wherever the writer is at in their writing process as well as the type of writing. For example, looking at a final draft of an external grant requires a different editing approach than a piece which is working through the initial ideas of a future paper. The writing group allows us to know each other’s work closely enough to be able to contribute original ideas to support the writer in bringing the piece to the next level, no matter the audience, and to highlight for the writer the elements of the piece that are already strong. And this is huge–we always take the time to point out the parts of the writing that are already fabulous! Through careful editing, we are able to engage in a meaningful and helpful way to further develop a piece of writing while also providing opportunities for ourselves to grow as professionals.

Conclusion: Honing our skills by writing this article together

Writing this article has been a product of all the writing group elements described above. With two members trying to graduate this semester, three members deeply embedded in different stages of field work, and one member preparing for her comprehensive exams, it did not feel like an opportune time to collaboratively write a manuscript. Then again, it almost never feels like the right time to write. When the idea to submit to Spire came up, despite busy schedules and writing anxieties, every member of the group volunteered to participate and contribute to this piece. Then it was time to put this group to the test and see if we could make the writing process enjoyable and productive using all the knowledge we have gained even in our short time existing as a group. To write this article, we first developed a list of potential topics, had members volunteer to take leadership of a section or two, and then asked all members to contribute their ideas regarding each section. By the end of this process, all sections had ideas from each member and the leader of that section would then, similar to the process of coding qualitative data, further develop key ideas, experiences, and reflections. In this way sections were truly collaborative and reflective of our group experience rather than the experience of the individual.

Inspired by two of our members’ attendance at a writing retreat, we decided to facilitate our own mini-writing retreat for several hours one winter morning. During this retreat, the goal was to produce drafts of sections that could then be polished later during the editing process. Our expectation was that no section would be perfect, but this mini-writing retreat provided a set time, place, and space to write. We mostly worked independently in silence, occasionally checking in with each other to gauge progress, make suggestions, and discuss issues that arose pertinent to the whole group. It may sound silly to sit in the same room writing individually among a group of people, but overwhelmingly the group feedback was that they were surprised by how much they wrote in such a short period of time and that they would like to hold a writing retreat again! By undertaking this endeavor together in a shared space, we motivated each other to focus solely on writing for a short period of time without distraction to accomplish a shared goal. At the end of this mini writing retreat, we allotted a period of time for all members to edit the completed first draft, and then two members took the lead on polishing the document further before presenting the final product for group approval.

This reflective exercise is both a collaborative effort to co-produce writing with a peer group, as well as a call to action to other graduate students and faculty. Write with others and do so often. Cross disciplinary lines and ask silly questions. Read carefully and comment kindly. Most of all, write and share that writing with others. Create a community of practice. These experiences have helped us develop as scholars and have created a welcoming, safe space to think about each other’s work. Our group members have found that writing throughout the research process, rather than waiting until the end, helps clarify our ideas and how we view our research, refines our data generation methods, and creates a space to share experiences from the field and from our writing process. Importantly, our group has not only been supportive and welcoming, it has helped us publish journal articles, write conference papers, submit grant applications, draft concepts for book chapters, revise research questions, submit job applications, and much more. This group also has the potential to develop new forms of collaboration that we see as critical to the future of environmental and sustainability-oriented research, while strengthening current conservation work through deep engagement across backgrounds, experience levels, and disciplines.

References

Cash, David, William Clark, Frank Alcock, Nancy Dickson, Noelle Eckley, and Jill Jäger. 2002. “Salience, Credibility, Legitimacy and Boundaries: Linking Research, Assessment and Decision Making.” Faculty Research Working Papers Series. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Ely, M, R Vinz, M Downing, and M Anzul. 1997. “What Is There about Writing?” In On Writing Qualitative Research: Living by Words, 7–58. Philadelphia, PA: Routledge Falmer, Taylor & Francis.

FitzGibbon, J., and K. O. Mensah. 2012. “Climate Change as a Wicked Problem: An Evaluation of the Institutional Context for Rural Water Management in Ghana.” SAGE Open 2 (2). doi:10.1177/2158244012448487.

