Service Learning - BIOL 212

My service learning was a volunteer opportunity at a newly developed Buddhist Temple called Tu Tam Meditation Center.  It's a recently formed community, and the Temple held many events to teach people how to meditate, and apply Buddha's teachings to resolve problems in their lives. The event started off with a small praying session with well Known Buddhist monks around the area.  I was assigned to introduce the monks a lead the teaching session according to plan.  After the teaching session, I helped serve lunch to the community and clean up.  It was a long day, but filled with knowledge and interesting examples that actually happened to real people.  These examples were given to teach people one of the main Buddha's teaching: "You will reap what you sow".  One interesting example given was about a lottery winner.  After she won the lottery she spent her money carelessly and slowly becoming unappreciative of everything in her life.  To her at that point, everything she need she can have. She spent her days shopping, and her nights partying.  Soon after she tried marijuana and other drugs, ultimately she was addicted to heroin.  She wasted all her money on drugs and became homeless after 7 months of winning the lottery.  At this point I recalled the "Mouse Party - Addiction" app  and the mechanisms of heroin on the brain .   Heroin mimic the body's natural opiate and bind to the opiate receptors in the brain.  Once bound, heroin caused the neurons to stop secreting a type of inhibitory neurotransmitter that would prevent the secretion of dopamine.  Since the prevention of dopamine secretion is inhibited, dopamine is constantly secreted in heroin users.  The neurons with the opiate (aka heroin) receptors are found in parts of the brain responsible for pain, stress, and emotional attachment.  Of course I didn't recalled ALL of this during the session at the Temple, but rather the session encouraged me to revisit these scientific facts after it was over.  I would never thought volunteering at Temple could help me remember facts about the CNS, and relevant drugs mechanisms.  

Some scientific questions I had after reflecting upon my volunteering session: 

Besides marijuana, what other drugs did this person use and how might that affect her brain and behavior? 

If she was able to recognize her problems sooner and fix them (i.e: rehab center) how long will it take for her to completely be drug free? 

Is the addiction she had was to drug or to the excess amount of dopamine in her system?  Can or Is dopamine be use as a part of the treatments for addiction? 

What causes relapse in a previously drug-addicted person?  What happened in his or her body that causes this relapse? 

I'm not sure how to translate event into English, but I will try my best... 

Tittle of event: Learning Buddha's Teachings and Meditate To Regain Inner Peace

Number of Hours I volunteered: 4 

Name and email of event organizer: Dien Ho, hxdien@gmail.com

Citation: "Mouse Party-Addiction".  University of Utah, Genetic Science Learning Center.  2006. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/mouse/

Service Learning - Campus Community Farm work party.

March 6^th 2017 I decided to do my 2-hour service learning activity at our Campus Community Farm to learn about ecologically friendly community resources and provide a peaceful and relaxing area for students to enjoy. The Farm work parties is an event that all are welcomed to joined and is organized by Carla Tjung: carla.tjung@email.edcc.edu.

Farm work parties start off by a tour given by the event organizer, where volunteers are taken around to see and learn the purpose of various structures that other volunteers and community farm workers have built.

Some examples of what we have at our community farm are; the hoop house. A large hoop shaped cover made of plastic whose purpose is to provide the crops inside with a slightly more stable environment during the harsh weather conditions. In addition, the crops in the hoop house were covered in a white fabric that also helped to insulate heat.

Another would be the worm casting bins where the worms inside the bins digest compost and produce worm castings fertilizer. The compost used to feed the worms comes from the compost bins around EDCC campus where after the castings produced are then used as fertilizer for the crops in the gardens.

There was also a Bug Hotel made up of recycled Dead wood, cardboard, hay, dry sticks and bricks to provide insects with a place to live, not only that it works as a way of keeping insects that may harm the crops away and insects that help them coming.

After a full tour had been given we divided into groups where we were each assigned a task with an objective of maintaining crop patches to keep the farm clean. My groups first task was to categorize new seeds by types and by alphabetical order, which helps with easy accessibility when trying to find seeds needed when it comes time to plant. Our next task was to plant sugar snap pea seeds in the hoop house for the upcoming spring, and last task was to do weeding in the in the hoop house.  

