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AASHE’s Presidential Voices interview series features conversations with heads of higher education institutions who are inspiring sustainability leaders. To recommend a president or chancellor for this series, contact Judy Walton, chief publications officer, at judy@aashe.org.
Beverly Daniel Tatum, Spelman College President since 2002, is our guest for this interview. Spelman is America's oldest historically Black college for women, and a leading liberal arts institution. It has been recognized for its environmental efforts with a Green Key Award from the U.S. EPA. In 2010, Dr. Tatum signed the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). Most recently, she spearheaded a Wellness Revolution at the college to empower and educate Spelman women on the value of lifelong wellness as a means of building strong, sustainable communities. Dr. Tatum is a member of the President’s Board of Advisors to the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. She earned a B.A. degree in psychology from Wesleyan University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. She also holds an M.A. in religious studies from Hartford Seminary.
Judy Walton: Why is sustainability important to Spelman, and how does it fit the college’s overall mission and tagline, “A Choice to Change the World?”
Beverly Tatum: Sustainability should be important to everyone because it’s essential to the viability of the planet on which we live. It was listed as a key priority in my 2007 convocation talk, and sustainability goals are incorporated into Spelman’s Strategic Plan for 2015. Sustainability is also listed up front on our About Us page. 
When we talk about the mission of Spelman, we talk about preparing young women to be leaders; we talk about educating the whole person—mind, body, and spirit—developing her intellectual, academic and ethical leadership potential. You can’t talk about ethics without talking about responsibility, and you can’t talk about responsibility, in a holistic way, without talking about responsibility for the environment of which we are a part. So when we think about preparing students for the future --preparing them to be ethical leaders – certainly an awareness of sustainability is critical and an important part of what we mean when we say, “A Choice to Change the World.”
As I have said in other contexts, we are changing the world all the time, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. We’re not always conscious of the way we’re changing the world, but each of us in our daily interactions is making an impact. When we think about our environmental impact we want to be conscious of this in order to be good stewards of the planet on which we live and to make sure that the change we’re making is a positive one as opposed to one that’s detrimental to the long- term health of ourselves and those we care about.
JW: What key initiatives have led to Spelman’s recognition as a sustainability leader among HBCUs?
BT: We talk about sustainability at Spelman in the context of three areas of focus: One is traditional environmental sustainability. The second is personal sustainability, which has to do with our own personal health and wellness. The third focus area is communal sustainability -- the health and well-being of our campus as an institution. Each focus area has an initiative associated with it on our campus.
When we talk about environmental sustainability, we highlight Spelman’s Climate Action Plan and its status as a signatory of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. As part of this commitment, we’ve set a target date for achieving carbon neutrality – we chose the year 2056, which is the 175th anniversary of the College.
We’re also committed to building green. In 2008, The Suites residence hall opened – the first-ever LEED Silver certified residence hall at a historically Black college or university. That commitment has been strengthened by a policy adopted by our board of trustees in 2010 stating that all new construction and renovations will be completed at no less than LEED Silver standards. The renovation of Laura Spelman Rockefeller Hall concluded in the fall of 2012 and we’re delighted that it has received LEED Gold certification. In support of our Wellness Revolution, we are planning a new project – Read Hall, which will of course be completed using LEED standards.
Also under the environmental sustainability umbrella we include curricular innovation and research. Along with everyday opportunities for conservation, we want to provide curriculum to further integrate sustainability across courses and disciplines with the goal of graduating empowered women who embody all three dimensions of Sustainable Spelman. We have faculty and staff Green Leaders who are working on environmental and sustainability solutions regionally, nationally and globally.
When we speak about personal sustainability we highlight our sustainability pledge as well as our Wellness Revolution and all it represents. Whether we’re talking about stroke, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, or HIV/AIDS, all these illnesses disproportionately impact Black woman. However, with changes in our diet, behavior, exercise and stress reduction, we can positively impact the current statistics. But we have to be knowledgeable about how to make those changes. Through the Wellness Revolution, we aim to educate the Spelman community on how to start and sustain healthy habits for life-long wellness.
Through communal sustainability we aim to make sure that Spelman College as an institution remains viable for many years. This requires all of us to abide by our standards of excellence which are captured by what we call the 3 C’s: civility, commitment, and consistency in excellence and performance.
JW: AASHE Bulletin recently featured Spelman’s plan to eliminate intercollegiate athletics in order to dedicate resources to a campus-wide fitness/wellness initiative. What was behind this decision, and how do fitness and wellness relate to sustainability?
