2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Documenting takes on recycling, honing rapid ethnographic skills: Transdisciplinary graduate student explorations in a rural U.S. southwestern campus community

While recycling has become a mainstream behavior in many urban U.S. environments, rural communities sometimes are not included or there is evidence that the bins for recycling are eventually heaved into the same landfill site. At the same time, a growing social pressure to recycle seems to upstage and overemphasize recycling at the expense of other, arguably more critical, aspects of the circular economy, namely reducing and reusing. In our work with graduate students from different disciplines, we have begun to have them document the feelings, thoughts, and values of others—their “takes”—on recycling in and outside their campus dining hall in their small, rural university community. These are short excursions into their community during workshops funded by the National Science Foundation. The workshops aim to develop, among other skills, qualitative research know-how and experience around environmental issues of growing concern. Research skills participants experience in the workshops include quick clipboard interviewing to develop approaching strangers in a friendly way, establishing rapport, note-taking, and deep listening. When students return to the workshop, they develop discussion skills, memo-ing, and inductive coding. The purpose of this paper is to document the perceptions of workshop participants on their feelings and thoughts about what they learned through this process of community-based, research-oriented experiential learning. This study uses rapid ethnographic assessment and co-interviewing conducted by the first two authors of this paper. Findings indicate that students evidenced a tolerance for diverse points of view and the variations of emotions people express as they share differing viewpoints on recycling. They expressed confidence in learning more self-reflexively about themselves. They were keen to share a sense of how they expanded their social skills in settings where they initiated and engaged in research tasks. Altogether, they embraced complex understandings of the human side of community action or lack of action vis-a-vis recycling in rural communities.

Authors

Prof. Ari Sherris Texas A&M University-Kingsville [biography]

Ari is a tenured mid-career Professor of Bilingual Education. During the 2015-2016 academic year, he was a J. William Fulbright Scholar at the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana. During June 2019, Ari was a distinguished guest researcher at the University of South Africa. He holds a PhD in Second Language Development, an MA in Applied Linguistics, and a BA in the Humanities. He is certified as an EFL and ESL teacher as well as a School Principal. Ari's research and language revitalization interests include Mikasuki, Salish Ql'ispe (aka Salish-Pend d'Oreille, Montana Salish, and Flathead Salish) and Safaliba. His ethnographic work documents situated practice in grassroots policy initiatives and school-based activism among the Safaliba in rural Ghana. His language documentation includes conceptual metaphors and formulaic language in Salish Ql'ispe and Safaliba. He also explores applications of task-based language teaching in the pedagogy of revitalization. His practitioner papers analyze integrated content and language instruction, academic English instruction for graduate students, and asset-based coaching for and by language teachers (e.g., peer coaching, critical friending in educational contexts). Ari has planned and facilitated language and literacy workshops and lectures, as well as curriculum development, in Ghana, Israel, Italy, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, and the USA. As a private person, Ari travels to the Israeli occupied West Bank of the Jordan river where he is a protective presence for Palestinians and Bedouins. Are also documents Israeli settlers who engage in violence, agricultural theft, intimidation, and threats against Palestinians and Bedouins. Ari's videos, notes, and presence support a coalition of non-government organizations working in solidarity with Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley to prevent the destruction of Palestinian villages and to prevent the displacement of Bedouins. Ari's international community service to Palestinian rights align with international law and the Geneva Convention.
Dr. Hua Li http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-7306-8298 Texas A&M University - Kingsville [biography]

Dr. Hua Li, a Professor in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, is interested in sustainable manufacturing, renewable energy, sustainability assessment, and engineering education. Dr. Li has served as P.I. and Co-P.I.
Christine Reiser Robbins Texas A&M University - Kingsville
Joel Reyes-Cabrera Texas A&M University - Kingsville
jianhong Ren Texas A&M University - Kingsville
Dr. David Ramirez Texas A&M University [biography]

Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering
Prof. Kai Jin Texas A&M University - Kingsville [biography]

Dr. Kai Jin is a Professor of Industrial Engineering and Co-PI of the MERIT project. Her research interests include Sustainable Energy, Green Manufacturing, Quality Control, and Multi Objective Decision Making and Optimization as well as Engineering Educa

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025