CEP Senior Projects - Class of 2008
The Senior Project is the culmination of a student's work in CEP, and it is required of all CEP students to graduate. Every student develops and carries out a Senior Project, with the support
and approval of a faculty adviser. The Senior Project can take the form of a refinement of one's best works, a research paper, an account of a study abroad experience, a work of art,
a community organizing project, a contribution to the future of the major, or any worthwhile expression of the student's commitments, values, or direction. Below are the senior projects abstracts
for the class of 2008.
EDUCATION
Leea Brady
Local Linkages: Increasing Farm to School Awareness at Orca Elementary School
Students at Orca elementary school have identified a need to be more involved, more intentional and more aware of the food choices in their school. They want to know what they are eating, where
it comes from and how it impacts their bodies. This project strives to expand the knowledge of the Farm to School [F2S] and local food movements with students, as well as within the larger Orca
community. Farm to School is defined as the procurement of local foods by school systems in order to provide fresh, locally grown produce to students who attend public schools. This movement aims
to improve student nutrition, by providing health and educational opportunities that will last a lifetime, all while supporting local farms (www.farmtoschool.org).
Many of the teachers, parents and volunteers within the Orca community make a concerted effort to bring their goals of environmental and social justice, as well as garden and nutrition education
into alignment. Orca's curriculum works to explore the connection humans have to the planet and fosters an understanding and appreciation for the environment.
This project seeks to provide a means for students to explore some of the issues and to gain a better understanding of what Farm to School can mean for themselves and for their community. By working with students in grades 4-6, knowledge of both the Farm to School and the local food movements will be furthered through reading, writing, guest speakers and field trips. Over the course of the semester, students will work together to produce two deliverables: the first, a school newspaper which will teach students, parents and teachers what they have learned, the second, an in class presentation and cooking demonstration to a class of fellow students. These projects will aid in educating the broader Orca community as well as serve as a supplement to the educational goals set out by Orca's staff.
Michelle Burce
Teaching Community Cultural Development
Community cultural development (ccd) is a broad term covering an enormous range of activities that give communities the opportunity to tell their stories, build their creative skills, and be
active participants in the development of their culture. Drawing on my experiences in community-driven theater and the knowledge gained from a quarter-long research project, I created and am
teaching a course this spring titled "Community Cultural Development: Art and Performance." In it, students are learning about the practice in the context of needing to complete a small-scale
community art project in ten weeks, deriving theory from practice and applying in-class learning to their experiences working with a community. My project tells a story of where art, education,
culture, community development, and collaborative practices interconnect, and how this impacts educators, students, and the greater community.
Mark Ferrin
HERE: Legitimizing Bioregional Education
Upon graduation from the UW, how many students know the difference between the Cascades and the Olympics? Or that the Duwamish flows into Elliot Bay? Or that the Duwamish Tribe still fights
for federal recognition? What would education be like if it was more rooted in the places where it happens? My project is a collaboration with The Washington Center for Improving the Quality
of Undergraduate Education and their project; Curriculum for the Bioregion. Through a collaborative community based reading seminar, Reading for Social Change, I led a process which culminated
in the creation of a framework for a research paper and annotated bibliography that will be made available to students and educators interested in curriculum that cares about HERE.
Patrick Robinson
Learning, Public Knowledge, and Individual Behavior
This is an effort to better understand the relationship between the acquisition of new scientific knowledge and the subsequent application of that knowledge in relevant fields. Scientific
understanding of our world is constantly expanding yet our behavior can often take significant amounts of time to adjust even with this new understanding. This changing of behavior is especially
relevant with today's questions around sustainability and global climate change. The general western paradigm is operating on assumptions that we know today are wrong, yet is persists. New methods
of learning are examined here in search of a more efficient and holistic transfer of information from academia to professional realms and the general public. Working for the most part with the
(broad) assumption that a more knowledgeable individual will make more informed decisions, key shifts within the western paradigm and within individual behavior is discussed. Finally, this
research and discussion is used as something a lens to evaluate work done with the City of Seattle within a volunteer based environmental restoration program. The administrative side of the
program is evaluated on the learning it facilitates and the possible improvements it might make. The volunteer aspect of the program is, qualitatively, discussed in regards to individual decisions
and priorities.
ENVIRONMENT
Sam Keller
Caring for Place: Getting hands dirty for the Pacific Northwest outdoors
In the age of technological connectivity people have lost an important connection to the outdoors. People are moving faster than ever before, and our local environments are being overlooked. This project facilitated a time and a space for people to slow down, get their hands dirty, and connect with damaged environments. Through a positive experience of creating and nurturing green spaces in the Pacific Northwest this project seeks to build a healthy connection between people and local environments that is grounded in physical connectivity, curiosity, and respect.