BT: As I mentioned, personal sustainability is a key priority here at Spelman. When we decided to discontinue our participation in intercollegiate athletics in May 2013, we were not rejecting sports, or even competition -- just the limited benefit that our NCAA participation offered a few student athletes in favor of a program of activity that would support lifelong fitness for all 2,100 of our students.
The intent of our wellness program is to transition our students from high school sports to lifelong fitness. Just as we develop habits of the mind – such as critical-thinking skills that will be used for a lifetime -- we want to develop habits of the body that will support healthy and sustainable living for a lifetime.
If the health status of African-American women is an indicator of the health status of blacks living in America, the news is not good. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 44 percent of Black women over age 20 have high blood pressure, and Black women are more likely to suffer from ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer and stroke and to die from them early in comparison to women of other ethnicities. All of these illnesses are linked to obesity and lack of physical activity.
Given these statistics, the need for a Wellness Revolution at Spelman is urgent, because it is our population -- young black women -- that is among the most at risk for negative health outcomes. Committed to educating the whole person - mind, body and spirit - we have an opportunity to change the health trajectory of the young women we serve. We are taking this opportunity seriously through the development of a creative wellness program. Wellness and societal sustainability go hand-in-hand.
JW: As a leader of one of the premier HBCUs, and a 2005 recipient of the prestigious Brock International Prize in Education, what strategies do you recommend to make campus sustainability a more diverse, inclusive movement?
BT: At Spelman we are leading by example and certainly we take pride in the various presentations that members of our campus community have given at professional events, national conferences and in the media. Along with Art Frazier, our director of facilities (who presented at AASHE 2012), we also have faculty members like Fatemeh Shafiei, chair and associate professor of political science and Jerry Wever, assistant professor of anthropology, who provide insight on the various sustainability efforts at Spelman to the broader community. Through these opportunities and others, such as our student Green Ambassadors, we have been able to tell the Spelman story in a way that we hope inspires others.
JW: How is Spelman tracking its sustainability progress?
BT: Our Climate Action Plan that I described earlier contains benchmarks and timetables, and includes a completed STARS checklist detailing our progress. For personal sustainability, we’re tracking participation in healthy living behaviors such as exercise. As part of our wellness program, our wellness coordinator tracks student, faculty and staff participation. When asked what will be the measure of success for our wellness program, I like to say, “when we have a culture of movement at Spelman College.”
JW: As an institutional leader, what are your biggest challenges in advancing sustainability initiatives?
BT: As at many institutions, two of the biggest challenges to advancing initiatives are limited resources and complacency. When advocating for any initiative, securing resources can be a challenge and that has to do with being in a tough economy. Our primary responsibility is to ensure that we’re able to deliver stellar academic programs and keep students in school, which requires scholarship support for most of them. Regarding complacency, we have to work diligently to ensure that everyone understands why it’s so important to mobilize and be actively engaged, in both supporting and promoting sustainability.
JW: What would you like to accomplish next in terms of sustainability at Spelman?
BT: As it relates to environmental sustainability, the first major milestone is our Climate Action Plan, which I described earlier. Now that we have a plan, we need to follow it. As relates to personal sustainability, we are focused on the Wellness Revolution (which I also described earlier) and creating the physical space needed to fully implement the vision for the program. That involves the completion of Read Hall using LEED standards. We are actively engaged in raising funds for that project. Regarding communal sustainability, we will continue to educate the community about the importance of the 3 C’s at Spelman and what each of us can do to ensure the long term health of our institution.
JW: How do you spend your free time?
BT: I like to exercise, read, and focus on my personal sustainability. I also enjoy time alone and time with my family.
]]>The popularity surrounding open source code is not created on accident. Developers who can work together by sharing projects and functionality will create more stable websites over a shorter span of time. You have folks working on different aspects of the site which ultimately produces more bug fixed and cooler fixtures. But there are a mess of choices out there, it can be difficult finding what works the best.
In this article I would like to delve a bit deeper into some popular Content Management Systems. Web projects which gain traction often stick around the longest, and these frameworks can produce loads of new themes and modules. I won’t go too far with details of the inner-workings in each system. But we should concentrate more on the key aspects which make each CMS worthwhile.
The open source Drupal project has been around for a long time, and seen plenty of new iterations. I have only worked a brief period in the backend and the development is very clean. I feel that Drupal is good for any generic website, because there are so many possibilities for tweaks.
