Education Commons^™

Phylogenetics: A Catalyst For A Biophilic Revolution?, Holli N. Watne

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

A biology framework in Environmental Education can inspire biophilia, the love for the complex array of lifeforms on this planet, in students. In this paper, a simple, multi-scaled phylogenetic tree is presented to express such a framework. When viewing life from a framework such as a phylogenetic tree, the human species is seen as just one part of something vastly complex. This view is contrasted to another framework, more anthropocentric in nature, that seems to be more typical in the developed world. Challenging students to view the role of humanity from a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, framework can lead to …

How To Make An Orchestra Alone: A Critical, Experiential Performance Of Ben’S Year In The Mountains, Ben Kusserow

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This paper shares the hour-performance traveled from the boat house to the middle of the dam on Diablo Lake, WA. There were two distinct activities in each of the four sections. In each section, Ben shared a story from his year in the NCI Graduate Residency program. He then engaged the audience in some critical thought leading into an activity.

Eating Is An Act Of Learning; Eating Is An Act Of Love, Annah Young

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Environmental Education should exist to address injustices in our world, be they social or environmental since the two rarely exist isolated from each other. Environmental Education should exist to unite people, transcend social boundaries, and bring about solutions to shared socioecological challenges. One of the most pertinent socioecological challenges we face today revolves around our food system. We now have an opportunity to change our education system to reflect the current reality of our food system and reimagine a future where all communities have control over the cultivation, production, and distribution of the food on their plates all while treading …

Education For Wholeness: La Womb De Mi Labor, Ginna Malley Campos

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Conventional education teaches and reinforces disconnection from ourselves and disengagement from the world. This presentation considers power, privilege, and the act of listening in educational settings and identity development and explores the importance of holistic education for transforming self and society. Through a personal journey that interweaves the complexities of colonial history, heritage and identity with spirit and healing; we invite all to engage inwardly with the suffering implicit in our existence in order to reconnect with the wholeness that enables our shared journey towards healing.

Inextricably Season 1, Episode 1: “Now What”, Adam F. Bates

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This is the transcript of a fictional weekly podcast called Inextricably, performed in front of a live audience at North Cascades Institute’s Environmental Learning Center in North Cascades National Park in March 2017. The author outlines and examines the personal themes and seasonal cycles throughout an entire graduate school residency, a Master’s of Education in Environmental Education offered in partnership with North Cascades Institute and Western Washington University. A search for the purpose in the way information and knowledge is transferred, a sense of disillusionment with traditional models of education, and the unexpected learning outcomes of this experience are the …

Uniting Passions: The Transformation Of A Teacher, Emily Baronich

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This presentation explores the formulation and evolution of an educator through the lens of mathematics, formal and informal settings. It leans on personal experiences, self- evaluation, and the process of developing a dream school that exemplifies environmental and mathematical learning.

Holding The Center: Story And Community, Emma E. Ewert

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Stories are fundamental to our experience of being human. They help us to make meaning from our lives, and to construct and understand our identities. Although we sometimes struggle to define story in words, we easily recognize when a story is present. This capstone does not present an ultimate definition of story, but rather a series of ideas and patterns that are most commonly found in story. In particular, it says that most stories contain protagonists who overcome a series of obstacles to achieve a final goal and find a meaning or moral behind a series of events. Through examining …

The Making Of A Naturalist, Joseph Loviska

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The purpose of this work is for you, the reader, to be sufficiently informed, entertained, and inspired that you find yourself reaching your own hands down into your soul, or your soil-filled gut, or the soles of your feet or your over-stuffed brain – wherever it is that you keep the meaning of your life — and press with your thumbs to make room for a new seed. Through story and poetry, I will use my own life as a site of inquiry to illuminate the educational structure and purpose of ideas around ecological identity. I see that dominant Western …

Being, Fxminist, Aly Gourd

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This presentation explores various expressions of voice, arguing the importance of defining and implementing a feminist [fxminist] perspective to inform a cultural shift in how we work to communicate truthfully, resist fear and violent oppressive systems, and find hope. A variation of the following was presented as a capstone presentation in March 2017 and has been reconstructed to reflect aspects of the speech and activities as well as an analytical orientation to the capstone.