Ruth Lee
Demonstrating the Financial Benefits of Sustainability through Carbon Footprinting
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports state that we only have a few years in which to stabilize our greenhouse gases (GHG) before we experience irreversible affects of climate change. In the past, business has shown a tendency to rally its skills, talent, and resources to meet great challenges, especially when there is money to be made. Imagine how the business community will benefit by leading the climate revolution through showing how they are thriving by "greening" their supply chains, operations, products and services, to encourage others to join the bandwagon. This senior project will help a company take the first step, understand their GHG emissions through a carbon inventory to help business see where their emissions are coming from, know where inefficiencies are, help set benchmarks for further reduction and find cost savings to their bottom line. Using a tool based off the World Resources Institute, and data from energy and waste bills, and a commuting survey I create through Survey monkey will help capture the emissions of the whole firm in the year 2007 in terms of energy, waste, materials and transportation. Analyzing the carbon footprint will help the business understand which areas have the most inefficiency and will help to create a list of actionable reduction strategies to meet their GHG reduction goals.
Lexine Long
An important tool for community based restoration: Ideas and expansion of the Seattle Urban Nature Interactive Habitat Map
It often seems in our modern, highly urbanized world, people are less connected to the natural world around them. Many Seattleites cannot name five native trees around them, or differentiate between native and non-native species. This project explores the power of community stewardship in their local forest, community mapping, and the value of knowledge about the surrounding natural world. The project consists of both background research about these topics, as well as working with an organization that is committed to implementing these values. Seattle Urban Nature (SUN) is an organization that is "dedicated to enriching the quality of life in the Puget Sound region by engaging communities to improve urban forests." They work to provide the scientific data and information about urban forests for local citizens, community groups and government organizations to use in restoration and stewardship. SUN has mapped and inventoried all of the vegetation and habitat types on Seattle's public land. Out if this information they have created an online habitat map that shows the composition of native and non-native vegetation and the sites where ecological restoration is currently occurring. The map has the potential to be a very useful tool to the forest stewardship community in Seattle, to inform local citizens about the environment around them, and to inspire them to take care of it. The work with SUN includes case studies of similar projects with the intent of learning from the successes and failures of other projects, and recommendations for expansions and improvement of the features on the map. In addition, a write up on the historical vegetation of Seattle will be produced for the website, so users will be able to understand the change in the landscape over time, and be motivated to take part in the stewardship and restoration of the surrounding ecosystems.
Rose Thornton
Duwamish Valley Visioning
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has," said anthropologist Margaret Mead. The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC) is one such small yet diverse group that is changing the face of Seattle and setting a standard for urban river cleanup for the world. My work with the DRCC supported the Duwamish River valley community visioning project, a hands-on effort to enrich the Duwamish corridor's community, economy, and local ecosystems as the Duwamish River undergoes a major cleanup. To this end, I researched the communities that DRCC works with, assembled informational posters, served as a link between Cindy Updegrave's CEP 302 class and the DRCC as the class researched issues relevant to the Duwamish corridor's future, worked at the visioning workshops and synthesized all of the data collected on workshop maps into four master vision maps. My ongoing work with DRCC involves writing a document that explains our methods and deliverables to other groups looking to replicate our process. The various pieces of my work for DRCC connect under the overarching goal of ensuring effective communication between the EPA, polluters, and the communities that live, work, and play in the Duwamish River Valley.
Regina Wandler
Envisioning Clyde Tree Farm
I have worked with Clyde Tree Farm (a local, family owned 150 acre tree farm of which I am a director) to plan for the future and increase community trust and dialogue. As part of this I have initiated an envisioning process, collecting of all of the shareholder's ideas, hopes and concerns, culminating in a document where I tie these visions together, articulating common elements and a possible pathway to overall satisfaction. I am also examining new economic options for the tree farm, especially FSC sustainable lumber certification. Last but not least, I have involved several other shareholders and led a collaborative authorship of a new 10 year Forest Stewardship Plan. While carrying out these elements of my senior project, I have followed a model for encouraging sustainable positive community dialogue.
