Patel School of Global Sustainability

Joy Ingram

What a week this has been! I started the week with jet lag and ended it with “jet flu”, or whatever this head-chest-ear-throat-sinuses thing is! I think all those hours on the plane breathing that re-circulated air finally caught up with me. My project is in planning and strategizing phase for the most part, working with my AWA sponsor to flesh out the details. In the meantime, I’ll provide you with some small vignettes of my first week Down Under…. Continue reading Sydney, Australia – Week 1 Down Under (5/22/11 – 5/28/11)

Maria Booker

Readers beware; I have a very different attitude today than I did on Monday. The inefficiencies of Accra are beginning to get to me, and I find myself more than frustrated. Continue reading Accra, Ghana – Day 12 (5/28/11)

Maria Booker

Well, the first week is over. I was able to meet my personal deadline of submitting my revised proposal by Friday. My research objectives in Ghana will be to look at the differences in solid waste and greywater infrastructure between unplanned migrant settlements, indigenous communities, and developed high-income settlements and compare these differences to the number of cases of malaria in each of the settlements. As you know, waste (both solid waste and greywater) dumped in the street provides an opportunity for water pools and mosquito habitats. My hypothesis is that the migrant settlements will have higher cases of malaria, because the government basically recognizes them as squatters. The indigenous settlements will have the next level highest cases of malaria, because they receive some infrastructure support. The high-income communities will have the lowest cases of malaria because they receive the highest level of infrastructure support. There are some limitations here that go beyond the scope of a blog, but the important thing is that it I prove that the migrant and indigenous settlements need a solid waste and greywater infrastructure in order to reduce mosquito habitats. Continue reading Accra, Ghana – Day 7 (5/23/11)

Maria Booker

The past few days have been spent acclimatizing and meeting with the key stakeholders in my project. I still feel anxiety when walking around town by myself, but it is lessening, and it lessened significantly after spending the afternoon with my Ghanaian host, Bertha.

The meetings with my stakeholders have led to a definition of my objectives. I need to clarify my research a little bit, link the themes together some more, and define my specific objectives. I have agreed to provide the completed proposal, objectives, and itinerary by Monday, but I am aiming for Friday. Wednesday is a public holiday here, and my daughter graduates pre-school on Friday, May 27^th, so I will be unable to work on both days next week. Continue reading Accra, Ghana – Day 4 (5/19/11)

Maria Booker

Today, I arrived at Accra International Airport at 115pm local time. The flight was long and uncomfortable, but I was able to sleep. From the air, Ghana is greener than I expected. Upon arrival, I am concerned that they don’t even ask me for my yellow fever certificate at customs; I wonder how they can eradicate such a huge pubic health issue when the airport staff isn’t trained to check for immunization records. Continue reading Accra, Ghana – Day 1 (5/16/2011)

Greetings students,

Welcome to the Patel School of Global Sustainability Summer 2011 Internships blog. You will be using this site to submit regular blog entries, photos, videos, and other materials to document and share your internship experiences.

If you are familiar with WordPress, the process of uploading and submitting your content will be a breeze, as the USF blog platform runs on the WordPress framework. Instructions for logging in and posting content are below and you are free to contact me, Randall Pape, or Bessie Skoures if you have any trouble working with the site.

Logging In

If you are ready to post content to the blog, head over to the log in page (the log in link will always be available in the right column under ‘Meta’) and enter your USF NetID credentials. Upon successfully logging in you will be redirected to the Dashboard.

Dashboard & Making New Posts

In the menu on the left side of your browser window, select Posts and then Add New. This is where you will write your blog entries and upload any multimedia content you wish to include.

You can type your entry in the text box in the center column of your browser window. There are some simple formatting tools available at the top of the text box that allow you to italicize or bold your text, create lists, add block quotes, and more.

Above the formatting tools there is a link titled ‘Upload/Insert’. Clicking the icon to the right of ‘Upload/Insert’ will open a window that will allow you to upload any type of file you wish from your computer (under 10MB*) or link to other files already hosted somewhere else on the internet.

*if you would like to include files that are larger than 10MB, I suggest uploading them to a file sharing site (YouTube for videos, Sendspace for documents, Flickr for photos, etc.) and linking to them from the ‘Upload/Insert’ window.

Once your post is complete, simply click on the blue ‘Publish’ button in the right column. The page will refresh and a yellow strip will appear at the top of the screen saying your entry has been posted successfully. If you click the ‘View post’ link you’ll be able to see your entry live on the blog.

Editing Your Posts

Each user can edit his or her own posts, but not the posts of other users. To edit your post, simply click ‘Edit this post’ link at the bottom of your post and – provided you have logged in – you’ll be taken to the post entry screen. Make any changes you’d like and click the blue ‘Update’ (in the same place as ‘Publish’) button to update your post.