11 am Concurrent Session 2

With a rapidly growing population, pressure on remaining natural resources in Madagascar is high and many species endemic to the island are threatened with extinction. The Betampona INR is one of the smallest protected areas (5000 acres) of humid lowland forest, surrounded by degraded secondary forest and farmland. Rice is the main staple of Madagascar, with the highest per capita rice consumption in the world, and is one of the main reasons for slash-and-burn agriculture to grow enough rice to feed the family. To protect the reserve's biodiversity, sustainable livelihoods for the people living around the reserve, ecological agriculture practices are being pursued, including agroforestry and organic field crop and vegetable production methods to increase onfarm biodiversity. This study looked at varietal diversity of rice in the peripheral zone of the INR, using a "rapid" survey method followed by community meetings. Rapid appraisal was a technique new to Silver Tsylavina and Florien Zafiroa, who I trained and supervised to carry out the study for their senior theses at ISSED-University of Toamasina. As lengthy detailed surveys are common among Malagasy students, Silver and Florien were surprised by the wealth of information about rice cultivation, problems and varieties from the survey, whereas farmers were pleased we were not taking a lot of time from them.

B: International Service-Learning through the Lens of Sustainability

B: Shea Tuberty, Grant Buckner,
Jasper Yoke

ABSTRACT

Belize is a small country located on the Yucatan peninsula. Due to its large tracts of forest and its proximity to the Mesoamerican reef, Belize is home to some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. However, agriculture and development are becoming more frequent in Belize, which negatively impacts water quality, and could lead to losses in biodiversity. Belize has not established a rapid biological assessment method for monitoring river water quality based on aquatic macroinvertebrates. As such, the Belizean Rapid Bioassessment Protocols (BRBP) was created by collecting aquatic macroinvertebrates and water chemistry data from 31 sites during the dry season 2019-2020 within the Belize River Watershed (BRW). The BRW is the largest and one of the most impacted watersheds in Belize. A reference collection of over 5,000 aquatic macroinvertebrates from 150 different taxa including 29 new records was created for Belize. Also, standardized methods for collecting aquatic macroinvertebrates were created for the BRW. A multimetric index using box plots to detect metrics that were sensitive to impaired water quality was produced for the BRW. The multimetric index resulted in four valid metrics: Abundance of Ephemeroptera, Total Taxa Richness, Biological Monitoring Working Party modified for Brazil (BMWP-Brazil), and % 3 Dominant Families. These metrics were used to create four categories of water quality for the BRW: “excellent”, “good”, fair”, and “poor”. Tolerance values (TV) for 29 families and 36 genera were calculated, starting with “excellent” and using cumulative percentiles to calculate how far into increasingly poor water quality a taxon was found. Watershed size, seasonality, and high elevation streams remain major areas that should be addressed in future studies. The multimetric index and TVs can be adjusted with more sampling, and eventually serve as a guideline for expansion outside of lowland streams in the BRW. Although this project represents an initial phase of biomonitoring in Belize, it is a vital step toward using aquatic macroinvertebrates as a critical component in detecting changes in water quality.

Session 2.2

Click here to register for this event!

A: Global is Local, Especially During a Pandemic

A: Jennifer Tyson

ABSTRACT

Public health preparedness strategies aim to collaborate with key partners to identify and practice various scenarios in order to make a change in an outcome. For this presentation, I plan to highlight public health preparedness competencies and strategies to combat and respond to the current COVID-19 Pandemic, locally and globally. Due to the lack of infrastructure in this sort of response effort, we feel the repercussions of this global pandemic, locally. These strategies include communicable disease investigation, contact tracing, and table top exercises and “hot washes” to gather key stakeholders to work through various scenarios including outbreak response, personal protective equipment training, inclusive response approaches, high and at-risk population considerations, and adapting emergency response infrastructure to combat major needs. We will explore these strategies together and confirm how global is local.

B: 34 Weeks behind the Great Virus Firewall: Observing COVID-19 within and beyond China

B: Scott Relyea

ABSTRACT

Over the course of 34 weeks, from late January through mid-September 2020, I observed and endured the emergence and apparent eradication of COVID-19 within the PRC while living in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing. In this presentation, I will discuss and share images depicting the evolution in both policies implemented by municipal and other authorities in Beijing and Shanghai and actions taken by the corresponding urban citizenries in response to the viral threat at different stages of its appearance and eventual dissipation. I will explore how these policies affected my research and my life – and that of my partner and our son who shared this experience with me. From our first domestic flight returning to Beijing only a week after lockdown was initiated in Wuhan, the epicenter of what would become a global pandemic, to our second domestic flight to Shanghai seven weeks later, to our fourth domestic flight fleeing Beijing in the waning days of the city’s mini-outbreak in the latter half of June, we witnessed different stages and intensity of virus response, mitigation, and reaction. I will endeavor to assess the combined role of simple, everyday actions and advanced technology, perhaps to some extent possible only within the political and social milieu of the PRC, in mitigating the threat of COVID-19 even as the virus diligently spread across the globe.

