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NAVIGATING THE GLASS CLIFF – LIVED EXPERIENCES OF WOMEN SUPERINTENDENTS IN WASHINGTON STATE
Get PDFThis qualitative, phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of women superintendents in Washington state, focusing on how they navigate leadership challenges, particularly during times of organizational difficulty or transition. Despite women making up the majority of the education workforce, they remain significantly underrepresented in superintendent positions. This study aims to uncover the unique strategies and approaches women leaders employ when confronting complex educational and administrative challenges in their districts. This research seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between gender, leadership, and organizational crises in educational administration. The findings aim to inform policy and practice, support the development of more equitable and inclusive leadership pathways, and provide valuable insights for aspiring female leaders in education
Modeling the tracking and prediction of grape phenology using machine learning
Get PDFAccurate forecasting of crop phenology is crucial for time-sensitive farm management decisions and for implementing mitigation strategies to reduce yield and quality during suboptimal conditions. In grapevines, phenological development involves complex interactions between environmental factors and cultivar-specific physiology, making prediction inherently challenging. Traditional process-based models rely primarily on growing degree days (GDD) derived from air temperature alone. For each cultivar, these models require independent parameters, typically derived via regression. While fairly straightforward, this approach makes assumptions about the simplicity of crop phenology, overlooking other influential factors that may affect the exact timings of the phenology cycle.Our work distinguishes itself in three main ways: i) we leverage expanded weather data inputs (i.e., air temperature, relative humidity, dew point, precipitation, and wind speed), ii) we replace the traditional process-based approach with a gated recurrent unit (GRU), and iii) training and prediction for different cultivars are handled by the same model. Using a 20-year dataset spanning 20 grape cultivars, our model outperforms GDD-based baselines in predicting budbreak, bloom, and veraison growth stages for grapevines. Furthermore, a post-processing step is introduced to generative adaptive confidence intervals for stage forecasts, offering users a quantifiable measure of prediction uncertainty
Ag Sounder, October 2025
Get PDFIn this issue of the Ag Sounder newsletter:Free Soil Health Samples opportunity for farmers and ranchers in Washington• Hedgerow Planting Workshop - Oct 25th• SW Washington Grasslands & Grazing Photography CompetitionVeterans Conservation Corps Internship Opportunity• SWWA Food Hub Fall Harvest Boxes - Available from Oct 2nd - Dec 11th• Update on Early Blue - Conservation Grazing Demonstration Site• Withywindle Valley Farm Lamb Harvest & Butcher Course - Nov 8-9 or Jan 17-18• Reimagine Wool Digital Poster Contest - Entries due Jan 1, 202
Ag Sounder, September 2025
Get PDFCovered in this issue of the Ag Sounder newsletter:Paint and Learn - Sept 20thSW Washington Grasslands & Grazing Photography CompetitionWhole Farm Planning - Sept 22nd - Nov 3rdGlobal Agritourism Conference Scholarship Application - Due by Oct 31stWSDA Local Food System Infrastructure Grant Applications Now Ope
Post Disaster Recovery: Rebuilding Sustainably After Natural Disasters
No full text"Design theory establishes the intellectual and ethical foundation through which designers interpret, question, and construct the built environment. It extends beyond aesthetics to address the social, emotional, and moral dimensions that shape how people experience spaces. Rittel and Webber (1973) first characterized “wicked problems” as challenges without definitive solutions, issues embedded in interdependent systems of human and environmental relationships. Within this framework, design theory becomes a means of ethical navigation, guiding practitioners through complexity by emphasizing empathy, context, and responsibility.Design operates at the intersection of creativity and consequences. Every design decision, material, spatial, or systemic, reflects an ethical stance on what and whom the built environment serves. Theories of design ethics emphasize that spaces must support well-being, dignity, and agency rather than mere function. Understanding theory through this lens allows designers to engage with global issues where urgency and sustainability coexist in tension. Among these, sustainable rebuilding after natural disasters stands as a compelling example of how design mediates between short-term survival and long-term resilience.Through theory, design transcends its utilitarian role to become a transformative force that restores meaning, fosters equity, and cultivates adaptability. It positions the designer not only as a problem solver but as an ethical actor within ecological and cultural systems. Grounded in this understanding, design theory becomes an evolving practice of inquiry, reflection, and care; One capable of rebuilding both structures and the social fabric that binds them.
