By applying the interdisciplinary approach of science, technology, and society, students can solve often-neglected research problems of shifting society's operation toward a sustainable state. A recent Penn State University student research report titled The Mueller Report: Moving Beyond Sustainability Indicators to Sustainability Action contained a detailed ecological analysis of one campus building and addressed methods to optimize its ecological performance in terms of sustainability by using both behavioral and technological improvements. This article analyzes the factors that affected the successful implementation (...) of sustainable practices generated by student research: (a) choosing a receptive primary audience, (b) establishing interpersonal relationships with decision makers, (c) saturating the local media, (d) making sustainability convenient, and (e) demonstrating fiscal responsibility. (shrink)

Stephen Schneider’s perspective on climate change communication is distinguished by its longevity, a keen anticipation of research findings, historical understanding, and grounding in first-person experience. In this article, the author elaborates Schneider’s work in terms of its key claims, suggestive research directions, and lessons for scientists, journalists, and citizens. This article also evaluates his “double ethical bind” formulation to discuss potential limitations regarding precautionary policy. In conclusion, the author suggests that Schneider’s work has been important for advancing a robust precautionary (...) perspective for climate change, but that it may be insufficient for carrying this perspective through to fuller expression. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss contemporary disputes within communication theory over the Dewey-Lippmann ‘debate’ as symptomatic of a broader inability to treat classical pragmatism as an intellectual tradition. If we return historicity to the relationship of classical pragmatism and communication, and if we develop a fuller understanding of the distinctive aspects of pragmatist theories of inquiry, we can better understand the contributions of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann to a novel conception of democracy as problem-solving. In this way, we recover (...) what is distinctive about pragmatist approaches to democracy and acquire a more differentiated sense of politics that refuses to reduce classical pragmatist writing to deliberative or dialogic conceptions of democracy. (shrink)