Working at the community farm allowed me to learn about how biological factors like insects can either help or hinder how successfully the crops are maintained. Learning about how the bug hotel can provide a safe dry place for insects to hide, hibernate and have young. The insects that live in the bug hotel eat problematic garden insects a process which is called bio control. Through knowing this the community farm can use this structure as a form of natural non-chemical repellent keeping the crops safe. 

During my learning service experience, I was able to observe various biological things at work, one specifically would be the earth worms from the compost bins. Earth worms belong to the phylum Annelida and class Oligochaeta, and they have hydrostatic skeleton with antagonistic muscle groups that cause the shape of their hydrostatic skeleton to change which allows for their locomotion. These muscles are longitudinal and circumferential which are used to retract and contact its body through the decrease or increase of certain segments throughout the worms’ body which all in turn leads to their ability of being able to move around the best on flat surface areas like soil.

Questions?

1. What other structure are being planned to be built next and how will they help the farm?
2. How does worm compost fertilizer compare to other types of fertilizer?
3. How long does it take for the earthworms to go through compost and produce worm casting?
4. What kind of rain water systems are used throughout the farm and how are they more ecologically efficient? 

Urban Forest Service Learning Event

 

Service Learning Event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

 

 



For my service learning project, I volunteered for Urban forest recovery located in South Everett which was on January 15th. I did not only volunteer for the sake of service learning, but also for serving the nation on Martin Luther Kings Jr. day. This specific project was to help revive the once private owned park into a vibrant living ecosystem for plants and animals also including the community.

I was in charge of planting some willow sticks for willow trees to develop in barren areas such as by the bridges and by streams where ducks swam in. The location of this park was relatively close to the highway and also integrated with the interstate trail that runs along interstate 5.

A little stream went under this bridge which had tiny tadpoles and ducks swimming

 

This project was held under the organization United Way and the leader for my volunteering work was Charlie Vogelheim, cvogelheim@forterra.org. I volunteered from 10 AM to 1:30 PM and then afterwards we were provided with food! Yum! The goals for this event was to specifically honor Martin Luther King Jr. by making a difference. Even the small picking up of trash from the wilderness can be a way of service. Our goal was to enhance and preserve this forest by planting plants and cleaning up along with maintaining the trails to make wildlife in the forest live easier in a clean environment.


Trails that we went along to clean and pick up trash. (Also the same below).

Throughout my volunteering experience, I discovered habitats for species such as squirrels and ducks along with some birds fluttering above the trees. I realized that as human development continues to increase and take over many places, we are the main cause of invasion. Without environmental science, I don't think people would be aware of what is happening to animal species and we are negatively affecting them even just by throwing a single piece of gum wrapper that can cause animals to choke if consumed. Its important for us to thank mother nature for its natural resources and we should consider that animals also have families and homes. They are just important for the world to have its balance. One connection that I made with this event to our course is that there are many species living in this forest. However bird population, according to the caretaker, decreased as human development increased. I thought that birds may have migrated to another forest and could maybe coexist with other species of birds which could maybe eventually evolve a new species over time if conditions are good enough.

4 Questions raised,
Do trails created in the forest affect wildlife and their habitats?
Did animal populations adapt according to human development?
How different would the diet of animal species be if there were no humanized developments.
How does a maintained forest differ from a natural forest with no maintenance?

 

 

Service Learning

Heidi Bachtel and the Washington Trails Association

For my service learning project I volunteered with the Washington Trails Association (WTA). The WTA's mission statement is to preserve, enhance, and protect hiking trails in Washington state. They are passionate about the wilderness, wild animals, and making sure people enjoy both, in a safe manner. This relates to biology in that it focuses on the relationship humans have with the wilderness, wildlife and making the habitats safe for both.

I volunteered on March 19th from 8:30am to 3:30pm at Blanchard Mountain. My crew leader was Arlen Bogaards, phone number (206) 625-1367. On this particular day Arlen wanted to focus on water drainage. Since there had been lots of rain fall recently, there were some small streams that had overflowed and made the trail extremely muddy in certain parts. Our goal was to dig trenches to divert the streams to other areas. 

