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| How I spend Thursday mornings at 6am. Reading water meters. |
Monday, August 15, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
How/Why Conservation Psych/ CSUSM
First off, let me say that the Nissan Leaf is pretty awesome! My professor just bought one and took us for a ride after our lunch lab meeting today. Its SO quiet! and he said that it has plenty of power as he took us speeding up the hill. I know what I want for Christmas!!
Another one of the questions that I get is, "How did you come to this conservation psychology?? Its so unique/interesting!" Well my path to conservation is rather convoluted so I will attempt to lay out my interest in it here.
I initially went into IWU wanting to get a private practice so I had a double major of psych and business. I was going along seeing what psychology had to offer when I took a stats class from Dr. Kunce. She was interested in mixing environmental topics into her stats lectures and I thought that was really neat, since I had always been pro environment.
One thing that is phenomenal about IWU was May term. This allows students for the month of May the option to take a class, travel to take a class, or not take a class and go home or work. Freshman year I took a multiculturalism class in Hawaii. the end of sophomore year for may term I decided to take an environmental studies class in the UK. This class really heightened my interest in the environmental studies department.
In the meantime I absolutely hated the business department at IWU the classes were boring, the department head was uninterested and the teachers were nothing special (with the extreme exception of my Investments Professor Pana, she was the saving grace of the department) (I also really enjoyed my econ class with Professor Smith, but I'm not sure if Econ falls under the business dept). So when I got back from being abroad for a semester in Ireland I dropped business as a major, made it a minor, and added environmental studies as my second minor.
When I came back from Ireland I lost my motivation a bit, I had been living on my own in an apartment in the awesome city of Dublin, and I REALLY just wanted to be done with school and be out on my own again. I took on more shifts at work after my back healed and started trying to save money to pay off the ever mounting IWU student loans.
Until one day I was in Dr. Kunce's office and she asked me about grad school interests and she pretty much said, go to grad school. I REALLY respect her opinion so what she says goes! She helped me look into what was going on in the field of conservation psychology and told me to check out that field.
Ultimately I found Professor Schultz out at CSUSM and fell in love with the program. So many of his research interests lined up with mine so I applied there. there was a letter of rec hiccup so I didnt get in initially and stuck around in blo-no for a year. I started management training at RL and was on the green team in the interim.
applied again at the end of 2010 and was accepted for the 2011 school year. which is where I now am!
Another one of the questions that I get is, "How did you come to this conservation psychology?? Its so unique/interesting!" Well my path to conservation is rather convoluted so I will attempt to lay out my interest in it here.
I initially went into IWU wanting to get a private practice so I had a double major of psych and business. I was going along seeing what psychology had to offer when I took a stats class from Dr. Kunce. She was interested in mixing environmental topics into her stats lectures and I thought that was really neat, since I had always been pro environment.
One thing that is phenomenal about IWU was May term. This allows students for the month of May the option to take a class, travel to take a class, or not take a class and go home or work. Freshman year I took a multiculturalism class in Hawaii. the end of sophomore year for may term I decided to take an environmental studies class in the UK. This class really heightened my interest in the environmental studies department.
In the meantime I absolutely hated the business department at IWU the classes were boring, the department head was uninterested and the teachers were nothing special (with the extreme exception of my Investments Professor Pana, she was the saving grace of the department) (I also really enjoyed my econ class with Professor Smith, but I'm not sure if Econ falls under the business dept). So when I got back from being abroad for a semester in Ireland I dropped business as a major, made it a minor, and added environmental studies as my second minor.
When I came back from Ireland I lost my motivation a bit, I had been living on my own in an apartment in the awesome city of Dublin, and I REALLY just wanted to be done with school and be out on my own again. I took on more shifts at work after my back healed and started trying to save money to pay off the ever mounting IWU student loans.
Until one day I was in Dr. Kunce's office and she asked me about grad school interests and she pretty much said, go to grad school. I REALLY respect her opinion so what she says goes! She helped me look into what was going on in the field of conservation psychology and told me to check out that field.
Ultimately I found Professor Schultz out at CSUSM and fell in love with the program. So many of his research interests lined up with mine so I applied there. there was a letter of rec hiccup so I didnt get in initially and stuck around in blo-no for a year. I started management training at RL and was on the green team in the interim.
applied again at the end of 2010 and was accepted for the 2011 school year. which is where I now am!
Sunday, August 7, 2011
SO, what exactly is Conservation Psychology?
Conservation Psychology is a pretty new field in psychology. It is sometimes referred to as Environmental psychology, however the original environmental psychology is about how environments influence people and such; sort of like office space layouts. So conservation psychology is trying to move away from the environmental moniker in order to differentiate itself.
The gist of conservation psychology is looking at the relationship between humans and the environment. Some of the applications are getting people to be more sustainable using psychological principles.
The area of research that I am working on with my professor is the social norms & disclosures part. My professor is a social psychologist. One of the projects that we are currently working on is the thesis of the current grad student. We are looking at energy and water consumption and recycling behavior. and providing feedback based on usage, along with the aggregate usage of the neighborhood. I cant provide more details now because the study is ongoing.
