Topic: Evaluating Cornell's Lake Source Cooling Project

Instructor: Dr. Pete McIntyre

Course Summary:

Students worked in small groups alongside Cornell's Lake Source Cooling (LSC) team to retrospectively evaluate the outcomes of the past 20 years of the LSC project in three key areas: public engaggement, economics, and lake impacts.

Course Philosophies:

1) Project-based learning: choose your own adventure!
• Given big-picture goal, devise a coherent set of objectives
• Expect setbacks, celebrate small successes
• Take stock, revise when needed to achieve overall goal

2) Team-work: collaborate to achieve collective success
• Value differences of perspective: no absolutes
• Nurture complementarity, not just partitioning
• Communicate openly and often

3) Objectivity: facts and transparency matter
• Seek and rely upon data
• Identify, evaluate, and report assumptions
• Critical, not cynical, thinking

4) Public engagement is essential
• Identify and understand stakeholders
• Always explain, rather than defend
• Communication is often the hardest part!