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Clean Slate: Restoring Our Spaces
No full textThis paper analyzes litter cleanups and climate action in Seattle, Washington, with a focus on the issue of trash pollution and its impacts on humans and marine life. It details my work cleaning Seattle’s parks, where I collected trash and recorded data on the types and quantities of litter. Using supplies from Seattle’s Adopt-a-Street Program, I was able to take meaningful action in my community. The paper discusses my inspiration for the project, introduces the issue of trash pollution, outlines my data collection methods, and presents the results of the cleanups. It concludes with key takeaways, lessons learned, and acknowledgments of the people and organizations that supported the project.
[A paper is included as a supplementary file with this page.
Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc Intern
No full textThis summer I had the opportunity to work as a Land Planning Intern with Kimley-Horn and Associates. As an intern, my role was like other analysts in the firm. I was introduced to consulting as an urban planner and given the responsibility of balancing multiple projects from both private and public clients. The public projects I got to work on this summer included: • Walla Walla County Comprehensive Plan Update • Oak Harbor Comprehensive Plan Update • Skagit County Hazard Mitigation Plan Update • Kittitas County Comprehensive Plan Update I was also given exposure to working with several private clients in development services. For these project
Municipal Parks Natural Resources Intern
No full textIn this internship, I learned that municipal park districts protect land by managing the activities that occur in a designated area. For example, BIMPRD protects lands by preventing large scale development via ownership, maintaining designated trails for park goers to recreate on, and permitting what activities park goers can do to best minimize environmental disturbance. Another part of BIMPRD’s land stewardship that I learned is that they host and manage work parties (with volunteers) and conservation crews (high school students and crew leaders) to remove invasive plants, properly dispose/compost of invasive plants, and close social trails to best result in thriving PNW habitats within the park lands. This helped strengthen my plant identification skills and removal techniques. I learned that BIMPRD takes scientific data and analysis, and public input, to provide for the future of our parks to result in the best experience for park goers and the best protection of lands possible in comprehensive planning
NOAA Chemical Sciences Lab Intern
No full textIn this internship, I engaged in instrumental science and improved my analytical and presentational skills with the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory. I worked on the adaptation of a Nitric Oxide – Laser Induced Fluorescence instrument for isotopic ratio determination and source apportionment of gaseous oxidized nitrogen species. I refined my skills in data analysis through the use of IGOR Pro, a programmatic data analysis tool, opportunities to improve my communication skills by presenting my work to my fellow interns at the Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship Symposium in Washington D.C., and opportunities to learn about the inner workings of government science. Throughout this internship, the training I received from Western Washington University allowed me to make the most of every opportunity I had
DCPS Environmental Compliance Intern
No full textDuring the summer of 2025, I had the privilege of interning with DCPS. From the outset, I assumed responsibility for managing, auditing, creating, and improving DCPS’s regulatory compliance. My biggest contribution was heading a project addressing pesticide chemical use, storage practices, disposal methods, and spill response. The overarching objective was to ensure full alignment with CDA (Colorado Department of Agriculture) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) standards and regulations
Muddying the Waters: The Effect of Disinformation on Truth Judgements and Perception of Social Consensus
No full textDisinformation may have a variety of effects on an audience. Disinformation may convince people to adopt that false belief. Disinformation may also create doubt concerning true information and lead people to be less convinced there is an agreed upon position. In this study, we examined how flooding individuals with conflicting information about controversial topics affected what they believed to be true and their belief that there was a social consensus. We presented some people with true information, some with false information, and others with a mix of true and false information. We found that individuals presented with one-sided information (i.e., true or false) consistently rated information from the perspective they were shown and had more confidence in an agreed upon expert consensus. In contrast, individuals presented with both sides were less confident in true information and that a consensus exists. Flooding people with a mix of disinformation and true information can muddy the waters, making it harder to discern the truth
YMCA of Greater Seattle Outdoor Education Intern
No full textThose five learning objectives are listed below: How to present environmental ideas/information in a way that children can easily comprehend. How to get a younger audience engaged and excited about learning about the environment. What do younger generations already know about the natural world, and humans’ role in it. What do they [children] know about climate change or the impact human advancement has had on the environment. What strategies work best to teach youth to be respectful stewards of the land i.e. following leave no trace, admiring plants and wildlife from a safe distance without disturbing them, etc
Into the Unknown: Structural and Biochemical Studies of Sortase Enzymes from Different Classes
No full textSortases are cysteine transpeptidases which are responsible for the ligation of surface-displayed proteins to the cell wall in gram-positive bacteria. The sortase superfamily is grouped into 6 classes, A–F, with each class recognizing distinct substrates essential for adhesion to host cells, nutrient acquisition, sporulation, and biofilm formation. Apart from being important enzymes to study for understanding bacterial virulence, sortases are also useful for catalyzing in vitro transpeptidation reactions, for example, the synthesis of antibody-drug conjugates. Despite their diversity, however, class A sortases remain the most studied and widely used for protein engineering applications due to higher in vitro activity and a more comprehensive understanding of substrate specificity compared to classes B–F. Here, we investigate the activity of sortase B from Bacillus anthracis (baSrtB) and its endogenous substrate, iron-regulated surface determinant protein C (IsdC). By mass spectrometry, we found that sortase-mediated ligation rates with IsdC were roughly 3-fold greater than ligations using non-native substrate, suggesting that the baSrtB–IsdC complex is driven by interactions outside the sortase recognition motif. Molecular dynamics simulations of this system identified a potential interaction with the IsdC NEAr Transporter (NEAT) domain, which may play a role in enzyme-substrate binding. Sortases A and D from Bacillus anthracis as well as sortase B from Staphylococcus aureus were also studied in silico to probe differences in substrate binding between sortase classes. Finally, we discovered that baSrtB recognizes and ligates substrates to its own N-terminus, which we predict is partially responsible for the relatively low ligation rates observed. Therefore, different protein modification techniques were employed to prevent self-recognition at the N-terminus and boost product formation rates. With this research, we aim to highlight important binding interactions outside of the sorting signal to better inform substrate design and lend insights into working with class B sortases
Jefferson County Department of Community Development Intern
No full textJefferson County has been routinely working on their Vision 2045 comprehensive plan 2025 update. To better understand what changes could be made, the county has considered outreach through survey creation to inform, educate, and gain feedback about changes being made to goals and policy. These surveys were intended to address broad areas of the comprehensive plan as follows: Land use • Economic Development • General Land Use • Rural Land Use • Urban Land Use Additional Materials to be considered: • Critical Areas • Survey Analysi
Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 2023/2024 Report
Get PDFThis report describes the results from the 2023/2024 Lake Whatcom monitoring program conducted by the Institute for Watershed Studies at Western Washington University (https://iws.wwu.edu/).
The major objectives in 2023/2024 were to continue long-term baseline water quality monitoring in Lake Whatcom and its major tributaries; collect storm runoff water quality data from representative streams in the watershed; and continue collection of hydrologic data from Austin and Smith Creeks