Environmental Advocacy Project
Anita Harker, Whatcom Community College
This assignment requires that students research the historical context of an environmental issue within their own communities and apply different types of organizing/advocacy tactics for instigating social change.

What is the West?
Maureen Ryan, Western Washington University
What is the West? is a written reflective exercise, with associated readings and discussion, designed to 1) build insight into how personal experiences shape our perception of landscapes, 2) enhance knowledge of the geography and ecology of the American West, and 3) illuminate the role of water (or lack of water) in the natural and cultural history of the American West.

Our World, Our Selves
Tim Walsh, South Seattle Community College
Students will understand how ethics and psycho-emotional factors influence our relationship to and our use of the natural world. Students will read, mark, and summarize text and will use writing as a tool to explore the connections between ethics, psychology, and sustainability.

Welcome to My Home
Matt Teorey, Peninsula College
Students are encouraged through writing and research activities to discover a greater sense of place and express their increased awareness of local ecosystems and cultural communities.

Toxic Hygiene: How Safe Is Your Bathroom?
Danielle Gray, Whatcom Community College
Students learn about potential safety and health concerns of personal hygiene products. Students examine labels and advertisements of these projects and then engage in rhetorical and cultural analysis of these advertisements.

Building a Public Knowledge Base: The Wikicadia Node Assignment
Todd Lundberg, Cascadia Community College
The center of this sequence of assignments is a collaborative, "New Media" writing project that involves publishing to a wiki a synthesis of knowledge about how humans inhabit places. Writers work in groups with others interested in a common sub-topic and develop information related to local places that local audiences who are invited to join the wiki may use.

Twenty Miles from Tomorrow: Examining the Past, Present and Future of the Lower Kuskokwim River Delta
Lauren McClanahan, Western Washington University
This project involves pairing pre-service teachers with students in the rural Alaskan village of Eek in Southwestern, Alaska. By creating effective writing prompts, the pre-service teachers hope to better understand how climate change is affecting the people of this region.

Interviewing the Past: Developing a Sense of Place through Oral Histories
Bob Abel, Olympic College
Local changes in climate, flora, fauna, and the human population can be anecdotally explored through interviews with long time locals.

Mapping Place, Writing Home: Using Interactive Compositions On and Off the Trail
Kate Reavey, Peninsula College
Students will choose a physical place to study, a site that is close enough to visit at least four times during the quarter/semester. Using writing prompts, text-based research, and close observations in the "field" (the chosen place), students will create a "mashup" of spatially referenced pop-up balloons. These will include researched and narrative prose, citations and links, and some visual images, embedded into a map via Google Earth technology. Through this unique presentation, the research and writing can encourage viewers to better understand the place they have chosen to study.

Urban Design and Identity
Julianne Seeman and Robin Jeffers, Bellevue Community College
Students will learn to apply theories-of urban design and of regional identity formation and, understand how designed environments promote behavior and how urban design can promote behaviors that protect the environment.