DESIGN
Dan Ciorba
Impact of 'Green Design' in Libraries: Energy efficiency, Cost, and the Ability to Serve Clients
With all the hype of green design, it's not completely clear if it actually makes much of a difference. My research is driven by one important question: is it worth it? By comparing and contrasting two, relatively new branches of the Seattle Public Library (one identified as being Green Design and the other not), I will determine the significance each library has on its community. The Ballard branch is considered by experts to be a Green Design building while the Montlake branch is simply just a newly built library. Once the community impact has been established, I will add energy efficiency into the equation and determine if the Green Design is worth cost and effort to build a library that is considered to be a Green Design. The methods that I've been using are mainly research and on-site data collection. My main research has been conducted at the Central Branch Library and through information found at the Libraries for All office. Is Green Design worth all the hype?
Noa Ginger
The Experience of Crowding and the Design of the Urban Space
As urban population continues to grow, planners are increasingly promoting density as a solution to numerous urban disorders. At the same time, however, citizens worry that their quality of life will be threatened by these new forms of density. In this project I look at one important aspect of this debate: the experience of crowding. Specifically, I investigate two questions. First, I examine the difference between the concept of density and the concept of crowding; and second, I explore how urban design elements can affect or mitigate the experience of crowding in the urban environment. My findings focus on several critical design elements and the way they have been used and misused in the design field today.
Jesse Griebel and Sarah Ashleman
A Design/Build Project in Guatemala City: More than a Playground
Sarah Ashleman and Jesse Griebel will discuss the processes of the UW Landscape Architecture design/build in Guatemala City Autumn 2007 by focusing on how to study the effects it had on the community for whom it was built. Using their experience and knowledge gathered during the 10-week project in Guatemala as a case study, they will examine the values and intentions behind their team's design. They worked in partnership with a pre-existing non-profit organization named Safe Passage. It operates several schools in an impoverished zone of Guatemala City where disadvantaged children are given education while their parents work in the Guatemala City Landfill, the largest in Central America. Parents collect materials found in the dump to sell for recycling in order to make a living while the children stay at home or attend the schools of Safe Passage.
Sarah and Jesse's group was in charge of phase two of a four phase master plan: designing and building a playground for the preschool. First, they collected input from the parents, teachers, and children in the community. Next, they spent three weeks creating three different design schemes for review. After receiving feedback they proposed a final design. Their team spent the next six weeks of the program constructing the playground, aided by foreign and local volunteers from the community.
The intentions of the design/build were directed toward providing an opportunity for play therapy, interaction with nature, pride in space, and safety in play. Sarah and Jesse will explore how the team in the third phase of the Guatemala design program can conduct a post-occupancy evaluation. Focusing on contemporary research, they will illustrate potential methods for evaluating how closely the playground met its intentions.
Valerie Porter
Community Design: Building a Better Community
Have you ever tried buying a gift for someone you didn't know? I have and it's difficult. It's a struggle because you don't know what the person likes or needs. The same goes for some designers and developers. It's complicated designing a space when the users' needs and wants are unknown. Community based design helps simplify this process by letting designers and developers know what users would to see or need in a space.
The motives of this project are to examine the advantages of bringing designer(s) and users together while striving toward a common goal. This project will also discuss the affects community based design has on a neighborhood and the members that live in the community. To clearly show the benefits of community participation in a design setting a case study of a design project in Seattle, WA in the International District will be illustrated. The case study will explore working with a group people from all ages, as well as dealing with cultural and language barriers.
Hussein Rehmat
The success of MCDO: McDonald's in Paris
SOCIAL ACTIVISM / MISCELLANEOUS
Shannon Goodwin
Cartography: place-making and alternative mapping projects
Maps serve to organize our conceptions of space and the relations within space, between socio-political structures and the environment. As informational tools, they serve to structure our thoughts, constraining and enabling various modes of relations. They are necessarily partial- we must choose what information to include/exclude, how to represent that information, and at what scale. My project explores alternative ways of representing space and the possibilities that arise from alternative mapping projects. Through participatory action research and self-reflexive experiential exercises I chart my personal journey through ways cartography can serve as a restorative process for individuals and communities, making the invisible visible, determining the boundaries of "place," and helping to (re)establish connections between people and their lived experiences.
Trisha Rasmussen
Purple Hearts: Connecting UW student-athletes to the community through service
In an effort to create long lasting relationships between community organizations and the University of Washington athletic community, I have developed a partnership program- Purple Hearts to help facilitate volunteering efforts. This program is incorporated into the current community service program that exists within the Athletic Department. Upon evaluating the current structure of community service involvement in the Athletic Department, I recognized a need for a structure that would provide more meaningful and committed student-athlete volunteer experiences. In Purple Hearts, each UW team is paired up with an organization within the community to work with and serve throughout the year. The goal of the program is to connect student-athletes to the community through service and support. Highlighted in my project is the work of the Track and Field team with their community partner Bryant Elementary. Purple Hearts aims to create more meaningful experiences for teams and organizations by establishing relationships that extend beyond a one time volunteer event.
