Congratulations to Our 2018 Dr. Alex Hills Grant Award Winners!

 

The 2018 Dr. Alex Hills Engineering and Civic Engagement Award

 

A couple days ahead of submitting his application for the 2018 Dr. Alex Hills Engineering and Civic Engagement Award, UAA Engineering student, Canyon Lewis, had a conversation with his uncle, a mechanical engineering graduate of MIT. They were discussing Canyon’s proposal for an Autonomous Aeroponic Garden and how this farming method could serve to address agriculture and food sourcing issues throughout Alaska in the 21^st century. His uncle had a lot of faith in the project’s potential. However, while Canyon – thanks to his training and education – could capably manage the electronics and modular-unit materials the endeavor would require, his uncle suggested the project would have the best chance of success if he partnered with a Biology major who better understood the food-production and farming side of things.

                So, when Canyon met Claire Lubke – a UAA student majoring in Biology and minoring in Engineering – a couple hours after submitting his grant proposal to the CCEL, it could not have seemed more fortuitous.

Canyon's proposed schematic for the final aeroponic system

                “UAA’s Society of Women Engineers organization (SWE) were having their annual meeting the same day I submitted my proposal. In fact, I ran to the SWE meeting from a meeting with Seeds of Change, who were supportive of my idea for the project and wrote a reference for me.”

                Canyon didn’t recognize many in attendance that afternoon, but sat down close to a friend and started making small talk with Claire, who was also seated nearby.

                “I just started talking with her because the room was filling up so quickly and I was becoming uncomfortable,” Canyon recalls, laughing, “I asked her questions about herself. She told me she was a biology major with a minor in engineering and with an interest in undergraduate research. Once she shared that, I couldn’t talk fast enough about the proposal I’d just submitted to the CCEL.”

                The rest, Canyon jokes, “is recent history.”

                For Lubke, the opportunity to collaborate with Canyon felt mutually serendipitous.

“I’ve had my eye on this grant for a few years now,” she shares, “chiefly because I’m interested in engineering as a tool for social justice and there seems a lot of potential for doing good work with this award.”

                She acknowledges that as a functional or practical career option, engineering isn’t frequently perceived or touted as a force for activism or social change.

                “I think a lot of people get into engineering without always considering the discipline’s larger implications. On one hand, it’s a reliable job or career choice. However, engineers are also responsible for designing the spaces we live in and use, and so it’s impossible to ignore the influence their work has on our lives.”

                Claire cites, for example, the work of the College of Engineering’s Dr. Dotson - an engineer on the forefront of advancing social justice by serving a critical need for rural Alaskans.

                “Dr. Dotson’s worked to design an in-home water re-use system for families in rural Alaska in an effort to help bring water to communities who don’t otherwise meet World Health Organization standards for water accessibility.” While not often an issue that receives a lot of media attention, it’s hard to think of a more pressing or community-minded use of one’s skills than insuring citizens have access to fresh water.

            “A lot of people often express they’re eager for social change – and oftentimes there’s even money and other resources on hand to fund different projects or ideas,” Claire acknowledges, “but working to address or effect change at the infrastructure and design level of things requires a degree of critical expertise.”

                To this end, Canyon and Claire’s collaboration proves ripe with possibility for Alaska and its food sourcing.



Early stages: Canyon & Claire's project beginning to take shape



                Lewis, who grew up on a farm in Northern California, has had his eye on aeroponic farming research for a while now and notes the ways it could positively impact the challenges Alaskans face in terms of food production.     

                “Aeroponics,” Lewis writes, "supplies nutrients directly to the bare root system [of a plant] through a water mist.” This process allows plants to receive an adequate supply of oxygen and water, both of which often limit growth factors with other, more conventional soil and water systems.

                As a means of growing produce, research shows that aeroponics systems "provide the ultimate environment for the health and growth development of plants." 

Canyon cites a NASA study, for example – conducted on space shuttle Mir – that “concluded aeroponic systems perform better than dirt-grown” produce. Considering Alaska’s mostly “unfavorable” soil conditions, which Lewis describes as mostly loamy, sandy, and acidic, a “dirt/soil-less” means of providing healthy foods to Alaskans seems nearly too good to be true. Among other sustainable characteristics, aeroponic systems have been shown to produced 80% more biomass weight (fruits and veggies) per square meter, while consuming 98% less water than most conventional farming methods, and reduced fertilizer use by 60%.

