The Independent Issue # 103 i
Fort Lewis College News Magazine
Nov 20th, 2019
The evolving science and industry of
cannabis the cannabis industry is changing constantly and consumers need to be informed about what they’re consuming.
Dear Readers,
Editor’s Note
Hi there, thanks for picking up this semester’s second issue of the Indy! We wanted to make sure we got it out in time for you all to take home and read over Thanksgiving break, so we hope you enjoy it. I don’t know about you, but ever since midterms I have been hanging on by a thread. Looking forward to thanksgiving is the only thing that got me through. This such a special time of the year, as we are able to take time off to spend time with friends or family and, of course, eat food! But let’s not forget the cultural significance behind thanksgiving, and how appalling the holiday is in regard to Native American and indigenous communities. That being said, I think we can take the tradition and transform it into something beautiful, like we have: a day for gratitude. I’m grateful to live in Durango, and go to such a beautiful, small and personable school where we get to be immersed in indigenous culture and history is we choose to be. I’m grateful for the Indy, and all the hard work we’ve done, the skills we’ve developed and the relationships we’ve built. I’m grateful for you guys, our readers! Without you we couldn’t be practicing what it is we love: journalism. So, thanks a lot! As always, let us know if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions or feedback. Happy Native American Heritage month, have a great break! Best,
Coya Pair Editor in Chief
Cdpair@fortlweis.edu
Cover Photo by Sierra Doan
Anyone who is interested in providing feedback to The Independent can reach out through email (Cdpair@fortlweis.edu) Facebook (The Indepdent FLC) or Twitter (@flcindepdendent). If you are interested in providing feedback about specific departments, please visit theindyonline.com where you can find contact information for our departmental editors.
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Th in t a dr aun Nav mu Pho
The Independent i
In This Issue The Evolving Science and Industry of Cannabis pAlx Lee 3-4
More Than Just Sounds
A Look into EDM in Durango
Charlotte Williams 5-6
One story, a Decade Later, Carries Lasting Impact for Native Women Barbara Edwards
7-8
Nuclear Energy:
How FLC’s Engineering Department is Making Waves for New Reactors Kim Cassels 9-10
Does Gene Mapping Really Tell You Who You Are? Kim Cassels 11-12
The Sing Our Rivers Red exhibit in the Delaney library showcases a dress donated by a cousin and aunt of Nicole Leigh Redhorse, a Navajo woman who was murdered in 2007. Photo by Barbara Edwards
First Launch Alx Lee 13
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Photos by Sierraa Doan
Whether a seasoned smoker or a first timer, the cannabis industry is changing constantly and consumers need to be properly informed about what exactly they are consuming.
The Evolving science and industry of
3
cannabis
The State of Colorado has experienced major shifts in marijuana consumption patterns, supply patterns and market balance, according to a 2018 market update conducted by the Marijuana Policy Group in conjunction with the Leeds School of Business and the University of Colorado Boulder. Laboratory testing is crucial for the consumption of cannabis, Lucas Mason, owner and lab director at Aurum Lab, said at the Fort Lewis College alumni cannabis science discussion.
Cannabis in the Lab Mason’s role in Aurum Labs is to ensure buyers that the product has passed state regulations and is safe for consumption, he said. Growers will use an organic pesticide that is approved for one crop, such as strawberries, and question why it is not approved for a cannabis crop, Mason said. “You’re not smoking strawberries,” Mason said. Certain pesticide compounds contain components like micro butanol, which will produce toxic chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide when heated for smoking, Mason said. If inhaled, hydrogen cyanide can lead to mild side effects such as anxiety and difficulty breathing, or severe side effects such as coma, seizures and cardiac arrest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homogeneity is a test in locating the amount of THC in an edible, Mason said. Potency measures the amount of certain cannabinoids in the product, he said. The lab ensures the 100 mg in a brownie is evenly distributed, Mason said. Through tests such as these, consumers are reassured what they are consuming is safe.