Here is an image of a stream I dug (by myself). The whole area was a muddy puddle so I had to wade into the flooded area and start digging down deep to form a trench for the stream to flow into.

To prevent flooding in other areas we took preemptive measures and dug some runoff areas from the trail. It's a bit difficult to see in the picture but I used the shovel to scrap and form the trail to have a run off area for water.

*Not being happy with the cold*

This experience was interesting and difficult in a few ways. It was very hard physical labor and it was extremely cold, especially up higher on the trail where there was snow. There were many times, especially after 6 hours when my muscles started to fatigue and my back started to ache, that I wanted to quit. It made me value and respect the other volunteers who participate several times a year in maintaining trails. 

A connection between class material and this project for me was understanding the valuable relationship and impact that humans have on wild lands. Humans can be dangerous and destroy or we can be nurturing and work to improve streams and areas for humans and wildlife. Another aspect was seeing how fast an environment can change due to flooding other natural disasters. It was also enjoyable to see the different species of critters we learned about in class in their natural environment.

Questions after experience.

1) How many hours a year is required to maintain WA trails?

2) If there are no volunteers what does WTA do?

3) What degrees are required to be a salary paid WTA employee?

4) Does the WTA work with any other organizations?

Service Learning - Party at the Campus Community Farm!

My service learning project took place at the Campus Community Farm on March 6th, 2017 for two hours and the project was called "Farm Work Parties", organized by Carla Tjung (carla.tjung@email.edcc.edu). During this project, we learned the basics of how to garden and the roles that each organism played to help the plants grow. 

The first thing we did when we arrived was that we toured the farm. She explained that the green club takes care of the farm during the spring and how they share the farm with the bee club. These pictures below are different aspects of the farm. 

Hand-made Bug Hotel. Each compartment has specific material for each species. These "good bug" population helps keep "bad bug" populations such as parasites in check.  

This is the cob oven in the cultural kitchen. Sometimes, students come and have a cookout and actually use this oven as well as the pit oven. Hopefully, in this next quarter, I will be able to come out and eat some good food!

Unlike a greenhouse, this is a hoop house. The walls/roof is made from plastic and keeps the crops sheltered from the wind, rain, and snow. The plastic covering does keep the plants at a warmer temperature but not by much. During the winter, the white pieces of fabric that are laying next to the beds covered the crops to insulate more heat so that the don't frost and die. 

After the tour, a few of us sorted seeds that were donated or bought into a seed filing cabinet by alphabetical order. Then, we planted a few pea seeds in the back corner of the hoop house and also pulled out unwanted weeds in the hoop house as well. 

The goal of these work parties was to prepare the crops and the land for the spring so that they are ready to grow and later on harvested. 

I personally really like the idea of service learning because it gives me another purpose of learning the subject in school. To be able to grow an eco-friendly and efficient garden, I'm glad that I had the background knowledge on how bugs and organisms such as earthworms live because I came to appreciate them more and see how important they are instead of just knowing that they are somehow important. For example, to build a bug house, we had to know which types of bugs feeds on other bugs as well as what type of habitat they prefer. If we chose random bugs without prior knowledge, it could harm the plants, help the parasites feed and grow in population size. To tell weeds from crops, we will have to recognize them and understand how they would affect the growth of the crops.

Science plays a very big role in the community since the growth of these plants as well as animals is based on science. This is especially important because these plants and animals can end up on your dinner plate. I think where your food is grown and how it was produced is important to your health. On a smaller note, if you wanted to grow your own garden, it would be important to learn about the science behind it so that you can grow your garden in the most efficient and cheapest way with the same quality as store brought produce and veggies. 

Questions:
How do I know which plants need to be put in the hoop house to survive and which ones can survive in the cold?
Can we cook anything in the cob oven? Or are there certain limitations?
How would we clean out the cob oven if it needed to be cleaned out? Or does it need to be cleaned at all?
How can you tell if the soil needs to be fertilized or if crops could be grown on a certain type of dirt? 
Why is it that the grass in my front lawn always dies within weeks of replacing it with new sod every time?  We water it about two to three times a week and try to keep them healthy but weeds start to grow uncontrollably and the grass slowly dies and dries off. We gave up after replacing it a few times because it became expensive.