Drupal has its own getting started guide for beginners. There is a lot of stuff to understand about the admin panel, and the installation process is not as clean as WordPress. But for these tradeoffs Drupal is a seriously phenomenal CMS. You have the ability to manage users based on roles which also includes custom parameters. Similarly you can do this with your own custom post/page types as well.
There is a large number of themes and modules to download for extended functionality. This may be the case with many other CMS engines, but Drupal has been around for so long. The library is massive and contains a lot of nifty features. You can dig through the modules and themes pages for a better understanding.
But ultimately this is a CMS you should experience for yourself. Thanks to Opensource CMS you could also try a Drupal demo of the frontend or admin panel. Short of installing your own Drupal website on a local server, this live demo would be the quickest option for newcomers to get familiar with Drupal’s core.
Second to Drupal for general CMS options would be Fork CMS. They are both written on PHP/MySQL and work using a similar compartmentalization of template codes vs page content. Although Fork is newer, the developers have been working really hard to publish new features and handle bug fixes. It is definitely a recommendation if you want to try something new.
Fork hosts a similar getting started guide which may be an interesting read, and even better I found that Fork hosts their own live demos which you can toy around for yourself. The admin panel is much more hidden than other similar CMS’. The options are also a bit more confusing but grow on you with time.
Just recently it was announced that Fork will be switching template engines and using PHP Symfony as the main framework. This was a big anticipated change since it was announced, and so any new developers will be getting into a newer updated version of Fork. The changes are noticeable from previous versions and the templating engine is much easier to work with.
Fork offers users the ability to manage all types of posts and pages. Blogs, image galleries, user profiles, anything that you can think may be added into Fork. The modules system provides an effortless expansion of the backend variables and methods. Although it might be easier to hit the knowledge base and search for related questions.
We all know and love WordPress so I don’t think there is too much new information that I can present. But I want to share how WordPress has transformed out of a mere blogging platform into the CMS market. The whole project is open source and has been since inception. I think the ability for people to publish their own blogs managed on their own server was revolutionary. It still is a powerful tool.
But the thing that makes WordPress even more lucrative is the library of tutorials, videos, blog posts, StackOverflow questions, and WP resources to be found all over the Internet. People who use WordPress are some of the most friendly supporters about sharing what they know. You can start out with zero knowledge of WordPress and pick up a lot of ideas with just a few days of practice & research.
Looking at newer websites I find that WordPress can be more than useful as an online magazine CMS. Publishers who are not interested in using physical printing would rather post their news online. It seems like WordPress is the best option for this type of website launch.
Probably a much lesser-known project which is admittedly very small, but can be helpful in tight niche communities. Aardvark Topsites is a free open source PHP script for ranking websites in a single gallery. You have the option of making different categories where users may signup, and the category lists will include all the top websites pulling in the most traffic.
It is definitely not something for everybody and Aardvark does serve a very specific purpose. But there are not very many other scripts out there which have such an in-depth solution. Users are supposed to include a badge on their page which automatically updates their ranking number via PHP. Aardvark will log how many pageviews are displayed to each button and catalog the data every day, building up a ranking system for each website.
For topics with a more refined audience, building a topsite listing is an easy service to a select few people. The Topsites CMS is not difficult to manage, templates are a breeze, and the official Aardvark site has an online manual for answering the most common questions. The CMS is great for networking among similar websites and helping to drive traffic from Google searches.
To wrap up the whole article I thought it would be nice to switch focus onto bulletin board forums. Namely one of the most popular open source projects phpBB. The website has been online for years and their community has only gotten larger. It obviously runs on PHP/MySQL which is most commonly supported on all webhosts.
The team has setup a live demo where you can login as the administrator to see how the backend works. Also you can see how templates are setup on various page types, such as forum listings or threaded posts. They have also put together a dynamic styles demo where you can switch between different themes in the forum skin. This is a nice method to get a feeling of how phpBB themes are often structured.
I think anybody interested in using a forum product should consider phpBB. The WordPress forums are simply plugins, and this goes the same with Drupal and all the other CMS’ which are not originally forum projects. You can find a list of features on the phpBB website and you may be surprised at how much is offered in an open source bulletin board system.
I should express this is not an exhaustive list of all your choices for open source – far from it! There are so many similar projects available online, and developers are publishing new ideas every month, but this list defines a series of brands I have noticed for a few years now. Spend a bit of time researching on your own and you may be surprised at the barriers you can surmount by starting with open source codes. Additionally, you may share your ideas or questions with us in the post discussion area.
The post A Deeper Look into Various Content Management Systems appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
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Every app tells a story. Apps like Pandora tell the story of music; apps like Tip N Split tell a story of a calculator; and apps like Temperature tell the story of weather. Then we have storybook apps like Alice for the iPad, which literally tell stories!
