Final Project Rough Draft

Objective: Please submit a draft of your final project. This submission will ensure you are on target for the final project submission in a few weeks. Please use this time to start the project in a meaningful way and connect with me if you have any questions.

Rough Draft Submission:

Select an article that is related to one of the following topic weeks: Population, Poverty, Food, Water, Fossil Fuels, New Energy, and Ecosystem Services. The article may touch on a few topics and that is fine just as long as you are clear on the message it is conveying. As noted in our syllabus, students must use the following resources to identify their article. News stories from other resources will not be accepted unless your instructor has granted prior approval. You might ask why I am only considering these outlets for our project. I believe these to be valuable, reputable, and creditable sources. In todays world where we can find anything on the web, we need to think about some of the following questions:

How often do you check to make sure what you are sharing or commenting on is real/creditable/reputable? How do you go about finding that out? What web resources can you trust right away when looking at materials online?

How much do you care if a story purporting to be real actually is real? Can embellished, or outright fake, stories have real-world consequences? What should a media outlet do if new data or contradictory data is found after the article is published?

What responsibility do journalists and news outlets who post or link these stories have to make sure they are true? Is it their job to make sure something is not a hoax before they cover or link to it? Do they have responsibility to share both sides of a complicated story?

Do you have an obligation as a well educated individual to ensure that materials, resources, and logic are grounded in facts, data, and accurate logic?

Approved outlets: National Geographic, New York Times, Science, Science Daily, Scientific American, News 360, Washington Post. All of these news outlets are freely accessible through ASU’s library system or the Internet.

(10 points) Part 1: Link – Include either the working link to the article’s permanent URL or attach the article you have selected. If you are torn between two or three articles, take time to work through the questions below. Select the article that is most interesting to you. At the end of the day, it is the things we find interesting and engaging that keep us going.

(30 points) Part 2: Rationale – Respond to each of the following four questions in 2-3 sentences:

1. Why did you choose this topic? Describe your rationale for selecting the specific sustainability topic that your article covers.

2. What is the specific sustainability topic you are exploring in this article? Describe why this is a sustainability topic.

3. Why is this topic of interest to those that are concerned with sustainability?

4. What engaged you the most about this topic and why did you select it? Do you think this is important for you to consider as a citizen?