The Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHS) Capstone is a semester-long project that builds upon prior coursework and allows students to produce a polished piece of original work. Past projects have included papers suitable for publication, art installations, computer games, and more. This collection contains final AHS work in a variety of mediums, for projects from 2006 to the present.
The terror organization Al-Qaeda executed an estimated fourteen terror attacks against countries around the world including Tunisia, Yemen, Kuwait, Indonesia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 1990’s and 2000’s. These attacks altered the political landscape of every country involved, often resulting in significant changes in legislation to facilitate the prevention of future attacks. For example, within the United States Congress passed the Authorization of the Use of Military Force granting the President war-time powers. President Bush opened Guantanamo Bay to imprison terror suspects and issued executive orders authorizing indefinite pre-charge detention. In contrast, while the United Kingdom Prime Minister proposed an extension of pre-charge detention to 45 days, the British Parliament refused to extend pretrial detention beyond 28 days. I will examine pre-charge detention after 9/11 in the U.S. and 7/7 in the U.K. to analyze the infringements on human rights. I conclude that the two countries reacted so differently due to differing governmental structures and experiences with terror.
Movies studied Butterfly Tongue (Spain) Moebius (Argentina) Maquilapolis (Mexico) Motorcycle Diaries (Chile/Peru/Venezuela) Letters from the Other Side (Mexico/US) A Place Called Chiapas (Chiapas, indigenous Mexico)
James Cameron’s recent film, Avatar, has grossed over $2 billion as of January 31, 2010. This blue alien and space ship laden film is the most recent example of a science fiction work that has gained widespread exposure to the general populace. It follows in the footsteps of such works as the Star Wars series, and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and many others, all of which have been exposed to millions of viewers worldwide. Due to the wide exposure of these science fiction blockbusters, along with less widely known works, including written works, television shows, and comic books it is clear that most people have at least casual exposure to the genre. While for most of these people, science fiction is just another brief source of amusement and wonder, are there some who have their horizons broadened by the imaginative ideas on which science fiction is based? Do any of those people go on to innovate in technical fields as scientists and engineers? By locating and examining examples of technical innovators inspired by science fiction, we can gauge some of the impact of the science fiction on the world.
The democratic election of Hamas as the governing power of Gaza in spring 2006 has ushered in a new era of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This watershed event and its larger historical and sociopolitical context indicate that national resistance to the Israeli occupation grounded in Islamic discourse will remain a dominant cultural narrative and political rallying point for many Palestinians. For unfamiliar Western observers, trying to make sense of this development is puzzling at best.
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has provoked a wide variety of responses from the Christian community. Some feel that it leads children astray into disobedience and occultism, while others find that it guides them in Christian ideals of love and courage. These varied responses are rooted in fundamental differences among Christians with regard to how they enter into dialogue with popular culture. Some Christians refuse to acknowledge that things of God can be found outside of non-biblical sources, while others are willing to explore ways in which their faith may be improved and strengthened by ideas expressed in popular media. This paper will explore different Christian reactions to the Harry Potter series, and will seek to connect these responses with different Christian approaches to popular culture. Further analysis will suggest that a Christian’s opinion of a popular culture phenomenon is dependent on their willingness to enter into dialogue with popular culture, rather than being dependent on an independent and unbiased analysis of the content. Through this analysis, we can achieve a greater understanding of how different Christians may approach their interactions with popular culture.
Reconstructing the civilizations and interactions of the Late Bronze Age Aegean is a complex problem. The chronology for this region is largely described by trends in Mycenaean pottery, and trade of such objects allows the archaeological find to be correlated to those of other regions such as Egypt and Anatolia with varying strength, since Mycenaean pottery was widely distributed through the Mediterranean. This substantial propagation of both Mycenaean objects and styles indicates regular trade from the center of Mycenaean palatial civilization during the Late Bronze Age. However, quantifying trade from archaeological remains is a difficult prospect. Not only may artifacts be sparse, but objects may be traded multiple times, stockpiled, or copied so that it is difficult to attach them to interactions between particular cultures in a given time period. Despite these difficulties, reconstructing trade relationships is helpful in understanding economic and political structures in a civilization as they change over time.