Hart, David D., and Kathleen P. Bell. 2013. “Sustainability Science: A Call to Collaborative Action.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 42 (1): 75–89. doi:10.1017/S1068280500007620.

Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Egon G. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills, Calif: Sage Publications.

McGreavy, Bridie, Laura Lindenfeld, Karen Hutchins Bieluch, Linda Silka, Jessica Leahy, and Bill Zoellick. 2015. “Communication and Sustainability Science Teams as Complex Systems.” Ecology and Society 20 (1). doi:10.5751/ES-06644-200102.

Pratt, Michael G. 2007. “Fitting Oval Pegs Into Round Holes.” Organizational Research Methods 11 (3): 481–509. doi:10.1177/1094428107303349

Wals, Arjen. 2018. “Update – Publish AND Perish: How the Commodification of Scientific Publishing Is Undermining Both Science and the Public Good.” Transformative Learning. December 4. .

Wenger, Etienne. 2011. “Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction,” October. .

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Cyanotype is one of the oldest photographic processes, invented by John Herschel in 1842. Its name references the Greek “cyan,” meaning “dark-blue impression”. The process involves coating paper with a light-sensitive combination of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. Once the paper is dry, either a photographic negative (which produces a photograph) or light-blocking objects (which produces a photogram) are laid on top. This is exposed to sunlight, and then washed in water to develop the image. The areas that were exposed to the sunlight will be a deep blue color. The areas where the sunlight was blocked by the object or dark spaces of the negative will remain the white of the paper.

Cyanotype is a fitting choice for producing images related to the environment. The chemicals used in cyanotype have a lower toxicity compared to other photographic methods. This method also uses the environmental elements of sunshine and water thus creating a match of medium and content. In this series, I used the photogram method to create prints which highlight the similarities and differences between seaweed and plastic trash. In a photogram, the image is made using the objects themselves and thus is a direct, one-to-one scale representation of those objects. Photograms of seaweed are an integral part of the history of cyanotype. This process was first used by Anna Atkins in 1843 to create the very first book that had photographic illustrations, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. I followed her same process for washing, pressing, drying and printing the seaweed to make these images.

Sources:

“Cyanotypes of British Algae by Anna Atkins (1843).” Edited by Adam Green, The Public Domain Review, The Open Knowledge Foundation, publicdomainreview.org/collections/cyanotypes-of-british-algae-by-anna-atkins-1843/.

James, Christopher. “The Cyanotype Process.” Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. Cengage Learning, 2016, pp. 102–123.

Kaplan, Art, and Dusan C. Stulik . “Cyanotype.” The Atlas of Analytical Signatures of Photographic Processes, 2013, hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/atlas_analytical.

Schaefer, Robert A. “Cyanotype Printing: A 19th Century Process for Today’s Photographer.” YouTube. 18 Aug. 2017, Center for Alternative Photography, Center for Alternative Photography,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvvVUfdqDaM.

Smith, Lindsay. The Politics of Focus: Women, Children, and Nineteenth-Century Photography. Manchester University Press, 1998.

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The sustainable community in Maine pertains to creating connections and unifying people to the natural world. It’s fairly simple to get lost in the busy lives of our new up and go culture, and staying aware of the environmental elements that are substantially given to us can be quite difficult. Farmers in Maine must be profoundly thorough to make the environment resourceful. Yet concurrently they must work to keep it conserved and protected.

I traveled throughout the local area of Penobscot County to many diverse farms and residential homes. I attempted to capture the residents’ livelihoods to share and spread the fulfillment of backyard agriculture. The farmers and residents showcased their capabilities, driven by their strong passion and love for agriculture. These hardworking folks coexist and understand the hardships of what this career or hobby can bring. They share their successes and appreciate the work of other farmers through events such as Farmer to Farmer Conferences and the Bangor Harvest Festival. Through their lifelong hobbies and careers, these farmers strengthen Maine communities.

