PORT ANGELES — April Watkins, the first graduate of Peninsula College’s honors program, will present her capstone project, “Place-based Learning,” at 4 p.m. today.
The free presentation, which is open to the public, will be in the Longhouse House of Learning on the Peninsula College campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Watkins’ research centers on colonialism in education.
“Even though I had grown up on Coast Salish ancestral land, I had little information about their art or culture,” she said.
“I was not taught anything about the tribes whose ancestral land we were learning on.”
Her project focuses on defining the extent of what she calls “the assault of lingering colonialism by tactics of regional omission and consistent cultural misrepresentation.”
She will explore place-based pedagogy as a means of resolving what she describes as an epic failure within the public education system with regard to cultural literacy.
Now in its second year, the honors program has 20 participants, with a dozen in the project phase of the program.
Topics range from service learning projects to facilitate student success, to geographic information system (GIS) analysis of forest ecosystems and development of bird habitat to promote biological diversity.
The program brings together students not only from a wide range of academic interests but also from a wide range of geographic regions, including the North Olympic Peninsula and other regions in Washington state, other states and several Pacific Rim nations, the college said in a news release.
The capstone project is the culmination of the honors program. It involves research, service learning, artistic expression and study abroad.
Students may work with a faculty mentor on a project the faculty member is conducting or develop a project that is uniquely their own.
For more information, contact Daniel Underwood at dunderwood@pencol.edu or 360-417-6252.