Painting is the controlled application of different colored pigments to a flat surface. By using suitable styles and patterns of paint, one can create the illusion of a three-dimensional space, represent an object from reality, or create a variety of abstract forms. In this painting, I set out to prove that multiple realities and perspectives could be represented side by side without violating the artistic unity of a piece. I wanted to determine whether or not isometric and flat elements could exist within a coherent linear perspective, next to more representational objects and spaces that fall back within the image. I further felt the desire to have regions of similar kinds of representations – worlds of a sort - and to have this contrast be between these spaces of similarity.
Welcome to this class for the semester, located somewhere inside of the intersection of history, technology, the environment, and pedagogy. Through units on urban development and human advances in technology/policy, we will look at how humanity’s interactions with the environment have changed over time. I have also done my best to give you control over your own learning process in the class by structuring policies and assignments to be flexible and challenge you to develop your own expectations of the experience that is this class. You will be doing a lot of learning, but alongside that you will be heavily engaged in collaborative experimentation as we do some very cool things.
The case for improving STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education has been ongoing for over 15 years (Katehi et al., 2009). While strides have been made to redesign science and math education, very little has been done in engineering. However, many national boards including the National Academies of Engineering (NAE) and the U.S. Department of Education are looking to develop engineering in K-12 education (Kathei et al., 2009). Though core subjects do not change very often in education, in 2006 the state of Massachusetts added engineering to its curriculum frameworks, the state standards for subjects covered in education (Perova et al., 2009). There are a number of reasons that national boards and industry have cited for moving engineering into K-12. First, it allows us to maintain a flow of students into the engineering “pipeline” (Katehi et al., 2009). Second, in a technology-driven world, technological literacy for all citizens is invaluable to progress (Katehi et al., 2009). Just as citizens should be able to read and write, they should have a basic understanding of how technology works, how it is designed, and how society and culture influences its development. Third, engineering design is an excellent tool for supporting student development of essential skills such as analytical thinking, communication, collaboration, and adaptability (Katehi et al., 2009). Fourth, engineering is an excellent vehicle for strengthening student understanding of science and math (Katehi et al., 2009). However, the biggest problem facing engineering in the K-12 curriculum is a lack of professional training in engineering. Most teachers of engineering in K-12 have a technology or science education background, and very few have engineering degrees (Katehi et al., 2009). To help support engineering in K-12 classrooms, many colleges and universities have started outreach programs. These outreach programs take a variety of shapes. Programs can be faculty-run or student-run; volunteer or paid; part-time or full-time; and/or have students teach in classrooms or faculty train teachers in summer programs. Each type of program has made different impacts on their communities and students. Many of these outreach programs are run through engineering departments and collaborate with university education departments. All of these programs use hands-on learning and the engineering design process to motivate students. Olin College is uniquely positioned for facilitating education outreach in order to meet the nation‟s goals. The college has an interest in bettering engineering education, and encouraging interdisciplinary studies and project-based learning methods. Students and faculty are involved in rigorous education research spanning many different areas. As a small school of roughly 300 students and 30 faculty outside the Boston area, Olin is capable of being involved with many different types of organizations (schools, museums, etc.). The college has started pursuing outreach program development through a STEM program with the Boston Metro West schools and through a service initiative, Engineering Discovery (as well as a handful of other programs including FIRST mentoring and the Society for Women Engineers middle school girls program). However, existing programs require support from the greater Olin community, in order to develop a large-scale operation that is sustainable beyond the four years of an undergraduate experience.
The development and growth of a town is influenced by its geographic surroundings, local and global political, historical, and social events, and urban growth dynamics. Although these important factors appear in a variety of sources, such as maps of a town, vital information can be observed from trends in the evolution of the town plan where the written record is deficient. The prosperity of a town becomes apparent with the rate of growth, and its functions and those of its citizens can be inferred from land use. Historical and natural events change the course of development, and as ownership changes, each culture leaves its mark. Technological innovations alter the dynamics of a town and are reflected in sudden changes in the growth pattern. A town's self-awareness and the influence of town planning appear in the form of geometric patterns, but actual success of the design becomes evident over the years. Using Krakow, Poland as an example, in this project I will show that the systematic comparison of normalized, georeferenced town plans and other documents can draw attention to changes not seen before or found in other sources. The significance of these observations calls for better organization and availability of maps, town plans, archaeological site sketches, and other historical documents for use by researchers in the fields of history and urban studies and for the interest of the public in general.
There is a place by my childhood home, an opening in the woods with small stone walls intersecting it, where I am too afraid to go to by myself. But what is it about this space that scares me so? In my installation, I look to explore this question–investigating my fear of and personal experiences with nature through artistic expression.
