North Campus Students Launch Environmentally-Focused Podcast

A group of environmentally conscious students at North Campus launched a podcast—Earthly Matters—last August to delve into the implications climate change has on the planet. 

It features six episodes; shows range from 10 to 23 minutes. 

The podcast was the capstone project for professor Yvette Lujan’s SPC 2608 public speaking course. It aims to help students polish their communication skills and acquire experience they can include on their resume.

“Students became more knowledgeable about what happens in their backyard,” Lujan said about their participation in the podcast.  “They all got a sense of, you know, ‘We either change or our fields will be altered forever.”

To start the initiative, the 24 students in the class split into groups of four to five members. Each cohort selected an environmental topic to research and they developed scripts. 

Episodes took an average of five to six hours to record and edit. But the journey toward the finished product had hurdles.

Unlike the Kendall Campus, which has a dedicated Speech and Debate lab that features three podcast rooms with equipment such as RØDE PodMics, television screens, web cameras, computers and panel-padded walls to reduce outside noise, North does not.

So Lujan enlisted the help of the Learning Resources team at North. They converted a study room on the first floor of the library into a podcast room within two weeks. 

It features multiple 12-by-12 foam sound panels, four Audio Technica microphones, an EVO 8 sound mixer and a computer with access to Podcastle, a podcasting software that allows users to record and edit conversations.

However, the room’s small quarters—it’s approximately 9-by-6 feet—proved a tight fit for the group’s four to five cast members. 

In addition, they had to use tape to keep the noise-canceling foam panels from falling off the walls. The makeshift sound-proof space made it difficult for students to record because microphones picked up echoes coming from inside and outside the cramped room. 

But despite the limited resources, the team persevered. 

“I think it went very, very well, especially for the little setup that we had,” said Edwin Gilmore, a librarian who was instrumental in creating the space the students used. “We just went for it, not knowing if this was going to work, and we made it work.” 

Episodes focused on topics such as global warming, rising sea levels, forest fires and floods and how that affects overall health and human rights.

“I think I developed many skills when it comes to speaking out loud and supporting my opinions,”  said 22-year-old Claudio Rosales, who  participated in the Fires Unveiled episode that explored the consequences of forest fires on humanity.

Ashley Ferrera, a 20-year-old student in the Honors College at North Campus, created the name and logo for the podcast—a hexagon encompassing a miniature earth with a plant shooting out and lightning signs on top. 

“Ultimately, this project is important because it gives students an opportunity to voice the facts of our current environmental state in ways that other students [can] digest,” Ferrera said.

Lujan hopes to continue the podcast next fall by creating a learning community environment that allows students from North Campus’ introduction to environmental science (EVR 1001) course to apply what they learned as they move on to her public speaking class. 

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