                In other words, as Canyon and Claire explain for the average, science-challenged layperson, aeroponics might prove a sustainable means to grow more produce in Alaska, as well as varieties of food that otherwise can seem outside the realm of reason in the northern climes.

                 “While Alaska has seen a nearly 700% increase in its population over the last seventy years,” Canyon explains, “only about 5% of the foods we consume actually comes from inside Alaska.”

                The vast majority of produce in Alaska markets, as many of us are already aware, is outsourced, arriving to us on barges. Importing these foods from out of state leads, first, to the inflated market price many of us can’t help noticing during a trip to the grocery store. And then there are other costs as well, such as damage to products during import and the loss of nutritional value and flavor over the course of transportation delays and shipping methods.

      



Vertical Hydroponic Gardening at Seeds of Change in Anchorage



                While they can’t predict, of course, how successful their aeroponics project will be, now that the award has been secured, Claire and Canyon hope to have one or two growing cycles completed before the end of the semester.

                “The growing system,” Canyon writes, “[combats] the short growing season attributed to the northern climes by bringing the plants indoors, and eliminating the need for arable land.” So, once the parts have arrived and are assembled, they expect to start growing leafy greens and other low-impact vegetables immediately.

                What it could mean for stimulating Alaska’s future agricultural production remains to be seen, too, but both Claire and Canyon couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity to discover where their projects leads them.

Kathi Trawver - Advocacy from the Heart

            As a practicing social worker in Anchorage for over  twenty-five years, Kathi Trawver regards community partnerships as “a bit of a no-brainer.” For starters, field work in the surrounding community serves an integral and practical function of her discipline. However, she also acknowledges that addressing some of Anchorage’s most pressing issues helps her attend to a more critical, pressing lifelong question: “So what?”

Dr. Trawver thinks that we each possess a “So what?” question, even if we never actively phrase it as such. Think of it as an inner-prompt that helps us identify why we think we’re here in the world – a reflective inquiry that helps us better understand why we do what we do. That “So What” leads you to pursue the work you find important and necessary. “For example,” she shares, “for me, staying connected to the community and engaged in it as a practitioner has always answered that ‘so what’ question for me.”

From early into her practice, she felt most at home helping practitioners lead clients to the necessary information, services, and resources that best afforded them a means to achieve their goals. She admits that working at this level has always felt like a natural impulse for her.

“No one should ever have to knock on twenty wrong doors to meet a critical need,” she argues, “In our work, we’re supposed to take away all wrong doors and to fill in the gaps where we find system fragmentation. So, a big part of my focus has been trying to address the fragmented system where people often have trouble connecting or talking with each other.”

Shortly into her work in the mental health field, Kathi noticed that many of her clients – adults struggling with serious mental illness – were often released from services and returning to their communities either homeless, precariously housed, or headed to jail. It wasn’t long before she noticed a trend.

“Among those suffering from mental illness, you’re often in one of three places at all times: an institution like API, in prison, or out on the streets.”

This realization, nearly thirteen years ago, led Dr. Trawver to focus her energies on the many issues relating to homelessness and housing insecurity in Anchorage. This, in turn, soon led to her involvement with the CCEL.

“My first UAA community-engaged project was working with Anchorage Project Homeless Connect(APHC),” she recalls, “I planned a variety of events with them – some of which involved social work students as volunteers assisting in the evaluation of the project.”       

One of these was APHC’s “One Stop Shop.”

“We started up the One Stop Shop with APHC as a one day event where as many of our providers as possible could set up shop at one location and people experiencing homelessness could come and get whatever they most needed at that time.” 

Community Volunteers for Anchorage Project Homeless Connect

Based on a model out of San Francisco, where it’s offered to the homeless community monthly, the APHC One Stop Shop brought a variety of services from around Anchorage to one location for a day, two times a year, offering the community’s homeless a means to get everything from a birth certificate, doctor’s appointment, and driver’s license, to a meal, a haircut, a dental referral and more.