Arguably, the best part about documenting agriculture in Maine is learning how the farms help their communities in various ways. I witnessed children, young adults, older adults, and even elders working with the livestock and crops on their land. Some had humble houses on modest plots of land, while others had an abundance of space. No matter the size or the quantity of animals and crops, these hardworking farmers all had the aspiration to help their communities and support sustainable and healthy lifestyles.

A thank you to Souder Station Farm, Foxgreen Farm, Coldstream Icelandic Sheep Farm, the Snyders, Anna JJ, The Village Farm and Garden, Taylor, and Witter Farm. Your actions have helped more people than you know. Your communities thank you.

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If you live in Maine, you probably know that the first defense to feeling cold in your home is to put on another layer, maybe some socks or a sweater, rather than to turn up the heat. This is a reality of growing up and living in this beautiful state that just so happens to be “wicked” cold for 6 months of the year. When using a standard furnace or boiler, heating your home with oil can cost over $3,000 annually in Maine, which is among the highest in the nation (Governor’s Energy Office, 2012). Maine also has one of the oldest housing stocks in the country, so drafts and poor insulation contribute to these high heating costs, and colder than preferred indoor temperatures. AmeriCorps members and students, partnering with various organizations throughout the state, have been helping communities tackle these high heating costs by implementing window inserts within their homes. AmeriCorps is a nationwide service organization whose main goal is poverty alleviation. At the 91���� site, the members are focused on achieving this goal through energy efficiency. WindowDressers, a nonprofit organization located in Rockland, Maine, provides insulated window inserts to help families feel comfortable in their homes as well as save money on their heating bills. The inserts are purposeful and blend into the home, fitting snugly onto the inside of existing windows, helping block drafts without obstructing the view!

Dr. Sharon Klein, an associate professor at the 91����’s School of Economics and a board member at WindowDressers, teaches that these inserts, and the builds necessary to create them, represent four areas of sustainability: economic, environmental, social, and technical. Economically, they are cheap to build and buy, and they save the customer money on their heating bills every single year. In general, these inserts pay for themselves in 1-2 heating seasons (WindowDressers, 2018). Environmentally, they save on emissions of excess greenhouse gases due to drafty windows that let warm air out, and cold air in, which causes your furnace to run more often. Socially, they help make communities stronger, build partnerships, and help families feel more comfortable in their homes. Lastly, they are technically efficient, as over the years Window Dressers and volunteers alike have created specialized jigs or tools, and honed in on the most efficient and accurate way to build the inserts and get the job done right.

“…these inserts, and the builds necessary to create them, represent four areas of sustainability: economic, environmental, social, and technical.”

This year, WindowDressers partnered up with AmeriCorps teams from many college campuses across Maine including Saint Joseph’s College, Husson University, University of Southern Maine, Unity College, and the 91����. During the January build the 91���� site helped supply window inserts to 24 low-income families in the greater Bangor area, offering over 200 window inserts for free and over 120 inserts to 17 full price customers. How is this possible? Window Dressers relies on volunteers like AmeriCorps members, college students, and insert recipients to help keep their costs low. In 2017, over 1,000 volunteers worked together to build 6,214 inserts at 27 Community Workshops across Maine. This community aspect is what makes this project so unique. One volunteer/client named Bob, described the build as being “so easy that anybody could do it.” He later spoke about how volunteering at the build made him feel good, and that he wants to help at future builds even though he wouldn’t be receiving inserts himself. Not only do these builds accomplish their goal of making the physical inserts, they also help to build community and relationships. The process begins months in advance with trained volunteers arriving at clients’ homes to do a custom measure of their windows. Since every window is different, even if they look the same, each window must be assessed by the volunteers for its ‘square-ness’, measured twice with a laser, given a window-specific label, and inputted into a specialized computer program to ensure accuracy. WindowDressers and the volunteers want this process to be seamless, and accurate. Once finished, and if cared for properly, these custom inserts can last between 5 and 10 years.

“In 2017, over 1,000 volunteers worked together to build 6,214 inserts at 27 Community Workshops across Maine.”

