"Dancing in the Dark"- Springsteen

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I will be working with Professor Emily Cox Pahnke, Jefferson County community members, community cooperatives, organic farms, local bookstores, maritime education centers, and community youth and elderly programs to promote coastal environmental education for sustainable development through art and engineering. During a social entrepreneurship honors class with Professor Cox Pahnke over winter quarter, I developed a biochar incorporated cement composite and a structural wave-dissipation design. For this endeavor, I aim to produce a two part community engagement process. First, to produce and implement a sculptural installation made from the biochar-incorporated composite I created last quarter and an accompanying infographic to be hosted at the Nordland General (community cooperative), Finnriver Farm and Cidery (local, organic farm and certified B-corp), Imprint Bookshop (small business), the Community Boat Project (non-profit), and other local collaborators. I have already acquired the materials for the design through supply donations and fundraising efforts, and have confirmed installation hosts, as well as further volunteers to host depending on their availability throughout spring quarter and into the summer. Second, to prepare a lecture series for community youth and elderly programs such as the Puget Sound Voyaging Society, Sunfield Education Association, Jefferson County Library District, and Northwest Maritime Center.

Coastal erosion is an issue that has faced my community with a rapidly expanding and accelerating concern, both historically and directly in my lifetime. I am from Marrowstone Island, Washington, an organic agriculture and mariculture-based community that has long been at the forefront of community and environmental sustainability and endurement. They have collaborated with universities for agricultural studies, built tiny homes with recycled material to establish affordable or free housing, written grants for land conservation, held mini Tractor Days and art markets and polar plunges and backyard triathlons (where the oldest competitor is 103 and the youngest is tucked in their parents backpack, working towards their 3rd birthday), and they've directly partnered with the Jamestown S'klallam, Port Gamble S'Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribes, WSDOT , the US Navy, and the North Olympic Salmon Coalition for a groundbreaking engineering project for the re-establishment of our open waterway in Kilisut Harbor. They have positively impacted salmon, oysters, clams, orcas, algae, eel grass, you name it. And in spite of all of that, they are losing their homes, their place of work, and their livelihoods to the seas or to the expense of challenging maintenance as a result of them. With that, so too goes their ability to continue such profound environmental and communal impact. That was the inspiration for creating a composite and design for a coastal erosion barrier capable of adsorbing microplastics, sequestering carbon, preventing chloride-induced corrosion as seen in concrete barriers, and wave-dissipation rather than redirection.

But after the journey to create a viable composite, after many iterations of stakeholder interviews throughout that process, I was taken back to the root of what I had hoped to accomplish. I want to open the pathways my community inspired in me, I want to stoke multigenerational education and early introduction of holistic scientific empowerment. Implementing (one) open-community, hands-on lectures and discussions and (two) visual education landmarks to promote coastal education for sustainable development allows me to facilitate emphasis on the integration of environmental, social, and economic dimensions for sustainable practices and thought processes at all levels of the community.

I view service as tied to a direct act. It can be a repetitive act, such as serving at a food bank, distributing feminine healthcare packages, landscaping for elderly community members, or volunteering in a multitude of ways. However, I think of community engagement not as a singular act or repetition of an act, but as something greater, a series of collaborations that add up, contributing to one overall value set- whether that is environmentalism, raising awareness for an invisible disease, or advocating for elderly care. Community engagement is listening, hearing the needs of the community, and bridging the gap between systemic change and individual action. That doesn't produce one direct act, but a series of diverse collaboration, questions, answers, revisions and re-approaches. Community engagement, to me, is creating a process or a network of processes of trusted, synergistic problem solving that produces lasting results.
Being exposed to community service and engagement at an early age by participating annually in Earth Day clean up through school and riding clubs, I furthered the concept into my daily habits of clearing debris on every walk, be it on the sidewalk to class, a mountain summit, or on the beach. As a teenager, working alongside kids with developmental and physical disabilities as a therapeutic riding instructor exposed a deeper connection to serving others in my community. Assisting in caring for my grandfather with Alzheimers not only enlightened my listening and patience, but produced an incredible gift of percipience. Experiences from my youngest years, amalgamated with shared knowledge from my elders, continues to shape my perception of service. I hope to continue weaving this ethic of care, responsiveness, and collaboration into every aspect of this proposed experiential learning - grounding service in both action and understanding.

There's a reason I waited until my senior year to complete my second experiential learning application: I endeavored to highlight the culmination of my skills, passions, and technical learning from my experiences with UW, and re-engage them with my community that made it all attainable.
Throughout my college career, I completed two studies abroad through Engineering Italy and Social Entrepreneurship India (international engagement), multiple independent research inquiries of composites and glaciers and art movements (research), volunteered my time and skills to rebuild and restore Port Townsend's tall ships and Washington's first ocean-going outdoor school that facilitates a sustainable maritime education that inspired me in high school (service), and lead as a mountaineering program staffer for mountaineering instruction, glacial rescue education, and team building (leadership). These were all invaluable experiences in shaping the lifelong learner that I am today. However, I aim to use my second and final experiential learning activity to create long-term, systemic connections. I view service and community engagement as vehicles for reciprocal growth- a chance to reinvest in the community that empowered me while still continuing to learn. Promoting coastal environmental education for sustainable development through art and engineering integrates my work in social entrepreneurship, environmental engineering, and science communication while furthering multigenerational sustainability education and empowerment.

In working with community cooperatives, local business, non-profits, environmental education initiatives, and other Jefferson County community hubs for accessible, holistic scientific empowerment that serves more than just the communities immediate concerns and inspires a lifetime of education around evolving climate-related needs, I hope to strengthen my ability to manage complex, interdisciplinary projects and to grow as a communicator in bridging public understanding with technical research and innovations. My proposed two-part community engagement process will demand skilled time management to reach diverse deadlines and goals, repeated and intentional stakeholder communication and feedback, honed public speaking and science communication, and considerate intentionality throughout the iterative and community-based participatory design process. I have centered my college career on studying how landscapes shape people and people shape landscapes, collective memory, and innovation, which is reflected in my classes surrounding global social entrepreneurship, sustaining free societies, in-situ and geographical information system modelling of ecosystem resources and stewardship, enhanced natural remediation systems, community-based snow science, and environmental design. I want to use this experience to guide how I will center my professional career. I aim to lead public-interest science initiatives, to deepen my roots in my own community through lasting educational and environmental impact, and to integrate experiential and community based approaches into the technical training in being an active civic member that has been my undergraduate education.

I feel incredibly thankful to have grown up in- and grown with- a community deeply ingrained in connection, endurance and shared investment in diverse causes. I discovered engineering- and with it the ability to apply myself to that intersection of individual action and systemic change- later in my "career" as a community member. Early on, my community inspired me with examples of collective values and inspirations and introductions to systems I would come to deeply care about- such as maritime education, women's rights, medical advocacy, affordable housing, and environmental resilience and conservation. However, for much of my youth, individual action felt as if it was tied to existing services, as something reserved to be led by adults or community leaders. That realization shaped my approach to this community engagement project. I want to promote access to knowing your own impact. I want to instill in my audience that everyone is a community leader, capable of actioning service and community engagement- of tying science, art, or any field of human endeavor to impact in both niche and broad systems alike. Using unique perspectives to catalyze change. So, yes, I am intricately a part of, and fond of this community. I am shaped by its values. And as such I am able to navigate the myth of action and engagement, to spark multigenerational empowerment in an iterative, inclusive, and accessible way.