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Team USA, AKA UW Nordic Team, in Štrbské Pleso, Slovakia at the 2015 UniversiadeFinal Project Report
Written by Rachel Watson
In the spring of 2014, the University of Wyoming Men’s and Women’s Nordic ski teams were invited to be the sole representatives of the United States of America at the World University Games to be held January 24th through February 1st, 2015 in Štrbké Pleso, Slovakia. This was the third time that this honor had been bestowed upon our team and, as with our first trips to Erzurum, Turkey and Trentino, Italy, this opportunity was hard won. A partially-funded club sport, the team adds constant fundraising to year-round training. However, through this synergy, over the past decade and a half, the team has integrated social and environmental justice into a unique quilt of volunteerism. Perhaps the newly formulated team mission statement most clearly communicates this integration, “UW Nordic team aims to create a community upon which a foundation of funding and volunteer coaching allows each athlete to reach his or her full potential in both skiing and leadership while making a positive environmental, social and community impact.” With our invitation to compete in Štrbké Pleso, Slovakia came a new vision fitting to our holistic objectives: we decided to introduce action-based, experiential integrated academic curriculum into an international competition experience. Additionally, with the dual objective of providing monetary support and creating an authentic grant writing and research experience, student athletes collaboratively wrote a Student Research and Creative Activities Grant entitled "The Footprint of an International Competition Venue: Carbon Emission, Community Perspective, Economics and Ski Wax Accumulation". This proposal was submitted to the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. This competitive, merit-based grant was committee assessed and successfully funded. In order to provide the framework to properly support students in their pursuit of original research and with the concomitant goal of providing immersive learning about environmental and health (biological – fitness affecting) impacts of climate change, we - the coaches of Team USA also professors and co-instructors of the class – designed and developed an innovative course entitled Environmental Assessment of an International Athletic Event. Course design was guided by pedagogical knowledge of the value of active (Freeman et al., 2014), inclusive ((Cancian, 1992; Chiapetta & Kobella, 2010; Harding, 1998; Roy, 2004 and Watson, 2009), authentic learning environments (Wolf, 1993; Savery and Duffy, 1995; Nelson, 1999) in which students work to address a problem (Merill, 2002; Pepper, 2009). Additionally, course design was guided by the work of Tarrant et al. (2014) who show that combining abroad travel with academic study allows for increased achievement of global citizenship learning outcomes. These outcomes encompass behaviors associated with environmentalism, social justice and civic responsibility (Winn, 2006). Inspired to knit together an experience that would richly integrate the aforementioned pedagogy with international competition, twelve specific learning outcomes were formulated and assignments and rubrics to assess these outcomes were developed. Upon successfully completing the course, in addition to writing an externally reviewed and funded grant proposal, we wanted our student athletes to be able to collect on-site data and observations to address the objectives of the funded proposal. Further, successful learners were expected to write an active, reflective journal that integrated competition experience, contextual community engagement and natural environment with self-introspection / intercultural development. We asked learners to write four or more blog posts that clearly communicated the competition experience as it interfaced with course reading material and the Slovakian community and natural environment. At the same time that one of our specific learning outcomes was to gain the necessary poise to handle the stress of an internationally competitive environment, another outcome was to summarize the tangible evidence supporting climate change and the impacts of climate change on human health, fitness (athletic performance) and the environment – particularly as it pertains to the sustainability of international nordic skiing events such as World University Games. Upon returning from the competition, the student athletes engaged in sample preparation, data analysis and interpretation. Discussions with mini lectures facilitated the process. Students were asked to assess pertinent literature (e.g. Vegetation state and extreme drought as factors determining differentiation and succession of Carabidae communities in forests damaged by a windstorm in the High Tatra Mts, by Šustek and Vido (2013)) when considering how to communicate their results and methods, synthesize a discussion and use proper funneling to guide the reader / listener in the Introduction sections of oral and written presentations. The student athletes prepared a full oral presentation that was presented in short-form at the Shepard Symposium for Social Justice and in full-form at an independent session that was fully recorded and accessible on Youtube. The individual original research projects conceptualized, proposed, performed and communicated by the student athletes were diverse in nature. However, in many cases, the students paired with one or