This page contains projects and assignments I have completed during my time at Mary Washington, highlighting the different knowledge, skills, and competencies I have acquired throughout my academic career. Here you will find a GIS project, a persuasive letter on the topic of overconsumption, and a Life Cycle Assessment.
Final GIS Project (Fall 2023): This project required forming a hypothesis on a topic of my choosing. I then had to use GIS data and tools to create a map aimed to test my hypothesis and display my findings.
I greatly improved my digital literacy through the completion of an Introduction to GIS course. During this course, I increased my familiarity with ArcGIS Pro and Google Earth, as well as my understanding and interpretation of GIS data by creating a variety of maps. At the end of the semester, I completed a final project (shown above) focused on the correlation between human population and biodiversity in the United States. Through this project, I demonstrated the skills and knowledge I gained throughout the course such as locating, analyzing, and utilizing datasets to create relevant maps. Additionally, I further developed my oral communication skills by presenting my project to a class full of my peers. To accomplish this, I had to properly prepare for both the presentation and potential questions from my classmates and instructor. I will be able to apply these competencies and resources to future roles and projects throughout my career.
Letter to the World Assignment (Fall 2024): I completed this paper as a final project for my Global Environmental Problems Class. This project required writing a minimum 2,000-word persuasive letter about an environmental issue of my choosing, as well as determining the root cause of my chosen topic. I was instructed to act as if the letter was going in a newspaper or website accessible to anyone.
When I was first assigned this letter, the style of writing was slightly intimidating. Prior to this assignment, the majority of my college writing assignments required a more analytical approach as opposed to persuasive. However, I ended up really enjoying the process as well as the end result. I decided to do this assignment on overconsumption because I think it is a very prominent part of our society, and something the average person would not connect to environmental problems. As someone who is interested in the social aspect of environmental science, this gave me the opportunity to practice my simplification and presentation of scientific concepts, such as natural capital and replenish rates, to the general public. I did this through the use of metaphors, analogies, and the use of infographics that were easy to understand.
For my specific audience, I chose to focus on young adults in America because I believe this group has the most impact on global consumption, and a higher likelihood of internalizing a different way of living than other age groups. I utilized my critical thinking skills by analyzing the social causes and impacts of overconsumption in order to inform those who do not value environmental sustainability about the negative externalities of consumerism, as well as persuade them from participating in the habit. As an aspiring environmental advocate, this caused me to think about overconsumption from a different perspective and determine a way to motivate and engage my hypothetical readers that was separate from environmentalism. This will be a very useful skill in my future endeavors.