Immigrants come to the United States for a reason most often referred to in the United States as “chasing the American Dream”. In pursuit of a better life and success that may not have been available to them in their home countries, immigrant youth are faced with the challenges of becoming accustomed to a new culture, transitioning to a new education system, changing themselves to pursue their dream in a new environment, and dealing with the obstacles that being a Latino in a predominantly‐white society brings: language difficulty, discrimination, and values differences between the American and Latino cultures. As their personal survival and success depends on them acculturating to this new way of life, these immigrants are often conflicted as to how they actually identify themselves culturally, and they are faced with the difficult decision of choosing between loyalty to their home country, acceptance in the broad Latino community, or adopting the American lifestyle and identity.
The complete wiki project site can be found at: http://wikieducator.org/RTT The key to understanding why effective rapid training is possible is the existence of constraints. When you prepare a teacher in a four-year college program, that teacher could go many different directions, including urban or suburban schools; public, public charter, religious, or secular private schools; different types of school districts, different teaching philosophies, etc. In many cases, the specific school or program where the trainee will teach is known ahead of time. They are given one primary way to do most things, not simply exposing trainees to a common set of methods. The purpose is not to prepare them to teach anywhere -- it is to teach here, right now. Since general education (high school, often college) is assumed for admission into the RTT programs, only the teaching-specific, at-this-school-specific knowledge and skills are necessary. This insight, emphasized by my advisor, had also changed my core deliverables. If the key to RTT was specificity to the specific task, there was no way to create the ultimate RTT program from the best components of each. I kept the common core components, not as a ranked list, but instead as a grab-bag that may have value to people creating their own programs. The criteria for ranking components was dropped, but this insight was transferred into the guide for developing an RTT program.
In this study of second language (L2) experience on L2 phonetic production, two groups of three American learners of French with different amounts of experience produced sentences in English and French. The sentences recited contained word-initial /p/, /t/, and /k/ as well as vowels /e/ and /o/ and were analyzed for voice-onset time (VOT) of the unvoiced stops and diphthongization of the vowels. VOT results showed that experience had an effect on ability to differentiate English and French, as the higher-experience group produced significantly different English and French values while the lower-experience group did not. The interaction between language and experience was found to be significant. Diphthongization values for /e/ were not statistically significant for the interaction but showed a similar trend. No conclusions were drawn for the vowel /o/ due to a number of participants producing the vowel in unexpected ways. The data showed that increased experience with French resulted in a measurable effect on two aspects of French pronunciation, in line with the predictions of Flege’s Speech Learning Model (1995).
Iran occupies a prominent role in international politics today due to its clash with the United States over its nuclear energy program. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has released several reports on the noncompliance of Iran's program with agency standards, which Iran is required to follow by virtue of being a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). While Iran has been at odds with Washington since the 1979 Islamic revolution, tensions have risen considerably in the past several years due to Iran's proximity to the American war theater and the rise of a hard-line government prone to vitriolic anti-American rhetoric under President Ahmadinejad. Iran has remained steadfastly defiant in the obfuscation of its nuclear program through several rounds of international sanctions, embargoes, and United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. Much to the frustration of the US, a significant contributing factor to Iranian stubbornness has been Russian patronage. Russia has continued to provide nuclear expertise and military equipment to Iran while resisting additional sanctions in the UNSC. Moscow claims there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program and thus no reason to prosecute Iran so harshly.1 While that may or may not be true, Russia does benefit immensely from Iran's political and economic isolation and the minor turmoil it creates and this gives Moscow little incentive to cooperate with Washington. While it is in Russia's best interest to maintain the status quo as long as possible, at some point the situation will resolve itself. Iran can submit to IAEA regulations, develop nuclear weapons, or work towards becoming a nuclear threshold state in an attempt to exhaust American patience.
The topic of my AHS Capstone is based on work I had done while studying abroad in Vienna last fall. I read ve of Leo Perutz' novels and wrote a paper in German, exploring the interplay between history and identity in Perutz' work. Leo Perutz is an important gure in not only Austrian literature, but also in the development of literature in general his novels explore the interplay between how identity is created through a manipulation of history. Perutz' works were often disregarded by both contemporary and later critics as being too adventurous and fantastical to be high literature, so little literary attention was paid to them. It is therefore one of the goals of my project to add to the body of work analyzing Perutz' thoughts and works.