More recently, through the CCEL, she partnered with Dr. Donna Aguiniga, two CESAs, and almost 50 UAA students to conduct a two-year project with community homeless social service providers to conduct an assertive unsheltered and homeless youth point-in-time count.

Over the past year, she’s also helped the State of Alaska Council on the Homeless conduct a statewide survey of municipal governments to determine needs related to homelessness and co-developed and presented statewide training for intake data collection for the January 2017 Project Homeless Connect events held across the state.

In addition to the above, she serves on the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness Board of Directors, Chair their Data Committee, and sits on the Alaska Homelessness Management and Information System Oversight Committee.

Dr. Trawver understands it’s not always essential that faculty come into university positions with practice experience in the community or as practitioners in the field. However, she also knows her natural inclination has always been to discover what’s most useful for practitioners on the ground. Knowing this has compelled her to bring her discoveries as a practitioner to the university, while continuing to explore what’s going to make a difference for individuals working in programs aiming to serve others.

“Even in my research, I’m not looking down, trying to carve conceptual frameworks or complicated theories about service provision. I just really want to get practitioners what they need and the information necessary to offer better services so that clients.” Almost for clarification, she adds, “Which is not to say there isn’t a need or place for more theoretical and less applied research. My heart’s just always somewhere out beyond the academic silos and in the community.”

In fact, for Trawver, community engagement isn’t an abstract idea or a subject for study “out there” in a remote setting somewhere beyond the university classroom and office buildings where she’s employed. Instead, she acknowledges that by virtue of her residence in Anchorage, “I am the community.” Rather than distance herself from the situations or needs that require the most pressing and immediate attention in Anchorage, she sees no other choice than to address them head on and from the heart.




Students from the UAA Justice System participating in Anchorage Project Homeless Connect

 

Dr. Michael Mueller: Ecojustice Begins with Awareness...& Science Prom!



Newhalen students observing birds and tracking data

I have to admit, if you asked me to define “ecojustice” prior to meeting Michael Mueller, I might have offered something about young men with big beards in Patagonia gear strapping themselves to Redwood trees to keep loggers at bay. And although there’s a time and place for people to engage in that manner, it only takes a few moments in Dr. Mueller’s office at UAA’s College of Education to set me straight.  

“Ecojustice refers to justice for both humanity and nature. Where ‘social justice’ focuses on justice for humanity, ecojustice focuses on larger matters that encompass the natural world, too.” As the ADN described in a piece focusing on Mueller’s work last year, “anthropocentric thinking -- humans as the most important species -- has been championed at the expense of the planet, for profit and personal and corporate advancement.” Ecojustice, on the other hand, strives to teach students about our species’ “relationships and interconnections” with the natural world.

And as an instructor tasked each term with training a new generation of educators who will go into their communities and challenge young people, his dual passions for ecojustice and the climate-change issues currently impacting Alaska come with an added measure of responsibility attached.  

 “In education, this interest carries over into an exploration of how we can best prepare teachers to engage students in issues specific to that ‘eco’ piece.”

Referring to it as only an “interest”, however, risks selling Mueller’s efforts short. Within the space of a few moments with Dr. Mueller, you’re magnetically drawn into a shared, deep engagement with his pursuits. His excitement for both ecojustice and education prove infectious.

It’s hardly surprising then that five years ago, Ed Lester – the principal of Newhalen School in Illiamna and then a stranger to Dr. Mueller – walked through the door of his office unannounced and proposed they work together. Lester, an alumnus of UAA who had become familiar with Mueller’s work, wanted to create engaging, science-based projects to help cultivate and foster student awareness of the environmental issues specific to their region.

“Every year, all the village schools that comprise the Lake & Penn and Bristol Bay Borough come together for a week. There are twelve schools represented in the region with close to 120 students in attendance for that week of activities together. They participate in Native Olympics and talent shows, and take all their meals together. And all the teachers and students from all the schools camp out in school for the week…” he chuckles and then adds, “It’s madness.”

Naknek Mural

When Ed approached Michael, the schools were interested in building structured academic events into their annual gathering. Ed and Michael brainstormed a variety of ways they could offer learning experiences that would cultivate learning and foster an awareness of issues critical to their lives in regions experiencing the effects of climate change, for example.