Querencia, Sasha Savoian

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Querencia, where I am are strong from. Querencia, translated literally from Spanish to mean “beloved place”. It informs identity, it gives us a place of belonging in the world, and it roots us to a particular memory experienced through landscape. It is as broad as it is narrow, but it inextricably links us to a literal or metaphorical landscape we call home. Querencia is a place where we know exactly who we are. It is often a physical location, a landscape, but it may also be a movement of music, a perfect wooden chair, a lyrical linking of words in …

Faith And Environmentalism: A Personal Reflection, Jessica T. Davis

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This paper was presented as a culminating capstone project at North Cascades Institute as required by Western Washington University’s M.Ed. program in Environmental Education. Guided by seven themes, this paper seeks to demonstrate the connection between Faith and the environment. The seven connections explored include the following: prayer and meditation, peace, food consumption, seasons, material consumption, taking care, and fellowship. While environmentally responsible decisions may not necessarily be a top priority for all people of Faith, religious beliefs and Spirituality may influence some to develop a deeper connection to the environment. Although this paper is a personal reflection, focused on …

Truth Grounding Education, Zachary Lundgren

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The following is a transcript of an oral presentation delivered at the Environmental Learning Center in Diablo, Washington in March of 2017. It explores wisdom shared by personal relations to the author that relate to education and education systems. It takes a critical stance on education systems and celebrates learning as a fundamental human act.

Braiding Identities In Nature Through Preschool, Hannah E. Newell

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Preschool is an age when many things are yet to be discovered. This capstone presentation engages the public in what free play in nature is like. Often as adults, we lose our ability to think with our imagination first. Preschool aged children can lose this ability as well if they are not allowed the time to explore freely. More importantly, they can lose the opportunity to develop a sense of place making it less likely that they will feel connected to nature. It is also pertinent that children of this age are introduced to the many differences and similarities that …

The Greater Unconformity, Emily Ford

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

In recent light of sexual harassment cases going unaddressed at Grand Canyon National Park and other public lands, there is a need to call out the persistent social, political, and economic structures that allow such acts to occur and go undocumented and unaddressed. A thorough explanation of geologic unconformities, especially the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon, is used as a seamless metaphor for a lack of space for women in the outdoors. This graduate capstone presentation includes an exploration of the gender binary, feminism, the geology of the Grand Canyon, the nature of unconformities, intersectionality, and ecofeminism. In conclusion, …

Klipsun Magazine, 2018, Volume 49, Issue 01 - Fall, Samantha Frost

Klipsun Magazine

Our roots define who we are. Of course, that definition is loose. Some think of it as our core values, our history or our home. Others interpret it as an unseen network that grounds us and helps us grow. Undeniably, roots shape the stories we must tell. I invite you to explore your definition of roots as you dig into the pages of this magazine. In this collection of stories, you’ll find a struggle for preservation, unlikely friendships, and reflections on our innermost convictions. Each story expresses the countless ways to define roots. We all face trials and tribulations, but …

The Planet, 2018, Fall, Emily Stout, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Runaway Slave Advertisements From Loyalist Newspapers Of The Maritime Colonies, Sarah Elizabeth Chute

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The end of the American War of Independence prompted thousands of Loyalist refugees to flee the United States. 30,000 went to the Maritime colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, bringing with them roughly 1,200 enslaved people. The newspapers founded by these Loyalists include advertisements for runaway slaves. These advertisements reveal the presence of slavery Maritime colonies and explain the nature of slavery there. Comparisons between these advertisements and those from other British North American colonies complicate the traditional understanding of Canada as a land of freedom for many black people. Significantly, these advertisements also bear witness …

Conceptual Metaphor And Its Role In The Composition, Performance, And Consumption Of Music, Loren Natario

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An analysis of conceptual metaphor (as described by George Lakoff) within the field of music discourse. I examined specific instances of conceptual metaphor and extrapolated to draw conclusions regarding patterns of reasoning and conceptualizations of music as a whole. Despite my observations of conceptual metaphor being limited to the English language, I argue that there is a degree of universality of these conceptualizations (at least within the domain of Western music) and provided evidence of similar conceptualizations outside of the English language. I also argue that significant changes in musical aesthetics in the 19^th and 20^th century can …

Deblurring Images, Jamie Mcmullen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Let the matrix B be a blurred version of a sharp image represented by the matrix X. Given B, we would like to recover X.

To accomplish this, we construct linear models of the blurring process that produced B from X. The idea is that we could then reverse the blurring to reproduce the original image.

For example, if the blurred image satisfies

B = CXR^T

for some invertible matrices C and R, then we could recover X as

X = C-¹B(R^T)^-1.