Cannabis in the store front The average customer is not knowledgeable about the potency in an edible and may have a bad experience, Sayrah Sims, floor
The Independent i manager and budtender at Prohibition Herb, said in a phone interview. This experience could affect their overall view on cannabis, she said. It’s best to think of bud tenders as herbalists, she said. If a customer wants to be relaxed, an herbalist might suggest chamomile or lavender. It’s important to get customers started in the right direction because everyone is different, everyone will have a different reaction to cannabis, Sims said. It’s recommended to see a doctor for dosing because budtenders may mistakenly refer a first-time customer 10 mg and the results may be bad, Dr. Mark Braunstein, a cannabis psychiatrist, said through text message. “Our dosing protocol for CBD is one mg/ kg of body weight/day divided in three doses,” Braunstein said. “So if someone was 30 kg for example, they would take 10 mg CBD in the morning, 10 mg at lunch, and 10 mg at night to start and see if that’s the right dose.” Medicinal cannabis will not magically make someone feel better right away, Braunstein said. But by consuming it in regards to diet, sleep and exercise routine it can help over time, Braunstein said. Finding the right product relies on the patient to give feedback to budtenders on what works best for them, Sims said. “That’s where the budtender has to have pretty good product knowledge like dosage,” she said. “If you have a newbie who’s never done cannabis before, you’re not going to recommend they start out with a 50 mg gummy.” There is a strain out there for everyone, she said. A person may get sleepy or anxious but it’s a matter of finding the right one for themselves, it comes down to trial and error, Sims said. “You don’t drive a Prius over a 4x4 trail, nor do you want a monster truck in the city,” Sims said. “You’re just not using the right vehicle to do what you’re doing.”
Alx Lee
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DJ Daily Bread (top, lower right) and The Floozie at Animas City Theatre in Durango, CO. Photos Courtesy of Cy Fontenot
MORE THAN JUST
SOUNDS
A LOOK INTO EDM IN DURANGO
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Micheal Travis of PRAANG Cervantes Masterpiece The Independent i Ballroom in Denver, CO. Photo Couresty of Cy Fontenot
D
urango’s music scene is most commonly associated with bluegrass or jambands, but live shows for these genres only serve a portion of the community. Electronic dance music, the kind most commonly associated with raves, is not only produced but also enjoyed by residents of Durango, and is considered an up and coming genre, according to Eugene Salaz, the talent and production manager of Animas City Theatre. Carter Landon, an EDM fan and sophomore at Fort Lewis College said “rave” is another word for an electronic music concert. Raves are events that people attend, rather than a genre of music itself. EDM originated from a rise in techno and disco music and evolved with the creation of new technology for producing to form subgenres, such as house music, dubstep, ridum and others, Landon said. These types of music are not new developments in the music industry but has been developing since the rise of techno music across Europe in the 1980s, Landon said. “Techno was probably the origination of all of it because techno has been Europe’s biggest crave of music,” Landon said. Raves originated in Europe as secret events for the youth, Salaz said. “Raves used to be an unground scene, where kids would find a warehouse and host a party,” Salaz said. “That’s all changed quite a bit over the last 10 years where electronic music isn’t really underground anymore.” Multiple DJs who create varying types of these genres call Durango home. One, Malik Mariano, a local DJ who goes by the stage name BraptheGoat, produces house music and releases it over various music platforms, as well as performing them at various locations around Durango, he said. House music is very upbeat because there’s a constant rhythm happening, Mariano said. “If you like to like dance or just like to feel the music, house music is the place to be,” he said. People in Durango generally attend funk,
“It’s
about sharing your person, sharing yourself with everything around you.”
- Matt Ralph
Co-founder
of
Unified Mountain Soundz
electronica, bluegrass and rock shows in town, Salaz said. Salaz considers the EDM community an up-and-coming scene in Durango due to the creation of Unified Mountain Soundz, a Colorado-based audio support company, he said. Matt Ralph, a local DJ and co-founder of Unified Mountain Soundz, created the company with a small group of people to provide the equipment needed for concerts – including a stage and sound system for music gatherings nationwide, Ralph said. “They’ve held their own music gathering called One Vibration at Hesperus for the last four years, and it’s really starting to generate some serious kinetic force,” Ralph said. The One Vibration gatherings are typically held in May, and the group has been planning the next festival since the most recent one ended in Spring, Ralph said.
and local
DJ
Unified Mountain Soundz expects to bring back One Vibration in Spring 2019, according to the UMS website. EDM has the ability to create community among its fans, who find “families” of other fans of an artist. A big part of the culture for many listeners is the ability to find community at shows, in groups online or even on the off-chance in other communities such as schools or workplaces. “You can have 10,000 people in a few square miles of each other, and everyone completely coexists, to the point where you can walk anywhere and not only make friends, but you make families or lifetime friends,” Ralph said. “It’s about sharing your person, sharing yourself with everything around you.”
