Panama Project featured on Swannanoa Journal

Click here to go to the Swannanoa Journal page and listen to a radio piece put together by WWC student Kathryn Stewart. The Swannanoa Journal is a radio broadcast produced by the Environmental Leadership Center at Warren Wilson. Nice work Kathryn!

Congrats to an alum!

Amelia Dulee-Kinsolving, Global Studies and Spanish major from WWC (class of 2006), was accepted to Mundus MAPP, also known as the Erasmus Mundus Master's in Public Policy. This is a full scholarship, double Master's degree program for non-EU citizens to study in Europe and is granted by the European Commission. Amelia will be studying a Master's degree in Public Policy and Administration for her first year at the University of York in the UK. Her second year will be spent in Barcelona at IBEI studying International Relations. Through this double Master's degree program, Amelia will study policy making at the local, national, and global level. This will allow Amelia to not only analyze existing political and bureaucratic structures, but also to analyze the diverse and often complex cultural influences that influence policy making. In addition to her two years spent studying at the University of York and IBEI, Amelia will be required to participate in an internship at a relevant policy institution and will participate in an annual summer school with fellow Mundus MAPP scholars which is taught by professors from throughout Europe.

This all follows her two-year stint in the Peace Corps, where she is wrapping up her work in Peru. Way to go Amelia!

Technology in the Rainforest

Senior Chris Fusting and I recently returned from a 10-day research trip in Panama, where we tested the use of SunSPOTs (Small, Programmable Object Technology) on the Cocobolo Nature Reserve. Our goal was to do some initial field testing of the sensors in anticipation of deploying a larger wireless sensor network in the coming years. These networks can be used to monitor all kinds of ecological phenomena at geographic and temporal scales that were previously difficult or impossible to achieve, and the data collected in the forest can be made accessible via the web in almost real time. We hope that soon our GIS crew members will be able to interact with the sensors in Panama while sitting at a computer in our lab -- cool stuff!

Congrats to Nora Purcell!

Nora Purcell, a WWC sophomore and member of the Geographic Information Systems Crew, has received a grant from Lewis & Clark University's Mellon Research Initiative. The two-year grant will allow Nora to conduct an interdisciplinary environmental research project using GIS and wireless sensor networks on the Cocobolo Nature Reserve in the Panamanian rainforest. Nora will also travel to Lewis & Clark University in Portand, Oregon to meet with other undergraduate students involved in the initiative.

Congrats Nora!

Global Studies Capstone Seminar Presentations

Seniors in the Global Studies Capstone Seminar will be presenting their theses this week and next. All presentations are open to the public.

Monday, December 3

4:00: Sophia Levin-Hatz

Bolivia’s sustainable development: An alternative approach

4:20: Ryan Cowen

Speaking out: China's restriction of free speech and why it should change

4:40: Elizabeth Bailey

A hidden reality: Normalizing racism against the Afro-Ecuadorian

Wednesday, December 5

4:00: Joe Davis-Lockhart

Crime in Communist China: A comparison of policies from the Maoist and the reform eras

4:20: Baldwin Saer

Alternative strategies for food sovereignty in Latin America

4:40: Nathan Bell

The mobility of ethics: Addressing inequalities by changing tourism development in Honduras

5:00: Dan Weisshaar

Globalization in the land of Goshen: How rural America is being used and neglected in the global marketplace

Monday, December 10

4:00: Leslie Springs

Examining the place(ment) of a community: Warren Wilson College and its Appalachian home

4:20: Jackie Fitzgerald

U.S. Immigration: The labor shortage myth and the shortcomings of guest worker programs

4:40: Curry Anton

“When two elephants fight, the grass always suffers”: Formerly abducted child soldiers and the need for their rehabilitation in northern Uganda

Wednesday, December 12

4:00: Rachel Melo

Examining citizenship and human rights: Bolivian immigration to Buenos Aires

4:20: Ariel Gordon

Aluminum companies in Jamaica: Assessing the ethical responsibilities of multinational corporations in the dynamic global arena

4:40: Jessica Giles

Picking up the tab: Corporatizing AIDS prevention and treatment in South Africa

5:00: Megan Betts

North African assimilation and Arab communities in modern Parisian culture

Study abroad funding opportunities and deadlines

If you are planning to study abroad for 8 weeks or longer during the 2008-09 note that the applications for Boren Scholarships for undergraduate students (also Boren Fellowships for graduate students), are currently available online. Please visit the NSEP website to begin your application.