The story of the cluttered app market is well known! Biz Report recently reported that the number of app downloads is estimated to reach 56 billion in 2013. And the San Francisco Chronicle has just reported that over 700,000 apps are for sale in the iTunes Store. Getting noticed is a major concern for app developers, and getting noticed sometimes requires not only a breakthrough app, but a compelling story.
For any app developer, conveying an app’s story at launch is critical. And just as important as promoting the story of your app is developing a story around the app that promotes the app’s story, that helps the app to stand out on digital store shelves, and that differentiates the app from its competitors.
To that end, what follows is a story about storytelling for a storybook app!
“The House That Went on Strike” and her troops.
Storytelling has been described as a method of explaining a series of events through narrative. Storytelling is used by marketers as a tool to entertain or to establish an emotional connection; it can be employed to illustrate a concept, to steer an argument and to encourage consumer loyalty. “The digital age equals a commitment to storytelling,” explains Marian Salzman, Havas PR North America CEO and author of the annual trend-spotting book What’s Next: What to Expect in 2013. “As such, brands are always looking to create stories around their products as a way to relate more personally to the consumer and, at the same time, capture the attention of the media. Storytelling was a trend in 2012, and will continue to be on the upswing in 2013.”
Indeed, this year’s Super Bowl advertisements and viral videos reinforced the focus on storytelling by brands. Taco Bell told a tale of seniors gone wild, a group of elderly partiers who escape their beds and hit the pools and bars one evening, ending their night by eating at Taco Bell. The spot tied the brand to youthfulness. Volkswagen’s clever use of famous YouTube “anger” stars dancing in a field to “Come On Get Happy” — the theme to ’70s sitcom The Partridge Family — tied the brand to the emotive story of happiness.
Taking a page from the major brands’ use of storytelling and applying it to the release of its book app, Jumping Pages sought ways to tell the story of “The House That Went on Strike.” And as the team did with its first production, “David and Goliath” (hopefully you read about that in “The Art of Launching an App”), it set out to provide backstories that support the house’s strike and to provide promotional opportunities for storytelling.
It all began one day while filmmaker and founder of Jumping Pages, Rania Ajami, was juggling her job, two kids and her home — and the home unfortunately seemed to be losing out. “One day, I just felt like I couldn’t keep up and, feeling unappreciated, threatened to go on strike. Then, as I looked around my own home, it occurred to me that with the TV blaring, lights burning, washer and dryer continually spinning, a kitchen resembling a 24-hour diner — maybe the house wanted to strike, too, and that’s when the idea for the story struck!”
Thus, “The House That Went on Strike” was born. The rhyming tale of an errant family that repents after its neglected house and appliances go on strike became a critical hit. MyMac called the story the “epitome of interactive books.” The ultimate critic in the book industry, Kirkus, hailed the book app as “a lesson… delivered in a blend of equally lively sound, art and animation.” And the storytelling that the team generated to promote the book provided a myriad of media stories. The book app was positively featured in political, publishing and home stories in newspapers, magazines and websites around the US. But achieving these results wasn’t easy. The process was well thought out.
As all app developers know, the production process follows a formula, and it’s no different when adapting a book into an app. The Jumping Pages team began the production route for “House” by writing a story about how a home would lead her troops (i.e. her appliances) on a strike to teach the residing family a lesson. The script was then transformed into a sequence of panels for the iPad, with each panel containing interactive and animated scenes that directly related to the story.
With the prose and plans for each panel in place, the company’s graphic artist, Walter Krudop, added the wonderful images, and the production team completed the visual, aural, musical, animated and interactive components. The next step was to choose a narrator. The team wanted a celebrated mom, one who had a background as a leader, because calling a strike would require the heft of an authority figure.
It’s easy for creative developers to fall into the trap of insisting on a trained actor to read their story. Naturally, you want the quality of the narration to match the quality of the app and the story. Yet a trained actor might not draw attention to your app or have the background to storytell around the app. Therefore, just as designing, coding and building an application take some creativity, so does selecting a voice for the app. For “The House That Went on Strike”, Jumping Pages rocked the house with its selection.
John Casey with Congresswoman Pat Schroeder during the recording of “The House That Went on Strike.”
Former congresswoman Pat Schroeder is not only a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame, but is a former presidential candidate, the first mother to serve on the US House Armed Services Committee, and the former CEO of the Association of American Publishers. Schroeder was literally a “house mom,” and her memoir, 24 Years of House Work… And the Place Is Still a Mess, was a complementary metaphor for the Jumping Pages story.