It was the beginning of a thriving and ongoing partnership that continues today.

In that first year, Mueller offered the kids workshops ranging from forensics (how to read a blood spatter), to writing and recording a PSA for local radio. That week, the students ended their week of academic focus with a dance. Mueller named the week of activities the “Science Prom.”  

In the five years since launching his first Science Prom the topics have remained engaging and far-ranging – students can take part in activities from cold water survival to building bridges; making robotic arms to orienteering with a compass; radio-tagging salmon to building and setting off Estes rockets.

Students learning forensics during Science Prom

Lake & Penn students readying to launch Estes rockets with Dr. Mueller

Readying for the big Science Prom end-of-week dance!

As an added bonus, Mueller now involves his graduate students in the Lake and Penn and Bristol Bay Borough events. Five years later, presented with twice annual science-themed intensives – one in September, and another in April – his students have become a reliable and active mainstay in the program.

But how does team-building robotic arms, studying bioluminescence, and learning how to write PSAs relate to ecojustice?

“We begin by offering the kids opportunities they don’t normally have in each of their separate, remote locations,” Mueller offers, “And we’ve worked to motivate them with memorable experiences, too. Then, by immersing and involving them in different group projects with a scientific focus, we’re involving them in group decision-making processes that could lead to further involvement.”

In the remote regions comprising the Lake and Penn school district, in which standards of living and the local economy regularly fluctuate with, for example, the market price of salmon, Mueller knows that kids need to be thinking about the impacts of local decisions on their lives and their futures.

“Consider Newhalen,” he offers, the school with which he’s become most involved: “They’re the headquarters for the Pebble Mine.”

Newhalen can learn to write and then air PSAs on their own school's radio station

The proposed mine project, of course – as no one seems more aware than Mueller – continues to prove a controversial and heated topic throughout Alaska. It's widely known, for example, that the mine could potentially impact the largest migration of sockeye salmon in the entire world.

 “We don’t go into Newhalen and tell the students what they should think about the issue. After all, from where many of them are situated, Pebble’s brought jobs to the area, they’ve paved the roads – but there’s also a noticeable tension around the issue throughout the community, too. So, our first priority is to teach the kids that as legitimate stakeholders in their communities, it’s critical that they make informed decisions. No matter what they decide about something like Pebble Mine, they need to know how to participate more fully in the decision-making process, right? So, in our work, we’re cultivating learning experiences that will give them skills to engage with any issues they’re encountering.”

            Presently, Mueller and his students are hard at work work building a bird habitat in Newhalen – an effort that will allow Newhalen youths to start collecting data on the many bird varieties local to the area, as well as the diverse migrating species. His hope is that as Newhalen youths compile data on the birds in their region, he’ll be able to help other village sites in the Lake and Penn district develop their own bird habitats. Taken together, as the region’s schools compile and exchange data over the considerable distances separating them, students will be able to close those gaps between them by sharing critical information about what birds are migrating where, how they’re responding to climate changes, and more.

            In other words, an exercise in ecojustice – providing youths with continuing, “real time” opportunities that explore and reveal our undeniable relationship and interconnectedness to the natural world.

             

Dr. Mueller will offer a presentation on his bird habitat project with Newhalen students at the CCEL's Community Engagement Conference at UAA on Friday, October 27, 2017 at 9:30am, in RH110.

- Jonathan Bower, MSW student, CCEL

Newhalen youths observing birds and recording data

Introduction to Civic Engagement - Did you know?

Did you know that?