Charlotte Williams
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D
iane Millich, a Southern Ute tribal member and advocate for the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, shared her experience of domestic violence on the reservation at the Violence Against Native Women symposium in the fall of 2019 to stress the importance of support services and legislation for women. VAWA was first passed in 1994 in order to improve the law enforcement and service programs for women who have experienced domestic violence, sexual violence, dating violence, sex trafficking, stalking, child violence and violence against law enforcement officers, as stated in the bill. VAWA must be reauthorized every four years, and the reauthorization of 2018 has not passed through the Senate yet, according to the text of the bill. The bill passed in a vote in the House in April, but no further action has been taken. Local support services such as the Sexual Assault Services Organziation and Milich’s Our Sister’s Keeper are provided funding under VAWA that could be affected if the bill is not reauthorized, Maura Dunco, the executive director for SASO, said.
One story, a decade later, arries lasting impact for
At that time, Millich began an organization called Our Sister’s Keeper to share the voices of Native Women after she fought to reauthorize the bill in 2012 with the Title IX revision Safety for Indian Women, Millich said.
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Native Women
“I was so afraid to share and tell my story,” Millich said recalling the trauma she endured after her experiences of domestic violence. Title IX is an addition to VAWA that gives tribal jurisdiction over assault crimes and provides Native American victims to press charges against non-native perpetrators on Native lands, Millich said. Versions of the VAWA bill prior to 2012 included only limited protections for Native women. There are still issues of staffing, prosecution and follow through of cases for Native women, and all women, Dunco said. SASO works with Native women who experience assault as well as historical trauma, and the reauthorization of VAWA is important to ensuring Native women continue to receive the support they need, Dunco said. “We work with clients on a day-to-day basis, and it is crisis focused, so what we do is really important to clients that we serve,” Dunco said. Although SASO has not seen any immediate problems with funding as a result of the slow reauthorization of VAWA, these organizations still wonder how their funding will be affected in the near future, she said. Failure to reauthorize VAWA gives the message that assault services are not important, Dunco said. Reauthorization also allows a more efficient and immediate address of data for missing and murdered indigenous women, Millich said. SASO works with the victim services of the Southern Ute tribe, and outreaches to tribal police, Kelsey Lansing, the cultural outreach coordinator for SASO said. “We are always inviting law enforcement to our human trafficking trainings and all of our cultural events to provide education,” Lansing said. Law enforcement in the Four Corners area practices “trauma informed care” with every SASO client and are aware of their communities, Lansing said. “Sexual assault cases are some of the most
The sing Phot
The Independent i challenging, judicially,” Dunco said. Part of Millich’s attempts at spreading awareness for Native women included sharing her own survivor story. Millich said she married into her second marriage to a non-native man after two months of dating and said that on the third day of their marriage her husband allegedly beat her. The man was not convicted of any assault charges, but was jailed on a different charge later. Millich lived on the Southern Ute reservation when she started to experience domestic violence, she said. When it worsened she called the Southern Ute Police. The tribal police could not arrest Millich’s husband of this alleged domestic violence on the reservation because he was a non-native, so the police would have to leave, she said. The La Plata County police could also not arrest him because they didn’t have jurisdiction on reservation land, Millich said.
On March 3, 2003 Millich left her abuser and moved into a safehouse, she said. Millich worked for the Bureau of Land Management, and three days after she had moved into the safehouse, she alleged that he came to her work and attempted to shoot her and fired a missing shot. The gunshot hit one of her coworkers in his shoulder when he jumped in front of the bullet, she said. The gunshot victim did not press charges and the man was not convicted for any crime related to that incident. A few weeks later after fleeing to New Mexico, Millich’s then-husband was arrested, according to The Associated Press reports. At the safehouse, there were five different officers from the Southern Ute police, Durango Police Department, La Plata County Sheriff's Office, the FBI, and Colorado State Patrol deciding who had jurisdiction over the case, Millich said. “There were all these different maps on the back of the police cars, each officer
was trying to figure out who has jurisdiction, what does the law read around that jurisdiction and how are we going to help Diane?,” she said. There were no domestic violence crimes documented against him on the reservation land, and the shooting happened on federal land, so the two crimes would not be merged, she said. Millich’s abuser would be prosecuted as a first-time offender and was convicted for an aggravated traffic offense, The Associated Press reported at the time. The La Plata County 6th Judicial District oversaw the case, Millich said. Because of her experiences, Millich was determined to join in the fight to ensure VAWA did not get signed without a revision to the Title IX Safety to Indian Women, she said. Congress had plans to pass the bill without this resolution in 2012, she said. Millich told her story in front of the U.S. Congress and in front of the Senate in order to ensure the resolution be added to VAWA before it was reauthorized, she said. Some senators and representatives believed her story and some did not, she said. In January of 2013, Millich, along with thousands of others, lobbied in front of the Senate again. Finally, the reauthorization bill passed through the Senate and then-President Barack Obama signed the final reauthorization in March 2013. According to a video of the event, Millich presented her story once more at the Department of Interior in Washington D.C. on the day of the VAWA bill reauthorization signing that month.
