University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Juliette Rooney-Varga directs the Climate Change Initiative at UMass Lowell and is an Associate Professor of Environmental Biology. She has more than 20 years experience as a research scientist, studying microbial ecology and biogeochemistry in diverse environments, including marine algal blooms, climate change-carbon cycle feedbacks in Arctic peatlands, and anaerobic microbial community dynamics and performance in microbial fuel cells. Her recent work, funded by NASA and NSF, is focused on climate change education, communication, and decision support.
Climate Education in an Age of Media (CAM) part of Climate Education in an Age of Media
The CAM project is developing approaches to bring student media production into climate change education in ways that are engaging, empowering, and can be readily adopted in a wide range of instructional environments.
Website Content Contributions
Public Service Announcement (PSA) About Climate Change (Higher Ed) part of Climate Education in an Age of Media:Use Student Media Production:Activities
Producing a PSA is an ideal culminating project for an interdisciplinary course on climate change and related topics. The PSA assignment requires high-level synthesis of content and, through it, students learn first-hand about the challenges of communicating about climate change to a general audience in a compelling way. The assignment offers the opportunity for students to engage with the material, consider what they want society to understand or do, use creativity and twenty-first century technology and communication tools, and become empowered to enter societal discourse about climate change.
Video Mash-Up part of Climate Education in an Age of Media:Use Student Media Production:Activities
Video mash-up projects are readily incorporated into science courses. They are information-dense, require little or no in-class time group work, do not require a production phase, and provide an effective jigsaw mechanism for students to learn from each other.