Liberal Arts Capstone Project

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Green Mountain College, one of its selling points is its Environmental Liberal Arts program. For this program's capstone course, "A Delicate Balance", students "write a personal sustainability paper and undertake a capstone project that culminates their academic experience and tests their research skills. This project combines a student’s academic area of focus with a project that benefits the College or greater community." While the focus of my project is not within the fields of natural resources management or environmental policy, it is relevant to another subject I am passionate about, queer and LGBT studies.

While helping another student, Jorie Jarvis, work on the development of a Safe(r) Zone program for our campus, I stumbled across the Campus Pride Index. My school's review on this site, while generally positive, inspired me to undertake a project to increase my campus's LGBT- and queer-friendliness. After a couple weeks of brainstorming and talking to LGBT groups on campus (PANTS and Pride), I came up with a few project goals:

1. Update Green Mountain College's Policy of Non-Discrimination to better reflect Vermont state law by including "gender identity"; including gender expression, which is not expressly protected by Vermont state law, would also be helpful for queer students.

2. Develop a one-step record change process for transgender students who do not have legal documentation of their name/sex change.

3. Work with the school's Diversity Committee to update and correct our Campus Pride Index review.

As the end of the semester approaches, I am taking time to reflect on what I have accomplished thus far and what I still need to accomplish. While I did not plan for this to be a single-semester endeavor, I would like to have some concrete results before holiday break. To this point, much of my project has involved coordinating and meeting with college staff to talk about my project and possibilities for its implementation. Here is a short summary of my work to date:

• Coordinated with student clubs concerned with LGBT and queer issues on reviewing our current Campus Pride Index review.

• Met with Joe Petrick, the Vice President of Student Life, to discuss my project and determine where to direct my efforts.

• Scheduled a meeting with Heidie Vazquez-Garcia, a Co-Chair of the Diversity Committee, to determine who filed the report that generated our current Campus Pride Index review and seek advice on accomplishing the other goals of my project.

• Presented my project to Student Senate to receive their official endorsement.

• Visited Sharon Hoffman, head of the Registrar's Office, and talked about the possibility of a one-step record change process for transgender students.

• Reconvened with Joe Petrick to get feedback on my project and to inquire about legal issues associated with the record-change process.

• Started working with the Noka Garrapy, the Associate Manager of Data Systems for the IT Department, to sort out the logistics of updating transgender students' records.

As the end of the semester approaches, some parts of my project are nearly complete. Student Senate has officially endorsed my recommendation to update our Policy of Non-Discrimination, and Joe Petrick directed me to an individual who should be able to update the policy. Coordination with all record-holding departments has led me to the conclusion that I should focus my efforts on working with IT and the Registrar's Office; the former deals with all the logistics of record-keeping and the latter authorizes changes. Updating our Campus Pride Index review will have to wait until next semester, but I have begun a conversation on this topic with the Diversity Committee, which is now looking for some student representatives. I will be applying for that volunteer position in hopes that I can help accelerate change on campus and promote the development of a campus culture that celebrates diversity.

Vermont Raw Milk

I created this map using information from a directory on realmilk.com (http://www.realmilk.com/where09.html#vt). The directory contains information about farms providing their communities with real milk. I tabulated the data, excluding any farms for which information regarding precise information was incomplete or missing, and then derived lat/long data from address information. After this, I saved the table in .csv format and imported this to ArcGIS and Quantum GIS for manipulation. Within these software programs I used the buffer tool to create another shapefile from vtfarms, showing a 10-mile radius around each farm. I then added these layers to TileMill for formatting, added a tooltip function, and uploaded the map to MapBox.

The purpose of this map is to show which areas of Vermont are within 10 miles of a listed source of raw milk. It also demonstrates how some areas have more options, as the overlap of different farms' radii creates a darker area.

Meant to fulfill the requirements for Map 14: MapBox.

Edited 11/12/2012: Updated map styling; added zoom-dependent symbol styling.

Tyson Plant Locations

While my initial idea for this map was to create it using a .csv file and a Google Fusion table, the result did not put all of the locations in the correct state, so I decided to use batchgeo.com instead. After using batchgeo to create a .kml from a .csv, I opened this file with Google Maps to check that it worked. Following this, I added a small Tyson logo to dropbox.com, which I used as a symbol for the plant locations on the map. I then uploaded the map to dropbox.com and used the Google Earth .kml embed gadget to get the code to embed my map on this blog.

So far, the Google Earth .kml embed gadget is one of my favorite methods for adding maps to my blog because the process is quite simple. However, the limitations can be frustrating, as it is difficult to create much more than point maps. It is also difficult to customize very much in Google Earth.

As you can see, there is a concentration of plants in the Midwest and the Southeast. Please note that locations are only town-specific, so zooming in any further is unlikely to show you the actual plant, only the town it is in.

Meant to fulfill the requirements for Map 12: Choose Your Own Adventure.

The Driftless Zone

Here's a map showing The Location of the Driftless Zone in the American Midwest. Here is a closer shot, showing the high-resolution data available for elevation modeling in this area.

Now that our professor has stopped assigning us specific maps to compile and design, I have begun taking requests for map subjects. This map is for a friend interested in doing research on the overlap of the Driftless Zone in the Midwestern United States and agricultural lands. Starting with some GIS layers (counties and elevation) from http://www.driftlessareainitiative.org/maps.cfm, I created this basic map showing the location of the Driftless Zone, including all of the counties it's in as well as an elevation/hillshade backdrop. Primarily made using ArcGIS 10. I've started working with data from the Soil Data Mart (http://soildatamart.nrcs.usda.gov/Default.aspx), but the county files are large enough that I haven't finished editing them yet. I haven't yet figured out how to upload rasters using the online map-hosting services, so I was forced to upload my map in picture format.

Meant to fulfill the requirements for Map 11: Choose Your Own Adventure.

Acadia National Park

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My second formal ArcGIS Online map, containing points of interest in Acadia National Park. I determined the GPS locations of these points using NPS park maps with Google Earth. I then added these coordinates, along with location names, to a Google Document, and referenced it using a CSV conversion option with ArcGIS Online.

Meant to fulfill the requirements for Map 8: ArcGIS Online + Google Documents.