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Becoming a Sustainable City : A Critique of the City of Kalamazoo
No full text130 p.We are all responsible to do our part in creating a better world for future generations. This is part of the reason I decided to do an internship working one-on-one with businesses in the downtown Kalamazoo area to help them create sustainability goals. That is also the reason I am writing this evaluation of Kalamazoo's sustainability practices and plans. Ultimately, the United States as a whole and cities like Kalamazoo are behind in addressing the climate crisis at the city-level compared to cities both in the United States and nations abroad. But why? What has stood in the way of protecting our only planet? That is what I will seek to answer here. Since June of 2022, I have worked with 22 business owners, presented to the Environmental Concerns Committee for the City of Kalamazoo, met with people in the City to answer my questions, and reviewed many of the City's plans, programs, initiatives, as well as researched what other cities in both the United States and abroad are doing. For this paper, I will be defining a "sustainable city" as a place that prioritizes the environment through plans and actions, where government officials and citizens work together with a common purpose. Different cities are practicing different elements of sustainability, such as green spaces, public transportation systems, clean air, renewable energy, solar panels, low greenhouse gas emissions, or ecotourism. Sustainability is not one-size-fits-all for nations, states, cities, or individuals. But the most important aspect of a sustainable city is action and whether the actions are meaningful enough to ensure quality of living for all residents (human and non-human) and limit the impacts from the city that would harm the common good of humanity. Many cities have plans to become sustainable, but a city has to be able to enact plans and work with its citizens collaboratively to become a sustainable city. The City of Kalamazoo has the Community Sustainability Plan (CSP) to become a sustainable city, going forward the City will need to enact the plan and work collaboratively with citizens. During my internship, I heard many excuses as to why a business could not commit to a sustainable goal. Similar excuses were also present throughout the CSP. I broke these excuses into four categories: time, money, authority, and priorities. These categorizations will be closely examined throughout this paper, but they generally catch the numerous reasons why a goal could not be met or an action is not attainable. By examining these categories more in-depth, we can begin to understand the reasons why Kalamazoo is behind in sustainability. Having an understanding of the answers to this question allows us to address those concerns so that Kalamazoo can become a truly sustainable city. The City of Kalamazoo is trying to become a more sustainable city but is falling short as a result of bureaucratic processes at the local, state, and national levels. Shortcomings of the Community Sustainability Plan reflect the City's challenges. Comparisons to other similar-sized cities in the United States and abroad make clear the lessons Kalamazoo can learn and how far the City needs to go to become a truly sustainable city
Effects of E-learning on Neurodiverse Children
No full text1 broadside. 48"W x 36"HChildren’s development is shaped by the people they’re surrounded by. Parents, teachers, and friends all play a vital role when it comes to a child’s social and emotional development. The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic caused a drastic shift in the education system that put children’s social-emotional skills endanger. Schools and institutions shifted to e-learning and students felt overwhelmed and confused. Although all children were struggling with online learning, the difficulty was more intense for neurodiverse children. Through a learning process, educators were able to find that using a cooperative learning approach better enhanced learning in the classroom for neurodiverse students.Kalamazoo College. Department of Psychology. VanLiere Symposium, 202
BIPOC Educational Spaces : An Analysis of Personal Experiences Working in Kalamazoo Public Elementary Schools
No full textv, 57 p.Within this paper I seek to detail and record a collective experience as a childcare worker within Kalamazoo Public Schools, as established through my personal experiences and my coworkers’ and other employees’ who have also worked and gathered experiences within similar circumstances. In doing so I have conducted informal interviews to gather the stories and experiences of those who have worked in similar spaces through the YMCA and other before- and after-school programming. That of which I will refer to by pseudonyms to protect their identities. They are as follows: Coworker at King Westwood Elementary is Jenny, Coworker at Prairie Ridge is Sam, Friend and College who works at Spring Valley is Violet, and a faculty member at Parkwood is Ms. Johnson. Through this I seek to capture the unique aspects of Kalamazoo Public Schools and the ways in which they engage and impact the children and families they serve. I plan to contextualize this collective childcare worker narrative with theory and further research that may provide understanding of said experiences and the implications they have for the children present. This process of collecting stories and recording them has provided me with new insight and perspective because it allowed me to gather both the corroborations and contradictions that shape the unique setting and experience of Kalamazoo Public schools
Building the Blocks of Kalamazoo through Asset Based Community Development