WWC's International Program's office deadline for Boren Scholarships application is January 22, 2008 Final Boren Fellowships' application deadline is Wednesday, January 30, 2008. All materials must arrive at IIE/NSEP by the deadline.

The Language Flagship Fellowships competition is also underway. Please visit the website to download an application. The national deadline for the Flagship Fellowships application is Friday, January 18, 2008.

Please contact Naomi Otterness at nottern@warren-wilson.edu if you intend to apply for these scholarships.

GIS Day!

Wednesday, November 14th is National GIS Day -- come celebrate with the Warren Wilson College GIS Work Crew. Here's our schedule of events:

9:00-10:00 Open House

10:00-10:30 Meet the fabulous world of GIS (with Becca Davanon)

10:30-11:00 GIS and the Panamanian rainforest (Nora Purcell)

11:00-1:00 GeoDome (in Canon Lounge)

1:00-1:30 Prediction of cantharellus lateritus using GIS and CART modeling (Chris Fusting)

1:30-2:00 Google Earth 101 (Lawson Revan)

WWC Panama project awarded international student internship

The interdisciplinary and international collaborative research project between Warren Wilson College and CREA (Conservation through Research, Education and Action) has been awarded an international fellowship by the My Community, Our Earth Project: Geographic Learning for Sustainable Development (MyCOE). MyCOE is a partnership to encourage youth to use geographic tools and concepts to address local issues of sustainability.

The MyCOE Biodiversity Youth Cadre will focus on biodiversity issue of importance to Central America. The student chosen for the WWC Panama project comes from a university in Panama and will be focusing on vegetation inventories on the Cocobolo Nature Reserve in Panama and will hopefully have the opportunity to interact with a WWC student proficient in GIS. Stay tuned for more info!

Sun Microsystems to support WWC Panama project

Sun Microsystems, Inc., is providing wireless sensor technology to Warren Wilson College in support of the effort to implement GIS and sensor technologies in Panama (see previous post on the project here).

Sun has provided two SunSPOT development kits to help implement a wireless sensor network on the WWC campus. This network will serve as both a test network for the larger deployment planned in Panama and an ecological monitoring tool for WWC students and faculty. The project requires an interdisciplinary focus and will engage undergraduates on many levels, including work crews, courses in computer science and GIS, independent studies, senior theses, and natural science seminars.

Sun will be providing additional development kits and other resources to the project as the campus sensor network is developed.

Want to study abroad during spring semester '08?

Applications for spring 2008 Warren Wilson study abroad programs are due to Naomi Otterness in the WorldWide office by Monday, September 17. This includes applications for study abroad at Capital Normal University in China, International Enrichment London in England, Universite Catholique de l'Ouest in France, Birkenfeld Environmental Campus-University of Trier in Germany, Kansai Gaidai University in Japan, Hannam University in Korea, University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, University of Granada in Spain, and Payap University in Thailand.

Welcome back, global travelers!

Welcome back to the following WWC students who spent last spring semester or summer studying abroad:

Curry Anton: Uganda
Katie Baker-Cohen: Mali
Amanda Bilyk: Argentina
Gretchen Caverly: India
Ahrm Choi: Mexico
Ryan Cowen: China
Mary Edson: Ireland
Jackie Fitzgerald: Honduras
Helena French: Peru
Jessica Giles: South Africa
Andrea Glenn: England
Forrest Heacock: Germany
Rachel Melo: Argentina
Niels Nugent: Thailand
Emma Richardson: Nepal
Hannah Oehl: Scotland
Hana Staub: Argentina
Morgan Williams: Tanzania
Chris Wilson: Kenya
Amy Witt: Australia

We look forward to hearing your stories.

Less-than-elegant geo-blogging

Test mobile blog. 35.61063 82.44058

Here is a cumbersome version of a technique that we are hoping to make much more simple in the future: a photo blog posted directly from a cell phone and georeferenced on a map or 3D globe. I took the picture on the left with a cell phone camera, then recorded my geographic location using a GPS unit and entered it as text for the blog. The photo and lat/long coordinates above were posted directly via cell phone, and this text was added later once I had access to a computer. I entered the coordinates into Google Earth and created the snapshot on the right. This is one of the projects that the GIS Crew (hopefully in conjunction with some students in a computer science class) will be working on in the coming months.