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City Sprouts Farm Local Food Systems Intern
No full textworked on site at City Sprouts Farm in the Birchwood Neighborhood of Bellingham, which has historically been classified as a food desert. I worked with several different facets of our local food system, including a small-scale urban farm and food pantries on campus. I spent my internship doing several tasks to wrap up the farm for the season and prepare it for winter, including harvesting and processing the last of the season’s produce, winter bed prep, and preparing other structures on the farm for the cold and wet winter weather. The goal of this program was to add to food access resources in Bellingham while teaching student interns about our local food systems in hands-on ways. I got to do this by having discussions and doing hands on work with like-minded people. I also got to learn different skills from the ones I had learned in my previous two internships/apprenticeships at this farm, because of the vastly different tasks that happen at different times in the farm season
Community Food Systems Internship
No full textDuring this internship, I continued my position as farm assistant, working with Ellie to lead other interns and help with end-of-season wrap up tasks at City Sprouts Farm. I also worked on a project for the City Sprouts website, creating a food systems resource guide geared toward WWU students who are interested in engaging with our local food systems
Whatcom Working Waterfront Foundation
No full textDeb and I work closely on the MERIS project, which is something we have been working together, along with the Executive Steering Committee and professional consultants at Maul Foster & Alongi, since last spring. The Project is in its 4th phase of development and within this phase I was tasked with ensuring all our contacts were up to date on what was going on with the project and that all our outreach activities were properly conveyed to them. MERIS stands for Marine, Economic, and Research Institute for Sustainability. Within the broader project there are 5 focus groups all tackling the different sectors of the project; these include Education & Workforce Development, Recreation, Culture, Environmental Stewardship, and Marine Economy Research and Innovation
Basking Sharks in the Salish Sea and Greater Northeast Pacific
No full textFor around thirty million years, basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) have filter-fed on plankton across Earth’s ocean. They once gathered in aggregations of hundreds (some estimate thousands) on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and individuals were common throughout the Salish Sea until an eradication program sponsored by the Canadian government in the 1950s-60s drove the species to near extinction. This paper provides an overview of the historical population data and changing cultural attitudes toward basking sharks in the Salish Sea and greater Northeast Pacific and lays out the possibilities for conservation and recovery
Unwelcome Mat: Mapping Displacement Risk--Tracking Gentrification in Northwest Washington as Land Use and Affordability Shift
No full textPopulated regions in Washington state face increasing growth pressures that present challenges for people struggling to find and afford housing. As the Growth Management Act regulates Urban Growth Boundaries in planning counties across the state, the demand for real estate within these boundaries rises rapidly. As a result, many residents face displacement pressures that force them out of their homes for economic, physical, or cultural reasons. Housing displacement poses threats to the wellbeing and safety of the community and the character of rapidly changing neighborhoods. To address and mitigate displacement, jurisdictions must first determine what areas and populations are at risk. This project uses methodology adapted from the Puget Sound Regional Council’s 2019 Displacement Risk Mapping to determine displacement risk by census tract in Whatcom and Skagit counties, the two northwesternmost counties in Washington State. It weighs 19 indicators across 6 different categories to create a displacement risk index score for each census tract. The index includes factors related to socio-demographics, transportation, housing, neighborhood amenities, employment, and civic engagement. Comprehensively identifying displacement risk helps under-resourced jurisdictions identify where to allocate resources to mitigate displacement and can help guide planning and policy decisions
Homer Behind Bars: Teaching Homer\u27s Odyssey in a Carceral Setting
No full textThe study of classical literature is often associated with elitism and class privilege. It can be difficult to study classical works in depth outside of higher education, making them less accessible to many underserved groups. This project seeks to expand access to classical literature through an 8-week course on Homer\u27s Odyssey taught in the Whatcom County Jail Work Center. Designed to promote both accessibility and deep engagement with the text, classes combined assigned readings with student discussion and activities. This project is documented through a series of journal entries and lesson plans, detailing the challenges, adaptations, and benefits of teaching classical works in carceral settings.
[A supplementary file with lesson plans is included with this listing.
