AfterWords

A couple weeks ago Center for Service-Learning celebrated their accomplishments and highlighted service-learning projects for the past school year. It was a night filled with great music by Arlie Neskahi & Eagle’s Jump and organic snacks prepared by the campus’s catering department.

The event started early at 5:30pm with students setting up presentation and posters from Sarah Zale’s English 205 class: War as Myth, Identity, and Wound. The room quickly filled with chatter and laughter as people tapped their toes to the beat of the music and giggled at pictures on the slides. Thomas Murphy, the Master of Ceremonies, greeted guest and expressed his excitement of the tremendous growth for the Center. President Jack Oharah also welcome the guest and went over some of the accomplishments for the year. The program highlights of the year was Profiles in the Art of Living and Voices in Wartime. Both Jennifer Inslee and Michael Wewer’s students reflected on the Profiles in the Art of Living and shared stories on how this service-learning project had changed them. Jennifer Inslee also announced her excitement for the phase two of this project coming in the academic year. The next program highlight was Voices in Wartime presented and reflected by Sarah Zale and Melissa Storm. In between these program highlights were announcements by Hayden Nichols of a new service-learning project in East Africa and by Kerrie Murphy of the chosen web design for EdCC’s Pow Wow website is Ling Chun’s design from Steve Sosa’s VISC120 class.

Listed below are the individuals and groups that received awards and/or recognition:

Service-Learning Student of the Year: Penny Green

Volunteer of the Year: Cari Pendergrass

Students in Service Member of the Year: Sandra Kilian

Service-Learning Faculty of the Year: Marie Johnson

Volunteer Group of the Year: S.A.V.E. the Earth Club

Community Partner of the Year: WSU Extension

Campus Service-Learning Partner of the Year: College Relations

AmeriCorps Retention Project: Jacklin Edwards, Jesus Silva, Penny Green

Students in Service graduates: Corbin Powell, Gerard Ah-Fook, Kristi Gutierrez, John Wennberg, Joseph Contreras, Lisa Quirk, Luke Pirie, Margarita Naumchik, Mary Andrews, Megan Lockhart, Mindi Hart, Nataliya Naumchik, Penny Green, Ryan Gilmore, Sabrina Berthold, Sandra Kilian, Yin Yu

Web links:
Arlie Neskahi & Eagle’s Jump
Campus Catering
Celebration Program

Exciting things are happening for Americorp! Obama has tripled the size of Americorp, and created new divisions such as the GreenCorp. Yay!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_national_service

For those who still aren’t sure if Americorp is for them, it is! Americorp is for everybody. Check out www.edcc.edu/americorp for more information.

When one says they’re going to be volunteering to survey microplastics, it’s likely that most people don’t have a clue what microplastics are, and wonder why you’re surveying them. Well, to answer the question, microplastics are pieces of plastic that have photodegraded into smaller and smaller pieces. Since plastic doesn’t actually biodegrade, the plastics stay there in the ocean, imitating pieces of food for fish, birds, etc. While “nurtles” are a fun name to say, it’s not so exciting to know that these plastic pieces are harming the ecosystem. Even more disturbing is the presence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where, because of the currents of the ocean, a good portion of the Earth’s trash ends up floating in this gyre, accumulating trash, debris, and plastics into an area the size of Texas.

I first heard about this phenomenon from Curtis Ebbesmeyer (I would highly recommend reading some of his work), when he came as part of the People For Puget Sound/REI Talk Series last year. So, when I found out that my former organization, the Snohomish County Marine Resources Committee, was teaming with WSU Beach Watchers, and the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, I decided to tag along with the other volunteers from Edmonds Community College.

The first day was the field day, where we would collect the samples at Mukilteo Lighthouse Park and Howarth Park. I was happy to be out in the field, and on the beach again, although it was pouring down rain, and I was drenched. By the afternoon site, the weather cleared, and it was refreshing. The process of collecting the samples was simple enough, but the analysiswas the hard part. I was in charge of sorting pieces of plastic, Styrofoam, twine, and other human-made debris out of a tray of rocks, twigs, sticks, and shells, only using tweezers and a microscope. Can you say tedious? I started going stir-crazy at the end, so I must give my special thanks to David for helping me finish my tray.

Overall, it was a great experience, and I am curious to see the results of the survey and notice any trends or differences across the sites in Puget Sound.

Anyone else want to share their experiences on the microplastics survey? How about the sand flea incident?

This is the first time I’ve posted a blog on Afterwords, so I thought I’d introduce myself first. I am the new Center for Service Learning Coordinator. I came from a background in Environmental Studies and Marine Sciences, and worked as an AmeriCorps Member at Snohomish County Marine Resources Committee. I met Tom Murphy when I worked with the LEAF School as a community partner. I have been working here since the end of January, and I still can’t get enough of it! I absolutely love what I do, and I can’t imagine myself anywhere else right now.

This brings me to the point of my blog today – last week, I joined S.A.V.E. the Earth Club in their Alternative Spring Break on Orcas Island. While I admit I love spending time in the San Juan Islands (I live and breathe marine biology), I was worried about spending three whole days away from my job, particularly because of all the deadlines I was trying to juggle. Three days away? I couldn’t handle it!

As luck would have it, the trip was exactly what I needed to snap me back to reality. We often get so caught up in deadlines, paperwork, meetings, etc, and forget the real point of our work – connecting to people and serving our community. Orcas Island reminded me that my work is important. I had an incredible time, met some great people, and connected to the land and community. What more could I ask for?

To me, community engagement is about the people and the connections you make. I live for those “aha” moments as I feel pride swell within me when I make a difference in a student’s life, or joy when I see someone get excited about learning. I thoroughly enjoyed watching one student’s exhilaration over the tall trees and how he could measure them using Pythagorean’s Theorem, and was particularly touched by another student’s poem about her life-changing experience on Orcas. It’s these types of things that make me ecstatic to be a part of Edmonds Community College and the Center for Service Learning.

I encourage those who participated on the trip to share their experiences here on this blog (post as a comment). I’d love to hear more perspectives, and I’m sure the campus community will want to know too!

Thank you to all those students who’ve touched my life in a way I can’t even begin to describe! You guys are awesome!