Maddie Spiller and Tiffanie Matsumoto
Housing for Who(m)?
The University District is one the fastest growing urban centers in the city of Seattle. With condo conversions rampant and transit coming, the neighborhood that has traditionally housed UW students is becoming more and more appealing to the young professional population. Both the city and University of Washington plans associated with the U-District focus on workforce and faculty housing, making the area even more attractive for a slightly older, slightly better employed sort of Seattleite. As apartment buildings are converted to support this workforce housing focus, the rental stock is dropping and rent prices are increasing at an astonishing rate. Simultaneously, dorm prices continue to increase and financial aid can barely cover that cost. How will students continue to afford to live where they study?
Our project aims to give students a voice in the U-District neighborhood planning process for the first time. By hosting a series of on-campus affordable housing forums, developing a website for students to gain access to community meetings, and distributing a student housing survey, we intend to secure significant student representation, as well as promoting transparency and better communication between local government planning, the University of Washington, and the community.
Sheri Weir
Mobility Education: Better Thinking to Move the Next Generation
Today, Seattle and the nation are facing crises of climate change, urban sprawl, traffic congestion, health and safety. These problems can all be related to our dependence on the car. There are measures being taken through planning and technology to reduce the necessity of a personal vehicle, but what if a difference could be made before the behavior is established? The Mobility Education Foundation is working to raise awareness of alternative forms of transportation through a revised curriculum of the current driver's education course, incorporating coursework on busing, biking, and being a pedestrian alongside traditional motor vehicle operations and regulations. My part of the project is to help bridge the gap between members of the community and the goals of the Mobility Education. I am working to supplement the curriculum and the movement through community outreach and education. Specifically, I am helping design a recurrent e-newsletter and interviewing the teens (and their parents) that have completed our recent pilot course in Federal Way.
COMMUNITY
Adam Brown
Outreach
CEP has struggled to maintain a consistent effort to perform Outreach. As a result, few people know about CEP. There is a need for a more concentrated outreach effort; thus, I proposed forming a new committee within the current committee structure, a committee that's focus would be upon outreach. My project is attempting to create a sustainable structure within the Outreach Committee, in order to create a valuable resource, not just for the CEP program itself, but to also create additional learning opportunities for students within the CEP community; all while helping to promote CEP, and inform the uniformed.
Clayton Christopherson
Branding CEP
Beyond the creation and maintenance of a wonderful program such as CEP lies its presentation. Introducing the major to prospective students, as well as to all others who wish to understand CEP, involves many different elements, one of which is the program's visual identity. Identity design, or branding, creates a face for a group or organization that often acts as a first impression, using logos, typefaces, and other design elements to communicate something about that organization. Realizing the absence of a unified CEP identity, this project set out to develop one. Utilizing a consistent visual vocabulary throughout various materials (stationary, website, outreach materials), the purpose of this identity is to accurately convey the attitude and values behind CEP, while simultaneously presenting it as a mature, professional program of study.
Miya Forrest
Pioneering Issei: Remembering Japanese American Pioneers of Washington State
This senior project records and publishes the histories of first generation Japanese immigrants who settled in the greater Seattle region and played key roles in laying the foundation of Seattle's Japanese American community. The project took shape through personal interviews, historical research, and collaborative article editing. The final articles will be published in the North American Post, a Japanese American newspaper distributed throughout the Pacific Northwest. The articles are intended to provide supplemental histories of Japanese pioneers of the Pacific Northwest that are not available in other texts. They are also critical tools for sharing verbal histories that will soon be lost as first and second generation Japanese Americans may not be able to share very much longer the early histories of their families with younger generations. These articles may also be used both by the Japanese American community and larger social and educational entities to teach about the contributions of Japanese Americans to Seattle.