Couture or Confusion: Analyzing Haute Couture Collections through Cultural Brand Strategy
No full textThis paper examines how haute couture collections, driven by abstract inspirations such as freedom, resilience, and aura, create a lasting cultural impact through Douglas Holt’s cultural brand strategy. Using case studies of Raf Simons for Christian Dior (Fall 2013), Zuhair Murad (Fall 2024), and Rahul Mishra (Fall 2024), the research demonstrates that abstract concepts can act as cultural innovations, enabling designers to break convention and deepen emotional engagement. Unlike trend-driven ready-to-wear fashion, couture’s creative freedom enables brands to convey ideologies and myths through their designs. These collections prove that abstraction, rather than confusing consumers, enhances brand equity and reinforces couture’s role as a space for artistic and cultural leadership
Ecology and symbiosis of Branchipolynoe symmytilida and Bathymodiolus thermophilus at East Pacific Rise hydrothermal vents
No full textUnderstanding ecosystem dynamics and trophic interactions are critical components of environmental conservation. The dynamic conditions found at deep-sea hydrothermal vents offer an exceptional opportunity to study, document, and describe the influence of environmental factors on ecological relationships, namely symbioses. Vent systems are characterized by intricate organism interactions, particularly symbioses, that contribute substantially to ecosystem biodiversity and can act as important moderators for organismal fitness and evolution. However, many symbiotic interactions are not well understood. One particularly important deep-sea symbiosis exists between foundational bathymodiolin mussels and the large Branchipolynoe spp. scale worms that inhabit the mussel’s pallial cavity. Bathymodiolin mussels are crucial ecosystem modifiers who occupy a wide variety of chemosynthetic microhabitats due to their unique physiology, which allows them to supplement their nutrition from chemoautotrophic gill symbionts with siphoned particulate matter. However, despite the importance of these mussels, and the prevalence of their symbiosis with Branchipolynoe spp. worms, many questions still exist regarding the details of their relationship. In this study we investigated the intricacies of the symbiosis between Branchipolynoe symmytilida worms and their Bathymodiolus thermophilus mussel at East Pacific Rise (EPR) hydrothermal vents, where the ecology of this symbiosis is largely undescribed. We used a combination of models to assess worm presence, abundance, and demographics across two biogenic zones. In tandem we conducted a comparative analysis using 16s rRNA metabarcoding to better understand symbiont worm food sources. Finally, we conducted a condition index analysis to investigate the impact of housing a worm on the host mussel’s health. We document sexual dimorphism and differential abundance between male and female B. symmytilida at the East Pacific Rise. Our observations suggest that the worms exhibit a selective affinity for host mussels within the Riftia zone. The results of our gut content analysis support kleptoparasitism as a potential method of feeding for these worms, though pseudofeces consumption is an alternative explanation. Finally, the results of our condition index analysis suggest that the impact on B. thermophilus of housing a symbiotic worm changes throughout the ontogeny for B. symmytilida and may suggest the symbiotic role of the worm shifts through development. Our study offers a valuable snapshot of the mussel-worm dynamics at the East Pacific Rise and contributes the base of knowledge surrounding the Bathymodiolus – Branchipolynoe spp. associations documented globally
Deception Pass State Park Beach Naturalist Intern
No full textA big part of the Beach Naturalist internship was working with the public using interpretive strategies. Before working in Deception Pass this summer, I was not entirely sure what “interpretation” meant. I had been to very few park programs as a kid, and it wasn’t until working with Interpretive staff that I saw what goes in to writing and creating the programs. On the first weekend of my internship during training Joy and Akiko expanded on what “interpretation” meant at State and National parks. There are a ton of different ways to think about it, but the one I like the most is: by getting someone to understand what’s in front of them you’re one step closer to getting them to care more about it. To get people to care about the tidepools at Rosario, me and the other interns had to help them understand it better
WWU Paleomagnetism Field Asst Intern
No full textMy internship this summer was with Western\u27s Geology Department, as a field assistant for a graduate student, George Meyer. George does work in Paleomagnetism, studying the magnetic fields of rocks. For this project, he was looking at Cretaceous granitoids in the Pioneer Mountain Range in Southwestern Montana. The sampling we did was with a coring drill that was made of a modified chainsaw. The chainsaw had the bar and chain removed and out from the engine a chuck was added that holds a 1-inch diameter diamond-tipped coring bit. A valve was also added on the chuck to pump water through the bit while drilling to cool both the rock and the bit, as well as reduce friction