No full textiv, 46p.As a Kalamazoo native, I have seen that resources for education, the neighborhood, and the built environment have the potential to alter community aspirations and the social determinants of health. I have participated intensively in a robust community change initiative called Building Blocks of Kalamazoo. In this Senior Integrated Project, I draw upon my experiences as a summer intern with Building Blocks and combine them with a literature review from Kim Cummings, the founder of Building Blocks. I will explore how a neighborhood intervention organization, Building Blocks of Kalamazoo, may influence public and community health on a small scale (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). I use the Dahlgren-Whitehead model to explain how Building Blocks uses Asset Based Community Development approaches (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993) to address modifiable social determinants of health. The promotion of the agency of community members to strengthen social networks and enhance built environments in the neighborhood street block level, therefore, improving the community of Kalamazoo
Novisimo
No full textix, 37 p.Introducing this collection of poems and prose, the author writes “I have come to see my project not only as a capstone of what I have learned throughout my time as an English major at Kalamazoo College, but also as the product of what I have learned about myself and further internal reflection. Hence the primary title of my project being “Novísimo,” to emphasize just how new and fresh these feelings always are whenever I find myself living between two worlds. These two communities, however, both foster different senses of belonging and isolation at the same time. When I’m back home in California, I find myself being comforted by the place where I grew up, where I have known the people there my entire life who have also known me for as long as they can remember. When these people who I have spent decades with know so much about me, it is difficult to show and tell them about a change that they might not understand. In that sense, that is where community in Kalamazoo also becomes a comfort as well, where I have peers who have similar experiences and are able to express themselves much more freely and away from home, much like I have. The heart of my works reflects on the feelings that come from being split between two places, such as: homesickness, lovesickness, anger, and a sadness that yearns for the way things used to be. These sentiments are often universal, but through these shared experiences I hope they reach and resonate with many.
Magic of Choice
No full textGameMagic of Choice is a visual novel that explores the genre of anime known as "magical girl."
Popularized by shows such as Sailor Moon, the magical girl genre focuses on young girls who
gain magic powers through transformation. This game calls into question the agency of these girls,
who often do not ask for this power or the responsibility it brings.
Please read the README file contained in the Zip folder. To play the game, unzip the zip folder corresponding to your computer's operating system.This program contains free software under a number of licenses, including the MIT License
and GNU Lesser General Public License. A complete list of software, including links
to full source code, can be found at http://www.renpy.org/doc/html/license.html
Optimization of a Copper Catalyzed Cross Coupling Reaction
No full textvi, 19p.Asymmetric diyne products are particularly challenging to make because the starting materials have similar structures at the terminal alkyne. Copper catalyzed couplings of sp carbons have been used to produce asymmetric products using copper powder, chloroform, and tetraacetylethylenediamine (TMEDA) under aerobic conditions. Previous work in our group found a mix of Cu(0) and CuCl was a faster and more consistent catalyst than copper powder alone. TMEDA acts as a bidentate ligand and a medium strength base in this reaction. We suspected other bases and ligands with similar denticity and pKa’s would also favor the asymmetric product. Our goal was to address whether both properties are important for asymmetric products by screening additives which would preferentially act as a base or ligand. We chose six nitrogen compounds with varying ligand strength, denticity, and pKa’s, as well as testing three different solvents. Pyridine was the most effective base when used in dioxane solvent and without added TMEDA. In addition, ether was a safer replacement for dioxane under similar reaction conditions. We found that pKa is a more important factor than denticity when choosing conditions for asymmetric C(sp)-C(cp) couplings. In the future, we plan to test more monodentate ligands across the pKa scale and explore greener solvent options
“Finding Meaning” : A Set of Short Stories
No full textxi, 40 p.Writing has been a part of my life since I was a young girl, and my passion for it has blossomed and expanded as I have grown up; my choice to become an English major was and obvious one. Yet, my experiences with literature and written content in my courses at K have altered, improved, and curated my writing style and talent into something I can identify with and be confident in. The SIP Project, in particular, has taught me an abundance of things about the relationship between my mind and my writing, as well as a better understanding of my style and message to readers
Synthesis & Characterization of Entropy Stabilized YBCO Superconductors
No full text14 p.The nuanced causes of the ability of certain materials to obtain superconductivity, or zero resistance, are still a topic of debate. To further developments in this area of study, the synthesis and characterization of novel superconducting materials is essential. A relatively young method in materials science, entropy stabilization dopes lattice sites of a crystalline structure, which produces a large amount of electromagnetic and configurational disorder. This method has not been applied to the YBa2Cu3O7−δ (YBCO) superconductor, a well studied, high temperature, superconducting cuprate. In this paper, we present data gathered from entropy stabilized samples of YBCO using X-ray diffraction, and electrical transport. Expected results were found for Series A, whereas difficulties in finding a temperature entropy dominant Gibbs free energy for Series B led to phase impurities and insulating behaviors