However, the blurring model …

An Examination Of Hippotherapy As A Tool To Deliver Physical, Occupational, And Speech Therapy, Madison Leidig

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This research paper aims to answer the following questions, 1) how is hippotherapy used as a form of speech, physical, and occupation therapy, and 2) is it an effective method of treatment. This will be done by describing each aspect of hippotherapy and how it can be an essential form of rehabilitation. Hippotherapy is broadly defined as the use of a horse’s movement to facilitate physical, occupational, or speech therapy. While hippotherapy is becoming increasingly popular, it is not yet viewed as a mainstream form of therapy. There is still limited research on hippotherapy, and because it is not used …

Klipsun Magazine, 2018, Volume 48, Issue 04 - Summer, Alyssa Evans

Klipsun Magazine

Change is inevitable. Through actions ranging from small to large, change comes upon each of our lives every day. But while change is inevitable, positive change is not. This magazine is dedicated to the changemakers, those who take the time and effort to make positive changes in the lives of others. A changemaker comes in a variety of forms. A childhood that inspired a lifetime of kindness. A high school student who has dedicated their time to activism. A tribe who advocates for safer living conditions of orca whales. All are changemakers. I encourage you to challenge yourself to recognize …

Window: The Magazine Of Western Washington University, 2018, Volume 10, Issue 02, Mary Lane Gallagher, Office Of Communications And Marketing, Western Washington University

Window Magazine

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Academic Writing Into The Advanced Chinese Class, Li Wang

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

How to incorporate academic writing into the Advanced Chinese Class? My mini-study explores how to balance the grammatical aspect with the writing train in the fourth-year Chinese class. By dividing the argumentative essay into a beginning, a main body and a conclusion parts, students can practice how to write an argumentative essay step by step. By including revision into the writing process, students get more opportunity to reflect and rewrite their writing.

Peer Editing As Learning Tool, Warren Cornwall

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

Structured peer editing of student writing provides a valuable tool for teaching writing concepts and skills. This write-up describes a detailed process for teaching and using peer editing in a journalism class. The goal of the peer editing is to help students understand and apply concepts and skills used to craft engaging and informative news stories, and to develop skills providing and receiving feedback about writing.

Incorporating Exploratory Writing Assignments For An Intermediate Nutrition Class, Claudia Wang

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

Several exploratory writing assignments were developed and implemented in a 300 level nutrition class based on the Backward By Design Strategy. A weekly written reflection assignment was analyzed, summarized, and reflected for its strengths/weakness. Strategies were identified to use this assignment in the future better.

Improving Mba Students' Ability To Do Financial Analysis, Claire Lending

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

I restructured my graduate class, MBA 541, Managerial Finance with a focus on the core concept, company value maximization. The course was structured around assignments where the students would do research on a specific company for the whole quarter. These almost daily assignments all focused on value and I would specifically ask the students to make “refutable statements” on how the company was adding or detracting from value due to their financial decisions. The combination of frequent low stakes assignment and the explicit connection to value enhanced the students’ learning and improved class atmosphere.

Scaffolding Writing Assignments In Introductory Art History, Monique Kerman

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

As a result of my participation in WWU’s Backward by Design retreat in 2017, I sought to modify the written assignments of my introductory Art History course for pre-majors in order to better prepare students working towards a lengthy research paper. In course evaluations and anecdotally, students reported being intimidated by the size and scope of the final paper, and asked for more writing practice. I decided that instead of requiring a high stakes research paper as the culmination of the coursework, I would scaffold assignments throughout the course that would eventually lead students to composing a thesis around which …

Consensus To Co-Create Curricula And Build Community, Nini Hayes

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

This project was about using consensus to co-create curricula and build classroom community. I worked with students to narrow their study of focus to two concepts, Neoliberalism and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. This co-creating and buy in from students really encouraged them to be present and find the course relevant to their work as environmental educators.

Using Reflective And Meta Writing Practices In English 101, Michelle Runyan

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

This study examines the ways in which a low-stakes meta, reflective, and reflexive writing assignment has the potential to help students better understand the writing that they do in the classroom. This assignment allows students to think through threshold concepts in the course, to question course concepts, and to think through the areas they are struggling with. Additionally, students are encouraged to think through their own writing process and how the skills they learn in the course might transfer to other courses. Finally, it allows the course instructor to examine their course curriculum and to adjust lesson plans based on …

Course Revision Using Backward By Design, Rita Daniels

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

The purpose of this mini-study was to redesign a Research Methods in Communication course using Backward by Design (BbD; Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The first stage was to identify the desired results for the course and the second stage was to determine acceptable evidence for the desired results. The third stage was to plan learning experiences. Results of the study indicated that students found assigned course work to be challenging but the effective teaching of the course content, the relevance of the course to communication studies, and the instructor’s contribution to the course made the course overall worth taking. Having …