The formation of a new government, the drastic increase in population after the war, technological advancements, and the expansion of American trade and markets, all resulting from America’s new found freedom, drove sweeping improvements to the technological systems of both agriculture and manufacturing, transforming small family farms and artisanships into large cotton plantations and textile mills. These changes guided the United States from technological and economic subservience to independence and influence enough to defend their territory in a second war against Britain less than 40 years later (War of 1812), establishing America as the world’s newest major power.
This AHS Capstone initially set out to investigate different methods and techniques for designing and fabricating jewelry in an artistic manner that expressed my personal style through the design. To do this I planned to combine three things: methods of jewelry making I was already familiar with, new techniques I have only employed while in a class setting, and methods of jewelry design and fabrication I researched and taught myself during the Capstone. This was to be done with the intent of creating several pieces of jewelry, and exploring the design and fabrication processes from start to finish.
The focus of this report is the effect of the past on the present. The trends discovered in the analysis of the state curricula are examined and considered in the context of the history of the American Civil War. The motivation for doing so is to discover how a cataclysmic event in recent history still affects the present through public policy, and how that public policy might influence our understanding of that event. In essence, this report examines how the winners write the policies that write history.
The original goal of this project was to re-create the interdisciplinary style of the early Olin classes. I wanted to integrate a materials science project, my OSS, with an art project, my AHS Capstone. To some extent, it worked, but not in the ways I thought it would. I was going to learn about different types of artistic media, and try my hand at drawing the same subject with each of them. This would have been a good and scientific experiment, with one fatal flaw: I am not an accomplished drawer.
This paper is the result of research to answer the question "why is there so much 'Socially Responsible Business' in Vermont." Vermont is a small state that effectively missed the industrial revolution of southern New England. It has a history, however, of attracting practical, independent-minded people from surrounding areas and “always being a stepahead, behind, to the left or the right of national politics.” The trend toward Socially Responsible Business is the latest way Vermont is showing its ability to attract independent thinkers. The paper is not an end to the author’s interest in Vermont History and should not be read as a definitive history, it was a way to motivate his research into Vermont and examine the validity of his pre-conceived theories.
In exploring the role of the oni in Japanese culture, I set out to determine to what extent oni are consistently described and how the depictions of them differ across various works. My basic methodology was to collect a number of varying sources and compare them, using background about oni and Japanese mythology as a way to give context to the set of works.
While the Olin Conductorless Orchestra (OCO) generally plays music that has been reorchestrated to fit its instrumentation, almost everything OCO plays was originally intended for a different type of orchestra than our own. Some music is meant for small, 5piece chamber groups. Other music is meant for large, 150 member orchestras. Nearly all our music was intended to be guided by a single conductor, rather than by the collective listening and movements of the group. Phoenix Flight, in contrast, is an original composition created specifically to highlight the unique aspects of Olin’s Conductorless Orchestra.
At Olin, in courses such as UOCD and Design Nature, an important part of design is the ability to create sketch models to better conceptualize your design. Professors have provided a number of objects such as toothpicks or more famously, blue foam, as materials for the sketch models. After taking UOCD in which the “blue foam lady” came in and gave a demonstration in how to manipulate blue foam and Styrofoam, I became curious about the materials they provided us and how to work with them to create sketch models, or better yet, realistic models (in particular, blue foam and Styrofoam). My AHSE Capstone in 3D Design/Modeling focuses on answering the question, how can you produce realistic models using cheap materials, such as blue foam, (and other materials at Olin)? Thus, the essential project goals are structured around answering this question which include but may not be limited to: 1. Learning different techniques to manipulate blue foam, Styrofoam, and other materials (For example, how do you make a perfect sphere from blue foam) 2. Learning the varieties of ways to use materials (For example, WonderFoam can be used to make imitation leather) 3. Gaining better understanding of which materials are most useful for modeling, 4. Learn about the basics of 3D Modeling
Various Artists is Olin's premier (and only!) progressive rock band. The group has performed numerous covers of popular and obscure music before, but this capstone project is their first foray into recording original music. Core members Kris Groth, Jea Young Park, and Zach del Rosario composed, recorded, and mixed three pieces over the course of Spring 2014, which are archived here. The piece "Red Disciple" (del Rosario) is a throwback to the simple days of early progressive rock, focusing on simple arrangements, a riff-based writing style, and dynamic time signature changes. "Full Commotion" (Park) is inspired by electronic music, especially drum and bass electronica, and features complex vocal layering. Finally, "Memories" (Groth) is a sweeping composition that melds strange time signatures, flowing melodies, and cold hard rock. The pieces archived here could be described overall as 'pretty dope.'