Session 2.3

Click here to register for this event!

A: Virtual International Experience in Japan

A: Nicholas Peach, Mitch Brown,
Brad Fye-Duell

ABSTRACT

This discussion will center around a virtual study abroad experience to mainland Japan to see the beautiful cultural locations, local cuisines, and historical locations. Through this experience, students will receive an educational opportunity through the university to receive credits to fulfill their international experience requirement.

The purpose of this experience is to broaden the student’s cultural knowledge while meeting their accreditation requirements by traveling to the country of Japan. These trips serve the purpose of allowing students the opportunity to enjoy a well planned itinerary and experience a Japanese university. Potential setbacks may include language barriers, student funding, and unpredictable impacts stemming from COVID-19. Success can be measured by a student's experience as well as their ability to pass the required Japanese University courses.

B: Planning and Executing a Virtual Study Abroad Program to India

B: Lakshmi Iyer, Dinesh Dave

ABSTRACT

Due to COVID-19, all study abroad travels for Summer 2020 were canceled by Appalachian State University. Instead of canceling our trip in May 2020 to India on Global Supply Chain, Logistics, and Analytics, we decided to explore a virtual option for our program. We were fortunate to gain the commitment of our partner institution in India, Kristu Jayanti College (KJC) to offer a virtual program. The Walker College of Business approved our plans for the program and we executed the program during the originally planned dates in May 2020. Our presentation will provide details about various aspects of the program - curricular content, collaborative aspects of the program which enabled our students to work with KJC students, coverage on culture, important places to visit, engagement of KJC faculty, etc. We will also discuss the challenges faced and how we handled them. We hope this presentation will provide some insights into other planning virtual international experiences in the future.

Session 2.4

Click here to register for this event!

Live in Lucca!

Adam Booker

ABSTRACT

In October of 2019, I had the opportunity to engage on a three-week long teaching and performance tour of the UK and Italy. What had initially started as an invitation to participate in a five day engagement at the behest of the Scottish Bass Trust, giving clinics, master classes, and performances in Scotland, soon spiraled completely out of control into further engagements in Bristol, Well's Cathedral School, a residency at the Royal College of Music and the Bocherinni Institute of Music in Lucca, Italy, as well as a live recording project of original music, which is soon to be released, and it all started at a conference the year before! In this musically enhanced presentation, I will share this experience with my colleagues and students, with a particular emphasis on how these kinds of connections are made, and how boldly following up on one chance meeting can lead to the kinds of teaching and performing experiences we all dream about in our academic careers.

Session 2.5

Click here to register for this event!

Education, Liberation, & Sustainability in Indigenous Guatemala

Gregory McClure, Jeff Goodman, Piper Strzelecki, Elias Fox, Caty Parham

ABSTRACT

During the Spring 2020 semester, before Covid-19 turned the world upside down, Dr. Greg McClure and Jeff Goodman from the Reich College of Education led a group of students to the indigenous Maya community of Copal AA in Guatemala. The App State delegation was part of the Honors seminar Education as the Practice of Freedom that examined US imperialism and intervention in Guatemala, and indigenous solidarity movements after the Guatemalan Civil War and Genocide. Copal AA was founded near the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in January of 1996, when 86 refugee families organized their collective return back into Guatemala after living for more than a decade in refugee camps in Mexico. Copal AA is multilingual and multiethnic, composed of approximately 700 indigenous Mam, Q’anjob’al, and Q’eqchi’ Maya. From the beginning, they established a progressive vision for their community, adopting by-laws that reflected their goals of environmental, social, and political justice. They banned the use of slash and burn agriculture, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and they established a progressive middle school that emphasized sustainability, youth advocacy, and indigenous identity development. Our App State delegation met with community leaders, students, and teachers, and learned of some of the current challenges facing the people of Copal AA. In this presentation, participants will share what they learned from the experience and provide suggestions for how members of the Appalachian community can support Copal AA.

Page updated

Report abuse