SUSI Environmental: Pre-Departure Paper Guidelines
Your paper in Word format and any slides in powerpoint format should be emailed to by Friday, June 23.
SUSI Environmental is an exciting opportunity to explore both your academic and cultural interests in the U.S. To help us support you with the best possible program and to focus you on your upcoming experience, we ask that you write a two-page (double-spaced) paper prior to arriving in the U.S. This paper is due to Kelsey Stamm Jimenez via e-mail by June 23.
Your objective is to summarize the most critical environmental issues that are currently facing your home country. Please keep in mind that we do not expect you to address every issue, as we know there are many. Your paper should focus on the most critical issues of greatest interest to you that you may wish to address in your academic, professional, or volunteer work as follows:
· Identify one or two critical environmental issues currently facing your home country
· Explain why you are personally interested in these issues
· Identify aspects of these issues you would like to learn more about while in the US. Looking at the program goals and the draft program book, do you see any parallels in our program to the issues you have identified?
· Discuss how collaboration with other SUSI Fellows would be useful to better understand these issues and identifying potential actions you could take in your home country to address these issues
Please note that we expect to receive a short paper no more than two pages long (double spaced). This will be an exercise in summarizing important points, as well as identifying areas that require further research. Papers longer than two pages will be returned for editing.
June 30 Presentation: On June 30, you will be asked to deliver a three-minute presentation on the topic of your paper to the program team and the rest of your cohort. Please do not read your paper. The presentation is only three minutes as an exercise in speaking succinctly and learning how to communicate your main points directly. This should be an engaging presentation where you perhaps draw from a few notes, but you should be speaking from the heart and from your personal interest. This is not a formal report. This is a time for you to share your areas of interest with the rest of your group, and to identify other Fellows with similar interests. You should not expect to spend a lot of time preparing your presentation, since you will simply be sharing the main points you have already written in your paper. You are not required to deliver a digital presentation; however, if you decide that you would like digital visual aids, please limit your presentation to no more than 3 slides, and please be sure to email your slides together with your paper on June 23. If you do not send slides at this time, we will assume that you will deliver an oral presentation without digital slides on June 30.
Please contact us with any questions you have regarding this assignment. We look forward to learning from you!