Casey’s portfolio is an exploration into chance and experimentation in printmaking. Largely using woodcut, the work takes advantage of the natural properties of materials to create subtle and delicate imagery.
With this series of sequential prints, I wanted to visually convey the accumulative effects of human impact on the Earth. I accomplished this by using two distinct processes to represent the two entities. The copper plate engraving of the circle represents the environment and the planetary boundary in which we live. The circle image does not change across the prints because the boundary is inflexible, but the color of the circle, which indicates the state or healthiness of the environment, changes based on the level of human impact. The copper plate was also allowed to pick up scratches as I worked on it to reflect natural changes over time. In contrast, the paper overlays represent human impacts. Each overlay is a contributor to the current unsustainable state of the world; it is not printed onto the paper directly but rather attached as an addition to the natural environment. Individually, the circle (environment) can still be seen behind the overlay, but as more and more layers are added, the less can be seen until there is no space left and the circle cracks, after which it is unknown what happens next.
In this essay, I explore what it means for something to be a robot, the defining differences between fictional and functional robots, and suggest where the field of robotics is actually leading.
This project consists of a series of works of art of a horseback riding theme, which combine the mediums and styles of Chinese painting and western charcoal drawing.
During a semester observing first-grade math instruction, I call into question how math is taught to younger children. I explore the idea of “developmental readiness” for abstract concepts, while exploring methods that might make these concepts more accessible for K-2 students. While evaluating the appropriateness of common core standards for mathematics, I try to define what good teaching looks like in a classroom with pressures from states, parents, and students.
For our Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Capstone project, we created and taught a STEM unit for fifth grade students. The goals behind this project were to learn how to plan and execute a cohesive unit as well as improve our knowledge and ability to teach STEM curriculum in elementary schools. Our unit ended up being a five week mission where students planned and built Mars rovers.
During World War II, over 110,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly evacuated from their homes and interned in government camps. For my AHS Capstone Project, I explored the effects of the internment on the cultural and personal identities of nisei, second generation Japanese Americans. This paper focuses on the analysis of two works of post-war Japanese American literature: Monica Sone’s memoir, Nisei Daughter, and John Okada’s novel, No-no Boy. Additionally, I present and analyze excerpts from the writings of my grandfather who experienced the internment as a teenager.
The final art installation design, Life Ticks By, gives community members an opportunity to re-evaluate how they utilize their time throughout their daily lives. The art piece enables them to take a moment of reflection so that they take a break from routine. It encourages people to pause, take control, and become more aware of how obsessive regularity correlates to passively living. Ultimately, Life Ticks By allows people to manipulate their personal time, forcing them to realize that they need to stop and look around once in a while to gain control of their lives.
Throughout the semester I read through the classical Spanish novel Don Quixote in both English and Spanish. The novel is a classic for many reasons, most notably it is the first major example of character development throughout a work of literature. The historical context of Don Quixote in 15th and 16th century Spain adds to the intricacies of the novel; the themes, issues, and commentary throughout the novel have political relevance in terms of Miguel Cervantes’ view of the state of his country as well as broader opinions of the Spanish people. As I read through the novel, I explored some of the deeper meanings of the text and some of the issues it presents through a series of mini-essays. At the conclusion of the novel, I furthered my analyses of these topics through the discussion of several related academic papers on Don Quixote.
We created a spoken word poetry club for Olin students to freely and comfortably express themselves through words and performance. There was not a venue for this kind of expression at the time of club creation. At the end of the semester, we hosted an open mic and all club members performed poems with additional performances from other students.
I sought to explore a fictional future world and the characters within it, specifically how different characters experienced and responded to the same events.
Over the course of this semester I’ve been studying technical Chinese, looking at words that I could use to describe a series of engineering projects. For the Complete Project Submission I've made a number of rough videos and placed them on Youtube, where in each video I try to explain a certain facet of an engineering project in Chinese. The early videos are rough because I made them mostly independently, without a lot of editing from my Chinese professor, and for the Final Project Submission I've revised one of the videos with her advice to make a more polished version.
This guide will give a brief overview of my experience of teaching six after-school lessons at Josiah Quincy Elementary School in Boston, Massachusetts. There are six sections (one for each lesson plan) which will cover the main pedagogy that I focused on in that lesson, the details of the lessons, and key insights that I got from that lesson.
