My Environmental Studies Capstone experience has been through service learning at the Pacific Union Garden Project. Through this service learning I have partnered with a variety of elementary aged children and teachers to incorporate environmental education in a garden setting. The use of rainwater catchment systems, compost and worm bins have been used to educate children on the importance of water, soils, and the regenerative cycle of life. This project will show how children interact and gain skills in a garden and why school gardens are important to children's education as a starting point for environmental education inspiration.

Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous peoples has been a successful 501(3)(c) organization for the past forty years. In the past years they have organized Mother Earth Day events, in order to raise the unity and interconnectedness of human lives with our planet earth. This years organized Mother Earth Day celebration will be a call to action through music to ‘wake up’ and‘ warrior through self-awareness and self-empowerment. The headliner to this event is Nataanii Means along with other indigenous hip hop artists that focus their lyrical art on self determination, resilience, indigenous rights, water, and liberation from systems of oppression.

Our finished project is a recorded video training, approximately one hour long. We gave a copy of the training to the Yurok Wellness Court. We also gave a copy of the slides to the Yurok Wellness Court, so that they may conduct their own live training using our materials.

Previous studies have examined the outcomes of different career development strategies for Environmental Studies students across the country and have found that programs with strong career preparation also utilize the curriculum and community when advising their students. Cal Poly Humboldt’s ENST department has yet to contribute to this research and implement all of these strategies. We conducted research, funded by the LAEP Program (including student surveys, interviews, peer-reviewed journals, and comparative analysis) to determine best practices to support our students in achieving their career goals.

Humboldt State University (HSU) students participated in the first part of an international lesson study by developing and implementing curriculum about climate change. Together with Swiss students from Haute Ecole Pédagogique du Canton de Vaud (HEP ), ideas of pedagogy were shared while developing, deploying, and revising an engaging lesson plan. With the goal to better understand lesson development and successful teaching strategies in the classroom, the students are to repeat this process at least three more times in Switzerland.

Acculturative stress is the stress experienced by individuals when they are in the process of reconciling two or more cultures (i.e., their heritage culture and a new culture). Research suggests that stress is linked to individuals’ wellbeing. Moreover, wellbeing linked to acculturative stress may be explained by threat appraisal (i.e., how individuals perceive stress - as anxiety-provoking and unmanageable). The current study examines threat appraisal as a mediator of the relationship between acculturative stress and wellbeing amongst a community sample of Armenian Americans.

Rapid Cycle Evaluation of the Peers Offering Wisdom Education and Respect (P.O.W.E.R.) program. P.O.W.E.R. is a living community curriculum that provides culturally competent group-based behavioral health counseling services to Indigenous Youth ages 13-17 years old. This project was guided by Indigenous Research Methodology including spirit-based research amidst the Pandemic of 2020. Theoretical references including systems theory and relational theory influenced this research. Research concluded an emphasis on evaluating the presentation of the curriculum to guide youth awareness of identity and process of trauma healing through ceremony, reflection, and belonging activities.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the 5th most common healthcare-associated infection. Of hospital-acquired UTIs, 75% are associated with urinary catheters. 12-16% of people hospitalized require a urinary catheter. There is a 3-7% increased risk of a UTI each day the catheter is in. The negative effects of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) are pain and discomfort, as well as longer hospital stays, increased cost, complications like secondary infections and mortality (estimated 13,000 deaths/year). The proposed outcomes of are after 1 year, there will be a 50% reduction in CAUTI rates and after 1 year, there will be a 2-day reduction in length of hospital stay.

The changes in proteome human muscle tissue were analyzed using protein extraction and quantification techniques, SDS-PAGE, and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Muscle tissue samples were collected at defined postmortem intervals from a single body at the Forensic Investigation Research Station (FIRS) in Grand Junction, CO. These techniques were used to identify decomposition products of the rectus femoris muscle proteins that occur ​post mortem. The ultimate goal of this research is to correlate protein decomposition product masses (via mass spectrometry analysis) to distinctive postmortem intervals measured in accumulated degree days (ADD).

We explored the role that instructors play in predicting college student's achievement goals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Achievement goals help us explain the motives behind engagement. Certain types of goals tend to be more adaptive than others. We predicted that greater institutional autonomy support would predict greater psychological need satisfaction. In turn, psychological need satisfaction would predict, respectively, greater mastery approach goals and lower performance-avoidance goals. We found partial support for our hypotheses, yet our findings highlight the importance of encouraging students to self-regulate and explore their own interests.