She was the perfect choice not only because of her background, but because she excels in narration and has since received numerous plaudits for her work. Finally, she helped to provide multiple storytelling tracks.
One way to storytell is to find something in the news that relates to a component of your app. By anyone’s standard, members of the US House of Representatives didn’t get along too well in 2012, and its low approval ratings and ongoing negative headlines bore that out. As a former member of this esteemed body, Schroeder had firsthand experience dealing with that rancorous House. In fact, she had suggested that one way to get the representative body to work together was to call for a House strike.
Using that angle, prominent political publications in the US, including the National Journal and Roll Call, wrote articles about Schroeder’s narration of the app and how its message could help the US House become more orderly. As Roll Call reports:
“Schroeder said she used to dream of leading her colleagues on a strike against “the messy House” they created and hopes that the house in this story will inspire Congress to take similar action. “They oughta strike,” she said about Congress’ ongoing fights in the Roll Call article.”
As book app developers know, the market is exploding. Some book apps are quite fancy, with a lot of interactivity, animation, and even videos and games embedded within. “The House That Went on Strike” contains interactivity, sounds and animation that relate directly to the story. And that is the difference. It’s a storybook first, and it’s important for this story to be told.
After leaving the House of Representatives, Pat served for over 10 years as the head of the Association of American Publishers, representing the top publishers in the US. Thus, she provided an authoritative voice about books and was recognized as a leader in the publishing industry. Furthermore, she could lend a stamp of approval about a book app, particularly one targeted at children.
While most parents have to weigh the pros and cons of downloading a book for their kids on an iPad, Pat could offer reassurance that the app was just fine for kids, provided that it was a storybook first and that any additional components of the app tied directly to the story. Consequently, she penned a blog post in the Huffington Post’s books section titled “A House Grandma’s iPad Story,” which spoke at length about her experience working on “The House That Went on Strike” and offered insight into how books should be produced for the mobile format (it’s even perhaps a must-read for developers who produce kids content for the mobile platform).
Furthermore, Pat’s experience in the industry helped the app get featured in Publisher’s Weekly, the bible of the publishing industry.
Most stories have a lesson, and indeed most apps do, too. “The House That Went on Strike” provided a lesson not only for kids, but for their parents: treat your home with respect. And while newspapers, magazines and blogs about the home traditionally feature decorating and “fashion” tips, the Jumping Pages team worked to create a story angle about how the app could help families come together to take care of their home.
The result was a nationally syndicated newspaper column by prominent home columnist Marnie Jameson, which appeared in over 30 newspapers in the US, including the San Jose Mercury News (the newspaper of Silicon Valley), the Denver Post and the Orlando Sentinel. The headlines from across the country, chosen by editors of the papers, ranged from “House on Strike: All Must Pitch In” to “Pat Schroeder Narrates a Book on Keeping the Home Tidy” to, appropriately enough, “The House That Went on Strike.” The story even made Marnie’s year-end “Lessons Learned in 2012.”
The “House” teaches a lesson!
Indeed, the “The House That Went on Strike” was a lesson in successful storytelling. The app generated dozens of media stories about several storytelling themes. The book app, and the slew of publicity around it, helped Jumping Pages secure work for a soon-to-be-released animal app for kids by a prominent animal expert, and a groundbreaking app for kids related to the entertainment industry. In addition, the company plans a sequel to ride the success of the original “House” production.
Storytelling is fun for kids, adults and the media, and it can be fun for app developers, too. When promoting your app, remember that it’s not always about the final product, but perhaps rather about something indirectly related to it. The best brands sell to you by telling stories around their products. Similarly, “The House That Went on Strike” became a media darling and a hit on the strength of its heartwarming storytelling. As a media success story, the “House” cleaned house!
Deciding on the story for your app will require some careful thought and creativity. The first rule of thumb is to find a story that will resonate with a very specific niche audience, and then determine the optimal time to launch the app along with the story.
For example, the app KillsWitch, which makes it easy to entirely eliminate your ex’s presence from your Facebook timeline, was launched this past Valentine’s Day. Why? Simple: the developers created a story about all of the lonely and scorned lovers who seek revenge for their plight on the day traditionally celebrated for love. The app’s story had a clear demographic in mind, and it allowed the media to take an opposing angle for stories around the holiday.
Here are some other tips to keep in mind when crafting your app’s story:
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© John Casey for Smashing Magazine, 2013.
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