SUMMER QUARTER
FHL 492 ECOLOGY & CONSERVATION OF MARINE BIRDS AND MAMMALS
MARINE BIOLOGY MINOR REQUIREMENT
This course at the UW's Friday Harbor labs gives students an oportunity to do learn about marine biology in a classroom, take fieldtrips, and conduct independent research on conservation of marine birds and mammals. This course satisfies part of my marne biology minor requirements, and was an amazing opportunity for me to gain hands on experience working in the marine science field. During this course I took trips on UW boats into the Salish Sea, collected and analyzed data, and came up with a research project that related to conservation of marine birds and mammals. My team and I conducted research on flight direction of birds in the afternoon. Read more about my research here.
ESRM 489 Costa Rica Study Abroad
METHODS CREDIT
During the Early Fall Start term of 2017 I studied abroad in Costa Rica. The course associated with this study abroad trip is ESRM 489. The main focus of this course is learning about how modern society and the natural world interact with each other, and the impacts of modern society on the natural world. During this program I developed my Spanish language skills, which had significantly deteriorated since I last took it in high school. I also learned an incredible amount about the biodiversity in Costa Rica and how ecotourism is affecting the natural landscapes in Costa Rica, as well as their culture and economy.
For more information on my Study Abroad Experience, visit my Outside the Classroom page.
For more information on my Study Abroad Experience, visit my Outside the Classroom page.
AUTUMN QUARTER
BIOL 220 Introductory Biology- Physiology
This is the final course in the introductory biology series. BIOL 220 focusses on plant and animal physiology. It was exciting to take this class and complete the introductory biology series as well as further develop my understanding of biology. I was originally going to take FISH 270, a similar course that focused on physiology of fish, but decided to finish the introductory biology series instead because it is more generally applicable.
CEP 400 Governance
For my last fall quarter in CEP, I continued with communications for my committee. I have learned so much from this committeee, and wanted to stick with it to teach what I have learned to people who are new to the committee, and to learn even more. This quarter I co-facilitated the communications committee with Kiana Ballo, another CEP Senior. A lot of things go on fall quarter, but becuase of all the turn over involved in welcoming in a new cohort, there is often a slow start, my goal for this quarter was to start it as strong as we ended it, and overall we did a pretty good job of that.
CEP 300 RETREAT
This retreat was one of the first opportunities to really get to know the new Junior cohort, and I am really enjoyed it. Last fall quarter's retreat was a great experience for me, and I felt very welcomed by the senior class of 2017. I wanted to make the incoming junior class feal just as welcomed as I did. I also wanted to take the time retreat provides to reflect on my undergraduate career and to prepare for my last year as an undergraduate student.
CEP 460 PLANNING IN CONTEXT
This course was completely project based and taught me not only about planning, but also about group work. My project was developing a social media strategy for the City of Tacoma's Planning and Development Services department. We had a team of eight students who throughout the quarter worked with our client, researched best practices, looked at case studies of similar social media accounts, and created a report of recommendations and guidelines. You can read more about the project here.
CEP 490 SENIOR PROJECT PREP SEMINAR I: RESEARCH & PROJECT SCOPING
This course helped me get started on my senior project. It helped keep me focussed on my project and made sure I did not put off important steps. It also give me time to work with advisors on my project and get feedback early on. It was during this class that I came up with the idea for my senior project, researching why and how the University of Washington should go about planning disposable plastic water bottles. To read more about my senior project and the work I did on it, click here.
URBDP 450 Introduction to Land Use, Growth Management, and Environmental Planning
METHODS CREDIT
This course exams land use issues and relates them to their social and environmental impacts. I was extremely excited to take this course because it merges my interests of Urban Planning and the Environment. This course gave me a better understanding of how I can use urban planning to minimize negative social and environmental changes caused by development.
WINTER QUARTER
CEP 400 GOVERNANCE
I again chose to continue with the communications committee. This quarter I worked on finishing up the senior projects page on the CEP Website. I used WordPress to create a page that showcased the past senior project night posters, and publish all of the past senior projects we had on file. Each senior project has its own page, with the senior project night ad poster, the title of the project, the project's abstract, a link to the senior who created the project's peoples page bio, a link to their personal website, and if available a PDF of their final written report. To see what the page looks like click here.
CEP 461 ETHICS AND IDENTITY
CEP 461 looks at ethics across many different spheres of life, vocational, personal, environmental, etc. Part of the purpose of the class is to help the students that take it develop moral responsibility, environmental stewardship, and self-awareness. This is one of the two CEP core classes that the cohort is split in half for, and for this one we are able to choose our professor. I chose to have Mark Purcell as my professor, because I had him in two classes previously and really enjoyed his style of teaching. For this class we had nightly readings and reading assignments due before class, that helped us prepare for the in depth discussions on ethics that we had in class. This is one of my favorite classes I have taken during my time at the University and I think it is because I learned so much from Mark and my peers.