Since 2010, WindowDressers inserts have been estimated to save approximately 880,000 gallons of heating fuel, which is equal to about $2.2 million (WindowDressers, 2018). Dr. Sharon Klein has made these community workshops a key focus for the sustainable energy courses that she teaches at the University. According to Dr. Klein and her students’ work, it is estimated that these window inserts save $52 per insert per year for single-paned windows, and $18 per insert per year for double-paned windows if the house is heated primarily by fuel oil (based on a typical insert size of 36×60 in.). The inserts work by improving your windows in the three ways that heat is transferred: conduction, convection, and air filtration. To reduce conduction, which is the direct transfer of heat from one surface to the next, the inserts create two sealed air spaces- one between the window and the insert, and the other between the two plastic layers of the insert. The purpose of this additional air space is to create a barrier between the interior of the home and the harsh winter temperatures exterior to the home. Convection is the movement of air, causing hotter air to rise and cooler air to fall due to the different densities. When your home heats up, the warm inside air hits the cold winter windows. When this happens, the air inside the home cools down and falls to the floor, pushing the warmer air up toward the ceiling. The result of this convection is an air current that feels like a draft. The inserts help raise the temperature of the surface that the air touches, in this case the inserts themselves, so that when the inside air encounters it, this draft is reduced.

Window inserts also contribute by helping seal tiny cracks between the windows and their frames that lead to cold air leaks. The inserts are custom measured to fit perfectly snug, with a foam strip around the edges to fill cracks. The precision of the window inserts allows them to be efficient while adapting to already existing windows, a much less expensive option compared to replacing windows. Before getting inserts, one volunteer said that they couldn’t go more than two months without having to refill their oil tank. After spending some time with his new home improvements he said, “The window inserts, I have to tell ya, they work, even for sliding doors! They have been a godsend. I ordered my last fuel fill in December, and I have not refilled my fuel yet.”

Another aspect that makes these inserts so great is their environmental impact. Dr. Klein has calculated that the window inserts save approximately 420 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per insert per year for single-paned windows, and 140 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per insert per year for double-paned windows when heating a home with fuel oil. Beyond this, by reducing the drafts and blocking leaks, the heat generated for the home is not wasted. This means that furnaces and boilers have to run less often, and at lower intensity levels. Promoting the efficiency of systems and energy use is one very important way to combat a changing, warming climate.

“Dr. Klein has calculated that the window inserts save approximately 420 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per insert per year for single-paned windows, and 140 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per insert per year for double-paned windows when heating a home with fuel oil.”

The purpose of the window insert builds is first and foremost community development, which can come in many forms. By providing community members with real, tangible energy and thus money saving opportunities, the 91���� Americorps team has made a true, lasting impact on the people and environment of the Bangor area. This multifaceted initiative is now being implemented every year, and getting involved is easy, fun, and rewarding. The builds consist of multiple stations where the inserts are carefully constructed by the volunteers. Simple tools and jigs are used to stretch plastic, and apply tape and foam. The motions are easy to pick up on, and all are encouraged to volunteer, regardless of age or ability. A job can be found for everyone.

Seeing this project work firsthand to help alleviate the burden and stress of winter heating bills in Maine is what the AmeriCorps team was aiming to accomplish. After speaking with some volunteers and clients after the build was finished, the consensus was unanimous; they’d recommend this to anyone! One Bangor resident named Samantha, a returning client and volunteer, said she likes telling others about these community workshops. She raves about the brilliance of this system including how easy they are, as well as the joy that networking with volunteers brought her. Another volunteer named Bob said, “Matter of fact, I told this one woman and her husband. They just bought this old house in Bangor, so lot of drafts they’re dealing with and they’re putting in that foam insulation which is expensive but they have to do it, so I’ve got to drop off a brochure for her. I hope you get a lot more people to do this, when you see it done, it works fantastic.” The AmeriCorps team will be looking to bring on new part-time and full-time members this upcoming fall and are excited to help touch the lives of even more people in the community.

Sources:

Governor’s Energy Office, Home Heating Calculator. (2012). Retrieved from

WindowDressers, History. (2018). Retrieved from

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