Service Learning: Farm Work Party

For my service learning, I volunteered at the EDCC campus farm on March 9th for about 2 hours. Unfortunately, it was pouring really hard that day so I wasn’t able to experience the full hands-on farm work. I met up at the hoop house where I was introduced to the event organizer, Carla Tjung (carla.tjung@email.edcc.edu) and another farmer named Marni.

The farm work party began with a quick but descriptive tour of the farm. Marla showed us the rain garden then explain its significance. Rain gardens acts as an extra storage of water as it soaks in the rain water instead of allowing it to flow into the drains. Essentially, rain gardens can also increase water quality and help pollution because rain water can carry pollutants from the streets into streams and large body of water.

Then, Marla lead us to the cultural kitchen where we met up with Anthropology students. I believed they had a special guest speaker that day and he briefly talked about his culture. A main topic that stood out was his description about the fishes available to his people. He told us that there were certain fishes his tribe could eat because others fishes were considered gods and consequences would occur if they ate one of the gods.

Finally, Marla instructed us to gather bark, clean, and replenish the farm. First, we had to rake the area where the bee’s were located and remove all the weed. Then, we filled about 5 to 6 wheelbarrows with bark and moved it to the bee’s environment. Next, we put the bark on top and raked it to level it out.

As we all may know, bee’s are towards the brink of extinction which means they are endangered. With a clean farm and healthy flowers and plants, we can provide the bee’s with nutritious meals. This will help keep them alive and help increase their population.

The goal of this experience is to teach us about the environment and how crucial little changes can affect us. Keeping the farm clean and running smoothly was the main focus in the farm work party. By maintaining a functional farm, the plants can reduce the carbon dioxide in our environment and also provide us with fresh clean air.

1)How was the rain garden designed or structured and what specific plants were used in the rain garden?

2)Are there school farms located in every college campus?

3)What varieties of crops are grown here in the garden and to whom/where are they distributed to?

4)How many bee’s live within the small cages and has Gwen thought about getting more?

PS: I didn't get any pictures of the farm because my phone was inside my backpack and I left it inside the shed since it was pouring. But I did get rewarded with a cool water bottle!

Service Learning: Cultural Kitchen Cleanup!

My service learning project was to help clean up & repair  the cultural kitchen on campus! One way it relates to animal biology is because the main item being cleaned that day were these wooden rods that are used natively in the northwest to cook salmon over fires. The salmon typically found here is Pacific King salmon and Coho salmon which is one of the species of fish we used in our fish muscle protein lab! Also there is a pit oven filled with river rocks (because they don't crack when they heat up) that is used to traditionally cook things like clams. While the oven takes at least 2 hours to get it hot enough, once the temperature is that high the fresh clams will cook in minutes. We know from the material we covered in biology that clams are bivalve molluscs and they have a hard shell that protects them and are closed tight unless you can see their siphons out the side of their shell and that they will close very quickly when they are startled. The oven must get extremely hot to cook them inside and have their shells open.

There were about 7 volunteers this day and twice as many wooden salmon rods, so we all grabbed a couple and started scrubbing them really thoroughly with soap and water and rinsing them really well because they are going to be used for cooking. They had quite a bit of dirt on them and we even found some beetles and after looking up some pictures on google I can say I think they are Carabus nemoralis or at least something of similar size and coloring! We dried the rods then over the fire and we sanded all of the rods down so no splinters would catch on the salmon when they are cooked. We also rubbed them down with vegetable oil to make them last longer (hopefully!). After we finished that we planted some ferns around the cob oven.

Planted ferns next to the cob oven. 

Bonfire and dirty wooden salmon cooking rods (upper left). 

The title of this project was Cultural Kitchen Cleanup & Repairs, I volunteered 3 hours and the organizer was Juliene Wall: juliene.wall@email.edcc.edu

The goals of this event was to get the wooden rods as clean and prepared as possible for in May when the organizers throw their annual powwow and use them to cook the salmon.

This experience made me think a lot about how these types of tools (the wooden rods) are completely man-made and a lot of care went into creating each of them. I think a lot of the time in this society we throw so much away and don’t spend much time on the upkeep of things rather than just replacing them. I think by cleaning and preparing them and realizing how much time it actually took to do it correctly was really important. I’m glad I did it because if I had attended an event where they used these rods to cook, I don’t think I would have thought or known at all about the work and preparation that went into making that happen.

