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- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
- Creators: Arizona Board of Regents
We spent the past two semesters interviewing, surveying, and researching the fitness industry to design an fitness app that would be popular and helpful among our target market. We created an app that businesses will encourage their employees to download under the statistically-backed premise that active individuals display higher levels of cognitive function and lower health care rates on average than their sedentary counterparts. While designing the app we conducted both primary and secondary market research on which features and elements of the app would be most desired.
This research paper explores how different relationships between people and nature can be fostered by learning experiences to bridge harmful gaps in the field of sustainability. Current disconnectedness from nature and people both within and across geographical borders hinder the cultivation of sustainable solutions. After attending a sustainability-oriented educational experience abroad in Ecuador recently, I decided to investigate how cross-cultural exchanges in Ecuador influences participants’ views of nature, new points of intersectionality participants learn while amongst nature in Ecuador, and what about this experience made it uniquely meaningful. Research methods included individual interviews and a group hike and picnic focus group discussion to collect qualitative data. I found that during this experience, students were able to lean into being vulnerable with each other, connect with indigenous community members beyond language borders, and connect with nature in ways that fostered awareness of the human position within it. From this, I learned that there were unique aspects of this learning experience that allowed for these relationships to be built and therefore for sustainable knowledge from the trip to stick when participants got back to the United States. The amount and flexibility of learning and processing time and dynamics created by classroom structure were important variables to the effectiveness of the learning experience. Institutions can learn from these experiences and connect people back to nature to implement successful sustainability solutions in the future.