two other teammates with whom they either shared academic interest or whose interests complemented their own. Elise Sulser, on the same days that she skied to the top American finishes at World University Games, used photo documentation to record activities at the event that contributed to CO2 emissions. Sam Wiswell and Britta Schroeter calculated / quantified the carbon footprint of our teams’ abroad experience in Štrbké Pleso. Their findings estimate total team CO2 emissions of 27.95 metric tons with air travel accounting for 87% of the emissions. Using EPA estimates, Britta and Sam put this impact into perspective and relate that it is equivalent to burning over thirty thousand pounds of coal and would take 22.9 acres of US forests an entire year to sequester our team’s emissions! Our economics students, Sindre Solvang and Will Timmons calculated the offsets needed to defray the team’s emissions and further analyzed the possible effects of buying these offsets on our team’s demand for travel. Additionally, Will and Sindre surveyed local Slovakians to determine their awareness of climate change and carbon offsets. Their data convince us that purchasing carbon offsets for our team’s travel would be affordable and desirable and in doing so, show us how we might sustain international sporting events in an economically feasible way. Taylor Vignaroli, Kyle Bochanski and Yara Thomas gathered local community perspectives using a critical ethnographic approach. Their findings indicate a positive local community response to the World University Games both with respect to personal impact and local economy. This, they convince us, bodes well for sustainability of future events. Finally, Ben Noren and Sierra Jech quantified ski wax accumulation in snow at the Nordic venue throughout the seven days of racing. Using toluene liquid-liquid wax extraction and rotavap concentration, wax was resuspended in toluene and analyzed using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). With the invaluable assistance of Joe Rovani at Western Research Institute (WRI), hydrocarbon relative abundance and fluorocarbon absolute abundance at three points along the 1.4 kilometer race course were determined. Ben and Sierra’s findings show us that hydrocarbons accumulate in the start area and on the flat section of the racecourse. Fluorocarbons are more uniformly stripped throughout the course thus lending credence to the advertised durability of these waxes. These data challenge us to consider the environmental wax contamination of an international event, the possibility of bioaccumualation of these waxes in air or water and also to revisit racecourse design as it relates to areas of maximum wax accumulation. Many race venues place start areas in sensitive environmental areas such as water bodies and wetlands. Our data indicate that this placement should be reconsidered. When considered collectively, the individual projects holistically address the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resource’s Mission Statement to “advance the understanding and resolution of complex environmental and natural resource challenges.” Sam Wiswell and Britta Schroeter express this eloquently in their project summary, “In order for the UW Nordic Ski Team to advance our understanding and resolve complex environmental issues related our world travel and competition, it is crucial to have a tangible grasp on our CO2 emissions, the primary driver of anthropogenic climate change. It is important to realize that this project, in combination with the other studies put forth on the team’s trip to Slovakia are useless without application. With the valuable knowledge of how much CO2 the team has emitted during our trip we can start moving toward potential next steps to taking responsibility for our carbon footprint. As we progress forward, the knowledge of the impacts we have from international travel can inform and inspire people to take action towards sustainable alternatives.” The formal integration of science and sustainability curriculum into the travels of Team USA to a major international competition is, to our knowledge, unprecedented. The fact that the coaches of that team were also professors of this integrated course makes this immersive, experiential learning process even more of a rarity. Perhaps our athletes most clearly express the impact of this learning in their final reflections when asked how integrating curriculum into their skiing has impacted their expectations, dreams, goals and life: I thought this class did a wonderful job of making me apply my knowledge to sustainability/skiing/and travel such that it greatly enhanced my WUG experience. I now know that it is possible to have integrated curriculum that goes beyond the traditional "study abroad". It is possible to make every single experience as investigative and meaningful as possible (but requires a lot of planning by those in charge to make it happen). Integrated curriculum is incredibly inspiring to me. My favorite part of this class was being able to read others' posts and see how as a team we are not only contributing different athletic talents/goals, but also academic talents/goals. It greatly enhanced my understanding of my teammates to be able to see them as whole people (athlete and scholar), and not just the idea of that.
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Monday, June 01, 2015
Skiing and Climate Change: Environmental Assessment of an International Athletic Event
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