CEP 491 SENIOR PROJECT PREP SEMINAR II: METHODS & ACTUALIZATION
CEP 491 focuses on helping students implement their senior project and complete what they had planned in previous quarters. This was a good chance for me to reflect on what I had already planned to do, and work towards creating tangible results. This quarter is when I really started doing the research portion of my project, and completed the literature review on the social, environmental, and economic impacts of disposable water bottles on our campus. To read more about my project check out my senior thesis page!
ESRM 400 NATURAL RESOURCE AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
ESRM MINOR REQUIREMENT
This course looks at the causes and solutions to conflicts over natural resources. It was interesting to learn about these conflicts and some of their proposed solutions. We also got to participate in mediation simulations where we were split into small groups and assigned a role based on a particular mediation storyline. Each person was assigned a role and had information on the character they were to play, but did not have information on the other characters. We had to work together to come up with solutions to the environmental problem we were trying to solve, even while we had different stakes in the arrangements.
ESRM 430 REMOTE SENSING OF THE ENVIRONMENT
ESRM MINOR REQUIREMENT
This course is taught hard skills used to evaluate imagery and data in environmental applications. The course description says, "Students learn to evaluate available hyperspatial remote sensing data sources and design simple projects related to environmental applications." This course paired nicely with previous courses I have taken in GIS, and helped me learn more about the technology used in the field of resource management.
ESRM 429 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SEMINAR
ESRM MINOR REQUIREMENT
This seminar explores different professionals in the resource management field and their contributions to restoration and preservation of natural resources. I took the class to learn more about what types of opportunities are available in the professional field of ESRM.
ESRM 455 WILDLIFE SEMINAR
ESRM MINOR REQUIREMENT
This seminar discusses the research of different faculty members at the University of Washington. Some of the topics include fisheries, climate change, and monitoring of megafauna in remote habitats. I took this class because I am interested in learning about the different types of research being conducted in the field, and what opportunities are available as an undergraduate and post-grad in this discipline.
SPRING QUARTER
CEP 400 GOVERNANCE
For my final quarter in CEP I stuck with communications to make sure that I have learned as much as I can from committee time as possible. I also wanted to make sure I have given as much as I can to the major by developing these skills and then using them to promote the major. Because of a schedule conflict with my last required course for the marine biology minor, I only attended committee time this quarter and not forum. I audited this class to make that possible, so while I will still participated and did the work, it does not appear on my transcript.
CEP 300 RETREAT
This was my final retreat and was a good time for me to reflect back on my time as an undergraduate student at UW and my time in CEP. We spent a lot of time at this retreat reflecting on the work we had done within our committees this year, and it was fun to look back and see how much progress we had made. Communications did a lot of work this year and it was nice reflecting on all of our hard work! We also spent time talking about how we could implement elements of the equity plan into our committee and came up with a long list of ideas to start using next year.
CEP 462 COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT
CEP 462 was my final core course within the CEP major. The purpose of this class is to bring all of the things I have learned from CEP together, to reflect on the values of the major and the things that I have learned as an undergraduate at UW. It brought together my experiences and classes and how they relate to the core principles of the major, while also providing help and instruction for completing my senior thesis. This class also had a time conflict with my last required marine biology minor course, so I needed to audit it as well. I attended the first hour of class everyday, and left half way through to make it to my other class. To ensure that I completed all of the work and was on track with my senior project, I met with the instructor of the course and the program manager, when necessary, outside of class time.
CEP 446 INTERNSHIP
This course helped me to connect what I have learned in my CEP classes to my internship. The internship I am using for this course is my Husky Neighborhood Internship with the North of 45th Committee (read more about it here). I am choosing to use this internship because it lasted the entire school year, and combined aspects from all three pillars of CEP. This class also served as a professional development course where I learned about applying to jobs, working towards the career I want, and how to present my self and my work in a professional setting.
OCEAN 210 INTEGRATIVE OCEANS
MARINE BIOLOGY MINOR REQUIREMENT
This course is a core course for my marine biology minor. In this course I learned more about the scientific processes that affect the ocean. The class focusses on the geological, chemical, physical, and biological processes that occur in the ocean, and how they interact with eachother. A lot of the work we did was looking at budgets and flux problems based off of these process. This class is supposed provide a good background in ocean processes and be useful when continuing on in marine studies. The skills and information I gained from this class can be used when I am in graduate school or when I am working on conservation efforts.