The Green Blogger Competition is the brainchild of Bob Haslam, director of the Quality Writing Center here at the University of Arkansas.  Bob sits on the One Book, One Community committee, which chooses a particular themed book for all entering freshman to read.  Last year they choose Colin Bevan’s No Impact Man, a sustainability themed book of one man’s experience to live a life of voluntary simplicity.

The committee changed gears and picked a different theme for next year’s reading but Bob believed the issue of sustainability was too important to let go.  He approached the OCS with the idea of getting a competition together to keep the sustainability dialogue going, to keep students interested, to promote research, to bridge departments and offices, to promote a systems based approach to addressing the complex issues of our times, and, of course, to help students improve their quality of writing.  To achieve these goals, Bob wanted to use WordPress as the medium, and, thus, the competition was born.