Partnership Description
ISTEP is an international environmental communication partnership/project in which international students in higher education settings work together to formulate public awareness and action campaigns concerning issues of environmental sustainability.
The partnership/project was conceived and implemented with the understanding that environmental problems of a global nature confront all societies and cultures, and that all societies and cultures need to work together toward the solution of problems and toward the initiation of environmentally sustainable ideologies and practices. Environmental issues to be addressed may include but are not limited to: overpopulation, pollution, resource depletion, global warming, ozone depletion.
ISTEP stands for International Students Together for Environmental Protection. The meaning of the acronym for those involved is that, as a citizens of earth, will take steps in the direction of environmental problem solution.
Background
The ISTEP project evolved from a partnership exchange program between the School of Communication at Northern Arizona University and the Hanzehogeschool, Hogeschool van Groningen at Groningen, The Netherlands. The partnership allows for an exchange of faculty and students between the two institutions of higher education.
The first exchange took place during the 1998-99 academic year when several faculty from NAU’s School of Communication taught at the Hanzehogeschool, Hogeschool van Groningen for various time periods and one lecturer from the Hanzehogeschool taught full-time at NAUÕs School of Communication. During this year, ISTEP was established as the name of a project in which international students would work together to produce public awareness/actions campaigns concerning the issue of global warming for the client Greenpeace, International.