School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences
Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Sustainable Agriculture
- All Subjects: happiness
- All Subjects: Economic
This project is an exploration of a K-3 Early Childhood Center and the Roosevelt School District’s progress towards the Farm to School movement and focuses on the transformations and strategic partnerships required to maintain gardens as an educational resource over the long term. Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center is a Title 1 elementary school in South Mountain Village, Phoenix and is the primary research location for this study. South Mountain Village contains a series of urban food deserts which are low-income regions without adequate access to fresh, affordable, and healthy food options. The baseline for the school garden’s integration status was measured through the usage and adaptation of the Garden Resources Education and Environmental Nexus (GREEN) tool for well-integrated school gardens. The school has existing partnerships with the University of Arizona Co-operative Extension, and Farm at South Mountain to help establish their school garden and organize a series of educational field trips centered around sustainable agricultural practices. As a part of this Culminating Experience, I also worked with the Sustainability Teachers Academy to create, plan and execute Sustainability and School Gardening workshop on March 11-12 for teachers, and members of the Farm to School Network across Arizona. The end goal of this project and workshop is to create a framework to cultivate and sustain critical partnerships for farms and schools interested in being a part of the Farm-to-School program in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.
The photographs focused on aspects of life and behaviors that have contributed to happiness in local communities. A website was created and a gallery event was mounted for public review and discussion. Gallery attendees and website visitors were asked to complete a survey to assess (1) gained knowledge of sustainability solutions, and (2) how effective a tool photography is as a means of sustainability solutions communication.
This visual medium allowed people think about how to incorporate sustainable community solutions into their own lives and may have changed people’s interest in, and thoughts about, overall sustainability and sustainable solutions. The survey results demonstrated that photographs can successfully communicate sustainability ideas. Specifically, viewers gained an increased awareness of how community and urban gardening can increase happiness, well-being, and sense of community. This visual approach can continue to be used to more successfully communicate additional sustainability solutions ideas and methods to the public.
COVID-19 brought so much uncertainty into the world and has molded this project into what it is today. The first project journey that was chosen was meant to show the impact of how much plastic waste was being produced at Starbucks. Then due to COVID-19 yet again, it changed into how much paper waste there was within the State of Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) Business and Professions Division (BPD). DOL BPD is a state agency division that licenses over forty plus professional and business licenses to the residents of Washington state. Due to the pandemic, the project transformed into how the three pillars of sustainability impacts remote work within BPD. BPD is in this new and unique paradigm where the deliverable that was brought forth as this project completed are, “The 9 Benefits of Sustainability through Remote Work” (Appendix D) where this specifically showed DOL why remote work is sustainable and how it should be implemented even further throughout the agency. This list was put together with the benefits that best fit DOL BPD.
Aspiring to build the most socially and environmentally sustainable chapter house possible, the Navajo Nation’s Tonalea Chapter collaborated with our ASU research team. Two roundtable discussion with Chapter elders and members, led to a vision foundation that embodies physical, functional and environmental conditions, as well as cultural and spiritual beliefs and values.
Initially, Houde’s (2007) Six Faces of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) were used to sort commentary. Analysis and review led to expanding the framework from six to eight traditional ecological knowledge categories (TEK8): Culture, Spirituality, Ecosystem, Time, Land, Design, Social Justice and Equity, and Economics.
Sorted narratives and discussions revealed traditional ways of life, beliefs, and values, along with suggestions about who to design for, and what functions are most needed. Based on the TEK8 categorized comments, design recommendations were offered.
Additional work is needed, but a strong foundation for a framework mapping TEK to sustainable design for indigenous people has been developed. By using the TEK8 to address social justice issues through participatory visioning, culturally appropriate design and broader opportunities for happiness may result.