Exploring Wicked Problems Through Design Theory: Poverty
No full textDesign theory is what guides designers to create and evaluate design using principles, concepts, and methods. Constantly creating newer designs, as a future designer it matters because it will help with improvement in design to better the built environment. Not only making it look pretty but using sustainability and other elements for a better future. When it comes to designing, the choices made reflect the values and principles designers have; these will have a huge impact on the way they see problems and design for people. According to “The Psychology of Design: How Design Influences Perception” stated that theory influences how we perceive design by helping us understand the design, design process, and the design artefacts. By using design theory, it can help analyze solutions for shelters amongst people living in poverty. This is by focusing on spaces that support occupants' well-being. Theory can help with finding different techniques to implement in the design, like; welcoming environments, community integration, adequate ventilation, and affordable and sustainable materials. Within design, there are many problems that have no solutions but can always be improved, seen as wicked problems. Poverty, for example can be seen as a wicked problem there are many people who are living in poverty that don’t have a place to stay. That is why the design in shelters is important, to better their situation. This paper will define what a wicked problem is, values/beliefs, boundaries, and responsibilities designers have
The Microbial Link Between a Ruminant and Its Habitat
Get PDFMicrobial interactions provide critical functions such as nutrient processing in host-associated environments (e.g., the gastrointestinal (GI) tract). Indeed, the mammalian expansion into herbivory was facilitated by the development of diverse gut microbiotas capable of metabolizing recalcitrant plant complex carbohydrates such as cellulose and lignin together with the evolution of Gl tracts comprising fermentative compartments housing these microbiotas (e.g., cecum, rumen). Along with herbivory came exposure to plant secondary metabolites (PSM) produced by plants to defend against herbivory and protect against environmental stressors. In addition to being toxic, PSMs can limit food digestibility thereby reducing the quality of the diet. In response, mammals produce GI and liver enzymes to degrade these toxins; however, host degradation of PSMs is energetically expensive and may shift nutrient allocation away from growth toward detoxification. Through an interdisciplinary effort including captive animal husbandry, experimental trials, microbial ecology, and pharm-ecology, we found that the microbial communities of three species of deer (Alces alces, Odocoileus hemionus, and O. virginianus) were influenced by nutritional characteristics at different scales. We found that large scale differences in geographic region, thus large-scale dietary selection, significantly influenced the microbial diversity and community composition – more so than the GI organ sampled. At a finer scale we found that natural diets, and the nutritional quality of the natural diets, also influenced microbial communities, but in different ways for mule and white-tailed deer. Finally, at the finest scale, we found that certain purified PSMs influenced not just the microbial community of deer but also impacted their behavior and physiological responses. Host-microbiome interactions influence wildlife populations and communities by directly affecting the survival and reproduction of wild herbivores and indirectly the predators that feed on them. Although the network complexities associated with consumption of PSMs are poorly understood, they likely impact these ecological processes. For example, PSM exposure may compound effects of other environmental stressors such as temperature increases, pathogen exposure, and landscape changes among others. Additionally, physiological stress as evidenced by thermal tolerance, metabolic activity, or behavioral changes may all be linked to this process
Youth Participatory Action Research: A Promising Strategy for Preventing Opioid Misuse
Get PDFThis is a research brief describing youth participatory action research, evaluation findings of an opioid-related project, and related recommendations
DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A SMART CROP STRESS MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR APPLICATIONS IN CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENTS
Get PDFCrop stress management is important in controlled environment agriculture as stress can lead to lower crop productivity and potential yield loss if not detected and addressed early. Current strategies to manage stress often need highly trained workers and control procedures and rely on intuition and expertise. This study introduces a prototype of a real-time and automated decision-support system for mist-based chemical applications to manage plant stress at the plant level in controlled environment. The system consists of three modules: an RGB imaging sensor module, a control module to operate and process the data in the cloud, and a sprayer module to apply the chemical solution. The imaging sensor module captures images of a group of plants, which are sent to the cloud for segmentation, mapping, and stress analysis. We performed an experiment on peas (Pisum sativum L.) by inducing nutrient-related stress, referred to as Dataset 1, and contains 386 healthy and 124 stressed crops. We used YOLOv11 algorithm to generate individual masked images of plants and a neural network classifier as the decision-making model for each image. If stress is detected, the microcontroller initiates a spray application. Our segmentation and detection model has achieved a high mean average precision (mAP) of about 93% while the decision-making model’s accuracy reached around 81% on Dataset 1. We also trained a classifier to explore applicability of the developed system in other crops using a publicly available dataset. We achieved an accuracy of 91% using a dataset of images (Dataset 2) of lettuce grown in vertical farming, comprising 1162 images of healthy crops and 768 images of stressed plants. The abiotic stress conditions in Dataset 2 included chlorosis, tip burn, and wilting. These results demonstrate a viable and adaptable approach for early, precise, and automatic plant stress control, which can be integrated into controlled environment management to optimize operations and, consequently, crop productivity and profitability