Presenter(s): Thea Bergen
Co Presenter(s): Makayla Dempsey, Hannah Gruen, Carly Henry, Kelsey Hunter, Cassidy Kroon, Mackenzie Myers, EJ Del Rosario, Melissa Teter
Faculty Mentor(s): Katheryn Lynch & Kylie Mosbacher
Oral Session 4 C
The Canopy Connections team seeks to provide an interdisciplinary and place-based approach to environmental education for local youth in Oregon. Through an emphasis on arts and humanities we hope to instill a heightened personal connection between students and their local Pacific Northwest forests. This connection can help cultivate deep passions that inspire the next generation of leaders, science researchers, and engaged Oregon community members. Our overarching theme, “Artist Activists”, represents the projects emphasis on creating a sense of action, movement, and personal connection between our students and their surrounding world. Arts and humanities as a unifying theme will help us to tap into the childlike wonder all students have for the mystery of the universe, provide a platform for creative expression, and cater to individuals of varying interests and learning styles. This approach ties directly into HJ Andrews and its holistic, system-oriented, and interdisciplinary research model. The Andrews Forest incorporates arts and humanities as a unifying thread to connecting all scientific research endeavors together, representing an ideal that science must have meaning and passion inspiring it in order to be effective. To complement the pursuits of the Andrews and maintain a connection to state science standards, art will infuse itself with discussion and activity around the scientific complexity, forest structure, and forest processes of Pacific Northwest old-growth forests.