Journey: Communication, Collaboration & Career: Thinking the Thesis Beyond the Bounds of UEP
By Amber Siegel ’24
In the Spring of my first year I began working with PangeaSeed, an arts-science non-profit, as their grant writing intern. While it wasn’t a position with which I had extensive experience, they offered me the opportunity to learn on the job, while gaining valuable exposure to the interdisciplinary world of art-science communication (see Image 1 for an example of one of their art-science murals). As someone who has long been drawn to the arts, having earned a Bachelor of Arts in studio art with a concentration in environmental studies at Kenyon College, I was thrilled at the opportunity to experience the intersection of art and science in a professional setting.
As I pondered my thesis topic, art-science communication felt like a natural fit. Courses like Cities and Community Resilience afforded me the opportunity to explore the arts in an academic setting, introducing me to topics such as creative placemaking and broadening my understanding of the intersection between community engagement and education via public art. Between my coursework at UEP and my experience working with PangeaSeed, it became clear that art-based science communication provides a promising tool for educating, inspiring and motivating audiences regarding climate change, including from a policy and planning perspective. Despite this, there is a lack of clear evidence regarding the cognitive, affective and behavioral impacts of public art, an evaluation gap that must be addressed if the creative communication practice is to grow.
Image 1. Title: The Last Island, 2017. Located in Napier, NZ. URL
Co-Design & Deliverables
To address this evaluation need, I focused my thesis on developing a framework to evaluate the learning outcomes of PangeaSeed’s public murals in Boston, MA. Given my research focus on PageaSeed’s murals, and my ongoing work with them, co-developing my thesis with PangeaSeed seemed both fitting and beneficial. As active practitioners in the art-science communication space, they were able to provide tangible insights into specific evaluation needs based on their lived experience. For example, the team was able to provide feedback regarding the types of metrics they would like to capture and assess (e.g. climate knowledge, emotional response, future action), their assessment capacity (i.e. ability to administer a survey) and more. While their insights were invaluable, our collaboration required me to practice reflexivity to ensure my work was not overly influenced by their specific needs and desired outcomes. This primarily involved tracking their input and my own reflections via journaling, as well as conducting a robust literature review to inform both the research and outputs in a more comprehensive manner.
Ultimately, we co-developed the Art-SE (Art-Science Evaluation) Framework, which includes user-facing materials for evaluation development and execution, along with survey materials for data collection. While the Art-SE Framework was created with PangeaSeed in mind, it was developed in a manner that makes it adaptable, supporting use by other art-science practitioners. The framework includes several components (link to all materials):
- Evaluation Checklist – Ensure all elements of evaluation are considered from the outset and incorporated throughout the project.
- Impact Categories Diagram – Capture standard categories, and sub-categories, to be assessed across projects (see Figure 1).
- Logic Model Worksheet – Track standard project information, as well as intended inputs and outputs.
- Outcomes & Indicators Worksheet – Identify outcomes and indicators based off of the outputs established in the logic model worksheet (see Figure 2).
- Methods Toolbox – Comprehensive collection of potential assessment methods, and the inputs, outputs and capacity required.
- Survey (draft) – A sample survey, ready for use, to lessen the burden on practitioners.
Figure 1. Streamlined categories to ensure valid cross-project comparisons. The categories should be used when considering & setting intended outcomes, while subcategories aim to provide deeper insights.
Figure 2. Outcomes & Indicators worksheet, which supports the development and identification of appropriate data collection tools. Blue text is a mock-up, intended to act as a guide for users.
My thesis did not produce a finding, so much as an applied, replicable, and practitioner-oriented research method. While I hoped to pilot the framework during my thesis work to produce more conventional conclusions, my advisor Kate Davies indicated that this was too large a project for an MA thesis. Instead, she encouraged me to consider this thesis as the first part of a longer work trajectory that would extend beyond the UEP program. In other words, a thesis does not have to live within the vacuum of an academic experience, and ideally contributes to our work beyond. In many ways this took some of the pressure off, as it allowed me to frame my thesis not as a self-contained, finished piece of work, but a portion of what could be a career’s worth of research.
Career Relevance
Fast forward to today: I have graduated and am now working as the River Restoration Project Manager for Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA). Upon joining, and as early as my job interview, I openly expressed my interest in art-science and its potential for community engagement and education. Lucky for me, CRWA was supportive of my interest and encouraged me to participate in creative approaches as appropriate. A few months into my job, our Executive Director forwarded me a grant opportunity called Edible Watertown, which aims to showcase Watertown’s local environment via arts-based installations, activations, and community engagement events. I applied to the grant as a potential scientific partner to an artist counterpart and was accepted into the program. Much to my surprise and delight, I was paired with Sophy Tuttle, a local artist whose work I had featured in my own thesis, given her previous collaboration with PANGEASEED (see Image 2, sample of Tuttle’s work with PANGEASEED in Boston). Over recent months we have worked together to develop our project proposal, including via meetings with other CRWA staff members and Indigenous advisor, Hartman Deetz, who is Masphee Wampanoag.
Title: Fear, 2021. Located in East Boston, MA. Developed in partnership with John Mandelman, head shark research at the New England Aquarium. URL.
Our proposed project revolves around developing a public mural along the Charles River, proximal to Watertown Dam, which CRWA has advocated to remove. The mural will feature imagery related to Watertown Dam, its historical significance, current environmental impacts, and the benefits of potential removal. We intend to incorporate imagery highlighting Indigenous experiences with Watertown Dam. While the artwork will focus on CRWA’s ongoing work in Watertown, it will also afford me the opportunity to pilot the framework I developed in my thesis, taking my UEP work beyond the bounds of my degree and into the professional realm. From the beginning, PangeaSeed and I hoped that this framework would benefit their organization as well as the wider industry, contributing to an evidence-based understanding of the ways art-science communication supports pro-environmental behaviors. Once piloted, we will have a better sense of the framework’s ability to assess the efficacy of art-science work, which will in turn help us equip practitioners with more dynamic and accessible communication tools for addressing climate issues.
Read the full Master’s Thesis here: The Art of Science Communication: A Framework for Assessing the Efficacy of Learning Outcomes Conveyed via PangeaSeed’s Public Murals in Boston, MA
Find Theses Honorable Mentions, Nominees, and winners from past years at the UEP Exemplary Thesis Library.