A couple question I have after this service learning event are:

What other animals were hunted/caught to be cooked in these traditional ways?

Can the wooden rods be used to cook any other fish or is it just specifically salmon? (In class, we learned that Coho salmon and Rainbow trout are so similar looking that sometimes they can be hard to distinguish, so that's why I was thinking about this. Or is this method of cooking just traditionally for salmon, I wonder?)

In the pit oven we were shown that you throw a wet burlap bag down before tossing the clams in to cook; is burlap used for a reason, or would other fabrics be okay to use?

We used spray vegetable oil (the kind used for cooking) on the wooden rods to make them last longer, but what kind of oil would be traditionally used for this and would be safe because they are used for cooking?

Serivce Learning: Monitoring Wildlife at the Big Gulch

1.       Choose the appropriate project. Explain in your blog post what your service learning project is and how it relates to animal biology.

I did the service learning project of Wildlife Monitoring at the Big Gulch in Mukilteo. The title of the project describes it quite accurately: we checked on devices that monitor wildlife at the Big Gulch and also made some observations ourselves based on the animals’ footprints. This relates to animal biology because during the project we learned more about the kinds of animals that are present in response to the changing ecosystem at the Big Gulch.

2. Explain exactly what you did and include photo documentation.

First, we checked the monitoring devices. These are devices that take pictures when they detect animal movement. To check on them, we changed their batteries and switched the SD cards so that the devices could store more pictures. There were two devices that we checked on.

One of the monitoring devices we checked

Then, we traveled further into the gulch to observe footprints so we could understand which species are traveling along that pathway. We found marks that indicated the presence of deer, rats, and worms as well as a domesticated dog.

Left to right: Deer, holes dug up by rats, worm "prints"

3. Include the title of the project or event and the number of hours you volunteered. Include the name and email of the event organizer who can verify your attendance at the event.

Wildlife Monitoring at Big Gulch

Grace Coale

grace.coale@email.edcc.edu

I volunteered for 3 hours

4. What were the goals of the event/organization that organized the event.

The goal of the organization that organized the event was to track animals present in the Big Gulch to better understand how the changing environment is affecting the animals. An invasive tree species has been pushing out native species, and the organization wants to better understand how this affects the animals at the Gulch.

5. Summarize your duties at the event.

I helped identify animal tracks and learned how to update the tracking devices.  

6. Reflect on how this experience affected you and your thoughts on the role of science in society and/or the importance of your service to your community.  This type of reflection can easily be used to strengthen personal statements for academic programs and job or internship applications.

During the event, I learned a lot more about an ecosystem that has been in my backyard for years. I never really bothered to look into what was going on at the Gulch, but thanks to this event, I had a chance to visit the area and learn more about the species at the Big Gulch. The most interesting part of the experience for me was looking at beaver homes for multiple reasons. As basic as it seems, I was not aware that beavers live in the Mukilteo-area! Though we didn’t see any beavers (because they are nocturnal), it was fascinating to see how they build their habitats. I also learned that beavers are considered “pests” because of the damage they cause to the environments they are in because of how they erode the soil. I enjoyed the opportunity to come to the gulch and learn more about what scientists are doing to learn more about the environment so close to where I live such as tracking and monitoring species and also fighting against invasive tree species.

Beaver habitat

Going forward, I will try to find more ways to help projects involving the Big Gulch.

7. Make a connection between what you did for this Service Learning Project and the material we covered in this course.

The habitat is changing for multiple animal species that have lived in the Big Gulch. In response to a change in the environment, we may also see a change in favored traits in the population and over many years, the species will evolve. Perhaps we might start to see change through mechanisms such as gene flow, the bottleneck effect, and natural selection.

8. Provide at least 4 questions that were raised based on your experience.

• Will erosion affect which species visit the Gulch?
• What animals are generally found from the tracker devices?
• Do beavers help the Gulch environment in way? If so, how?
• What other problems (apart from erosion and invasive species) is the Big Gulch facing?
• How does the wastewater plant next to the Gulch affect the ecosystem?