Over the semester, I worked to better my understanding of a number of biological forms through drawing. My Final Project Submission consists of 23 pencil Sketches from my sketchbook, 4 larger Explorations in charcoal, and 2 final charcoal Studies. I also included an artist’s statement cataloging my ideas and a bit of my process for the project.
Impressionism as an artform has a rich history, beginning in the 1860’s after the advent of photography. The impressionism movement allowed artists to move away from realist ideals and focus on capturing the feeling of a scene rather than the details. Because impressionism was such a radical movement in art history, truly understanding the impressionist movement involves a familiarity with the history and ideals of the more influential impressionist painters. The works presented here have been inspired by painters such as Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cezzane.
To the technologist, Greece was a place of dull cunning, whereas in art, it was a place of constant creative revolution. In this paper, I seek an avenue toward mending this discrepancy in the historiography of ancient Greece by examining the intersection of Greek art and technology in one device: the crane. Previous scholarship by Smith and others suggests that artistic innovation can lead to improvements in utilitarian techniques as well.1 If this holds true in ancient Greece, then we can begin to question how and why Greek improvements in the fine arts had a more lasting impact on the western world.
This final project of building a bicycle as an art piece is significant because it describes my passions. As an engineer I value hugely the simple engineering elegance of a bicycle. It’s simple and it’s efficient. I believe it can be argued to be a “perfectly” engineered object: a barebones engineering solution maximizing efficiency. I believe that the form of the bicycle can be made to be as elegant as the engineering of it: I believe that I will be making a functional art piece that illustrates the intersection of art and engineering through the simple elegance of the bicycle.
I explored and translated different sections of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Most students who have studied Latin are focused on the literal translation of the original work but Ovid has so much more content to offer in his masterpiece. I have written a guide which summarizes my journey throughout my journey as a translator. This guide also describes the struggles and challenges that I faced.
This was a process-centered AHS Cap project focused on developing comfort and ease in using Mandarin in a casual setting. Equally important was my goal to become comfortable integrating myself into a Chinese Chess-playing community. Both of these skills have lifelong applications. I will continue to use and develop the lessons learned in this project for years to come. However, they are difficult to capture in a concrete form, so the final submission for this project is a reflection on my process and achieving my goals.
The goal of this project was to explain the story of producing indigo through history with photography. Indigo was synthesized or used in several ways, including dying using natural indigo, synthesizing indigo with the historic bayer-drewson synthesis, and by generating indigo with transgenic bacteria.
Having had the opportunity to spend significant periods of time growing up in two different countries, and thus immersed in two distinct cultures, I find that I do not completely identify with either culture, but rather that I have a relationship with a blend of the cultures. Whether I am in the US or in Taiwan, I do not fully fit in culturally. This is especially pronounced when people around me point out particular observations about my behavior, appearance, habits, or other such characteristics. Depending on where I am, different attributes are highlighted – for example, in Taiwan I receive comments about my slightly accented Mandarin or my fluent English, while in the US I am frequently at a loss when my peers make pop cultural references to movies they grew up watching. Because of their interactions with me in a specific environment, people have a specific perception about my cultural identity. I wanted to capture how these viewpoints may be reflected at a surface level, which at times feels constraining, but ultimately do not affect the core of my identity. This exterior projection is represented by the patterned cages I have cast out of bronze.
Poetry has been an ideal medium for me in exploring this type of environmental writing. My goal was to use relatively simple, accessible language in order to address complicated questions. I think of each poem as a compact package containing many layers of content. For the most part, I used the poems to describe individual experiences or events that happened to me, and use them to ask broader questions about how we interact with nature. This method seems to mirror how I believe sustainability issues should be tackled: by everyone applying their individual skills and experiences to work towards solutions. No "silver bullet" will solve all the large conundrums we face, of course. However, many smaller-scale solutions will eventually add up, and at the very least will create a paradigm shift and cause us to approach sustainability issues in new ways.
With the Office of Student Life’s support and the academic rigor of an AHS Capstone project, I created the Peer Advocates program hoping that it would serve two main purposes. First, it will provide confidential support from trained peers, which did not exist at Olin before this program. Second, it will send two messages to the community: “sexual misconduct and partner abuse have no place at Olin”, and “if you are a survivor or an ally, you are not alone, we get it, and we are here to help”.