One example of a study that was successful is in the realm of energy consumption. My professor worked on studies that provided people in neighborhoods information about their energy consumption along with normative feedback about other people in the neighborhood, like "77% of San Marcos residents often use fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool in the summer." The following week after getting this type of message the households who got the normative message used 10% less energy that the control.
It is the social part of conservation psychology that I am most interested in. I often get the question, well what are you going to do with that? I would ideally like to work with businesses who have environmental programs implemented and get those programs to be more successful using these psychological techniques.
More Information:
Conservation Psychology
Wikipedia
The gist of conservation psychology is looking at the relationship between humans and the environment. Some of the applications are getting people to be more sustainable using psychological principles.
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| From, http://www.conservationpsychology.org/ |
One example of a study that was successful is in the realm of energy consumption. My professor worked on studies that provided people in neighborhoods information about their energy consumption along with normative feedback about other people in the neighborhood, like "77% of San Marcos residents often use fans instead of air conditioning to keep cool in the summer." The following week after getting this type of message the households who got the normative message used 10% less energy that the control.
It is the social part of conservation psychology that I am most interested in. I often get the question, well what are you going to do with that? I would ideally like to work with businesses who have environmental programs implemented and get those programs to be more successful using these psychological techniques.
More Information:
Conservation Psychology
Wikipedia
Friday, August 5, 2011
Environmental What!? An introduction
Hello everyone!
SO, I decided that I wanted to start a blog for a few reasons. The first of which is reflected in the title of the blog, Environmental What!? When I tell people that I am studying environmental psychology that is undoubtedly the first question that I get, usually followed by, "so you talk to trees and grass about their problems??" Environmental psychology, also known as conservation psychology is very new and many people have not heard of it before, so I figured I could use this blog to detail to people what environmental psychology is. This will entail things I am learning in my classes, research I am involved in, things that interest me off the conservation psychology listserv etc...
The second purpose of this blog is for my family and friends (hey guys!). I moved across the country from Illinois to California mid June 2011, so this way they can keep tabs on me and what I am up to. It also serves to let them know that I am still alive and in one unbroken piece, since we all know I have an afinity for breaking things (my back, ribs) when I leave home.
The third reason for blogging is that I have extra time on my hands for now. This way I can entertain myself while I explore the city and the things that California has to offer.
The fourth (and not really a reason) reason is so that I can try out adsense and maybe make a few (most likely $3.74) dollars to help pay off some of those lovely student loans. I worked on a project as an undergrad where we generated ads for a business and I though it would be a fun experiment to be on the other end. Also so I can legitimately say, "check out our sponsors!"
I hope that I will have the attention span to keep this blog going for the next two years. I very well know that that is a lofty goal (we all know how everyone still keeps up with their xangas) but I will give it my best shot. Especially because I think that the field of environmental psychology is a very interesting an relevant topic.
I cant make too many promises about the direction of the blog because I have a wide array of interests, but hopefully it captures your interest.
The next few posts will be giving you more of a glimpse of who I am, and what exactly environmental psychology is. And some pictures of my new place and of Sunny Southern California.
Here goes nothing!
Joey
SO, I decided that I wanted to start a blog for a few reasons. The first of which is reflected in the title of the blog, Environmental What!? When I tell people that I am studying environmental psychology that is undoubtedly the first question that I get, usually followed by, "so you talk to trees and grass about their problems??" Environmental psychology, also known as conservation psychology is very new and many people have not heard of it before, so I figured I could use this blog to detail to people what environmental psychology is. This will entail things I am learning in my classes, research I am involved in, things that interest me off the conservation psychology listserv etc...
The second purpose of this blog is for my family and friends (hey guys!). I moved across the country from Illinois to California mid June 2011, so this way they can keep tabs on me and what I am up to. It also serves to let them know that I am still alive and in one unbroken piece, since we all know I have an afinity for breaking things (my back, ribs) when I leave home.
The third reason for blogging is that I have extra time on my hands for now. This way I can entertain myself while I explore the city and the things that California has to offer.
The fourth (and not really a reason) reason is so that I can try out adsense and maybe make a few (most likely $3.74) dollars to help pay off some of those lovely student loans. I worked on a project as an undergrad where we generated ads for a business and I though it would be a fun experiment to be on the other end. Also so I can legitimately say, "check out our sponsors!"
I hope that I will have the attention span to keep this blog going for the next two years. I very well know that that is a lofty goal (we all know how everyone still keeps up with their xangas) but I will give it my best shot. Especially because I think that the field of environmental psychology is a very interesting an relevant topic.
I cant make too many promises about the direction of the blog because I have a wide array of interests, but hopefully it captures your interest.
The next few posts will be giving you more of a glimpse of who I am, and what exactly environmental psychology is. And some pictures of my new place and of Sunny Southern California.
Here goes nothing!
Joey
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