Matt Keat
Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival
Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Network and the Community, Environment and Planning (CEP) program look forward to partnering once again to put on this years festival. Both share a dedication to their communities and to activism. This will be Hazel Wolf's 10th Annual festival and the second year that it will be held on the University of Washington's campus, May 1st-4th 2008. Holding the festival at UW has allowed the festival to be more accessible and hopes to reach a broader audience. This visibility and the importance of this festival's message have compelled me to take the coordination of CEP's involvement on as my senior project. Hazel Wolf and CEP look forward to having a festival that is full of diverse filmmakers and media sources. Our attendees range from scientists, to students, teachers, professors, advisors, community members, activists, politicians and many more. We intend that this festival will be an ongoing fixture at the University of Washington and that CEP will continue its commitment to the festival and to community activism.
Christine Winckler
Zero to Website
There are scores of technical manuals on how to design and develop websites. Books that go further than the technical aspects into measures of quality and best practices are also very available, but they are for design firms with large budgets. As a result, individuals working on web projects have little guidance beyond technical training. I decided to fill that gap by exploring best practices for creating websites and compiling them in a step by step guide called Zero to Website. The guide will help the little guy evaluate and meet the communication needs of a new site during the creation process. In my presentation, I will cover the challenges inherent in creating websites and practical tools for overcoming them without breaking the bank.
PLANNING
Jason Airey and Peter Dane
Developing Community
After a three week trip to Russia Peter Dane and myself were inspired by Russian Dacha communities to apply their design in the United States. The communities in Russia are primarily used as summer cottages and primarily focus around gardening but we noticed that many attributes the communities held were capable of being used in new urbanism development. This project has become a feasibility study of using Russian Dacha housing as a means for new urbanist development in the United States. We will look at the evolution of new urbanism and how it has transformed to designing and building for strong communities and how the Russian Dacha fits in to that.
Ching Chan
Preservation of Historic Associations in Chinatown/International District
Historic associations of Chinatown International District are currently facing threats of deteriorations, mainly due to the lack of participation of their members. The goal of my project is to research, through interviews with association members and a formal exchange with Vancouver, BC Chinatown, the different ways and efforts community planners can better preserve the physical (building structures) and symbolic state of these historic associations. Through better understanding of the values and significant roles these associations hold in the community and the nature of their functions, planners can assist the community in preserving the culture and activeness of these associations. And since many buildings in Seattle's Chinatown International District are owned by these different associations, the wellbeing of these associations may highly impact the overall vitality and dynamic of the community.
Monica Le, Tom Eyler, Erin Harris
Harris Magic Bus System: Filling the Gaps in Transportation from Home to Hub to Heart
The purpose of this project is to conduct background research for a pending patent called the Harris Magic Bus System (HMBS). The HMBS serves to facilitate two key goals, to promote transit oriented development and support growth management. This new system will augment the current transportation system by filling the gap between home and transportation hub, wherein the current system falls short. The HMBS will use a system of autonomous vehicles and will be controlled by a regional coordinating software system. It is a personalized transit solution that is automatically and dynamically flexible in real time, through use of the remotely controlled and automated vehicles that will complement the existing system.
The automated vehicles have a huge advantage over the current options for transportation regarding reductions in harmful emissions, overhead costs compared to the current systems, and have the potential to become a sustainable money-generating entity that benefits both the residents and the city.
Using quantitative data analysis, our research was constructed of technical information which already existed, but was analyzed with relationship to the HMBS. Our team took three core topics integral in conceiving the HMBS as a viable and sensible means of bridging the gap in current transportation strategy and solution problems. We focused on the current transportation issues and needs, land use policies and route services, and reservation and payment methods. Research was legitimized if it was applicable either to the patent, which was filed in April 2008, or applicable to future partner candidate presentations.
Lilia Peng
Mapping Development: The Evolution of Development Theories and Models
"Development" is a concept and field with many differing viewpoints. This project seeks to clarify the often confusing debates and hypotheses within development discourse by outlining the evolution of major development theories and paradigms over time. Significant shifts have occurred in development ideology in terms of goals and discourse, actors, and the relationship between the state and the economy. There has been an increasing recognition and inclusion of non-economic factors in defining and measuring development, namely quality of life indicators (education, health, employment, etc.) and concepts of choice and freedom. Additionally, the field is seeing a steady shift from top-down, state-centered policies and programs to bottom-up, locally-directed, and community-centered work. Within development economics, the relationship between the state and the economy has changed from significant government intervention and protectionism, to free market policies with minimal government involvement, to the current realization that good governance is important for sustained economic growth. These trends in development discourse and policy ultimately point to the expansion of the field to include matters of social, cultural, political, and historical concern beyond just economics. Future directions in this field will hinge upon the ability of governments, international institutions, civil society organizations, communities, and individuals in melding together these complex factors into new, and hopefully more effective, development ideas and actions.