In our CEL A292 Introduction to Civic Engagement class last fall, students said that they had made above average growth or a great deal of growth in these critical thinking skills and understanding society and culture on a scale for an end of semester survey:

• Analyzing other people’s ideas and proposed solutions. 100% 
• Contributing to a team to solve problems.86%  
• Systematically reviewing their own ideas about how to approach an issue.86%  
• Creatively thinking about new ideas or ways to improve things.86%
• Discussing complex problems with co-workers to develop a better solution. 86%  
• Seeing the relationships between local, national, and global issues. 86%   
• Communicating effectively with people who see things differently than I do. 86%  

In the same course, students agreed or strongly agreed with the following statements asking about their engagement with community issues: 

• Helped me to know about opportunities to become involved in the community.100%
• Integrating service into a college course is a very good idea. 100%
• It is very important to me to help other people during my lifetime. 100%
• Gave me knowledge and skills to address community issues. 100%
• The nature of this class helped motivate me to be the best student I can be.100%
• I will be able to apply learning from this class to solve real problems in society. 100%
• Provided me with skills/knowledge that I can use in my career. 100%
• I participated in class discussion more frequently than other classes. 86%
• Had a positive impact on my plans to complete my college degree 86%
• Would highly recommend that other students take the class. 86%
• Caused me to feel more concerned about social problems. 86%
• Appreciate how my community is enriched by cultural/ethnic diversity. 86%
• Better able to discuss controversial issues with civility and respect. 86%
• Activities provided opportunity to explore and clarify values 100%

At the end of the fall semester, one student shared with me: 

I’ve never been asked to think about who I am going to be as a member of my community. I’ve thought about who I was going to be as a teacher, but I’m graduating now, and I’ve never thought before now about who will I be for my community!

I’m proud of our students, many of whom are freshmen or sophomores and who take on completing 20 hours over 10 weeks of the semester in one of a group of community agencies that we have agreements with. And I’m proud of our Civic Engagement curriculum, which pushes students to grow in their personal, academic, and civic roles and development of a civic identity. 

Our fall classes are open now with three sections of CEL A292, one of which is online (the online class participates in activities of advocacy and marketing with social media for organizations, rather than direct service). In addition, CEL A392 offers an experience in learning about philanthropy and reviewing actual grant applications to award $10,000 to four organizations ($2,500 each) at the end of the semester, and CEL A395 is a Civic Engagement Internship with a community organization. For more information, contact Judith Owens-Manley at 786-4087 or jowensmanley@alaska.edu or visit the CCEL website at www.uaa.alaska.edu/ccel. 

Anchorage Point-in-Time Homeless Youth Count

Kathi Trawver and Donna Aguiniga, School of Social Work, created a project with Covenant House, Alaska Youth Advocates and Parachutes with their mini-grant from the Center for Community Engagement & Learning last spring semester.  Twenty-five undergraduates assisted with the project, along with a Community-Engaged Student Assistant (CESA) who supported the faculty in recruiting and training community volunteers.  Volunteers were trained to conduct an assertive point-in-time outreach count of Anchorage's homeless youth. Trawver and Aguiniga provided data entry and analysis, and presented results to community partners.

Covenant House in Anchorage, AK 

Trawver and Aguiniga described their project as follows: 

We developed this research project in response to a compelling community need (i.e., a gross undercount of homeless youth during federally mandated annual point-in-time counts) that resulted in an opportunity for approximately 25 students to become engaged in their community.   In partnership with community providers, faculty developed an outreach training and survey instrument. On January 29, 2014, student volunteers paired with an agency outreach worker conducted outreach interviews across the city over a 24-hour time-period. During the count, we helped manage a centralized deployment center, inputted all returned data, and provided support and debriefing to returning volunteer students.    Point in Time Survey for Homeless Youth 2014  Students involved in this project became intimately aware of the complex issues related to homeless youth in our community. Through training sessions provided by community professionals and formerly homeless youth and conducting community outreach interviews, students gained valuable field experience under the mentorship of professional community partners and UAA faculty.   Our team conducted more than 70 interviews of homeless youth, almost double the number who were identified the prior year! Following the event, we conducted an analysis of the data and presented aggregated results to our community partners. Student volunteers also assisted agency staff by taking part in an outreach after-party for participating youth.

Trawver and Aguiniga explained that community providers don't often have data given back to them in a way in which they can use it for effective program planning.  This project gave the community partners control over the data that was collected and allowed them to receive results quickly.  They plan a continued collaboration and another outreach project in January 2015.  They also plan to publish the results of their collaboration and present this as a project model to state homeless providers and policy makers.  

For more information, contact ktrawver@uaa.alaska.edu or donna.aguiniga@uaa.alaska.edu.