The Sing Our Rivers Red exhibit showcases earrings, each representing a single indigenous woman who has gone missing or has been murdered Photo by Barbara Edwards
“When Native American women are abused on tribal lands by an attacker who is not Native American, the attacker is immune to prosecution by tribal courts,” said then-President Barack Obama at the VAWA signing. “As soon as I sign this bill, that ends.”
Barbara Edwards
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Nuclear Energy: HOW FLC’S ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT IS MAKING WAVES FOR NEW REACTORS
T
he engineering department is making substantial innovations in nuclear energy research by developing unique parts intended for pumping liquid metal. Fort Lewis College is one of five U.S.based academic institutions studying how to increase the efficiency of the next generation of nuclear power plants, which involves using metal as a coolant that could help minimize radioactive waste. Because nuclear power involves blasting radioactive atoms apart, things get pretty hot— and just like a car’s engine that runs off of miniature explosions— it needs a coolant, Billy Nollet, associate professor of physics and engineering at FLC, said. Right now, most nuclear power plants keep cool with water. FLC’s thermal hydraulics lab is studying how to safely use liquid sodium as a coolant instead, he said. Some advantages to using this liquid metal in lieu of good old fashioned water involves how it can chill reactors at atmospheric pressure— the weight of air on Earth’s surface— along with how long spent waste stays radioactive, he said.
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Nollet started the FLC thermal hydraulics lab in 2013 where he and engineering students have been studying the way corrosion happens inside nuclear power plants and how to keep liquid sodium flowing through the piping hot cycle of nuclear energy. “So imagine your car,” Nollet said. “Your car has a radiator that has a water pump that flows the antifreeze around. It has a thermostat which controls the temperature at which all this happens. You can take that water out and replace it with alcohol or some other of your mineral oil or liquid sodium. We are just removing the fluid and switching it out with something better. So rather than water we use something else.”
WHAT IS NUCLEAR ENERGY? Nuclear power generates electricity in a significantly different way than coal and natural gas, and creates low to zero carbon emissions, Nollet said. While nuclear power won’t contribute to greenhouse gases, it does create radioactive waste that is notably dangerous, he said. This radioactive waste comes from
uranium and plutonium. These natural and radioactive resources used for nuclear energy make for spectacular fission after their atoms split. Fission is the heat energy flying out of a broken nucleus. This hot shrapnel travels through the reactor to make steam, which then spins a turbine that generates electricity, Nollet said.
INSIDE NUCLEAR REACTORS This is where FLC’s thermal hydraulics lab comes in. Thermal hydraulics is the study of how to use fluids to move energy around, Nollet said. Their fluid of choice is liquid sodium— a liquid metal that looks similar to mercury, and can chill reactors more efficiently than water, he said. It doesn’t have the same problems as a water coolant, which boils much more quickly than liquid sodium and thus loses its chilling ability, Andrew Napora, a sixth semester engineering student, said.
The Independent i Another benefit of using liquid sodium is how it decreases the amount of spent fuel and its lifetime of radioactivity, Nollet said. Spent fuel is what is left over after nuclear fission that can’t be used anymore. “These things are dangerous when they’re highly radioactive,” he said. “That’s the part we need to make sure we keep away from the public.” This radioactive waste is stored at the bottom of water tanks until it becomes stable for dry storage, which can take decades to millennia, Nollet said.
A NEW GENERATION OF NUCLEAR POWER
Also, sodium reactors can allow the fuel— uranium or plutonium— to burn completely, so there is little to no waste left over, he said.
A COld Trap THE SOLUBILITY OF OXYGEN IN SODIUM IS TEMPERATURE DEPENDENT: THE COOLER THE SODIUM, THE LESS OXYGEN IT CAN HOLD IN SOLUTION.
“With a sodium cooled reactor we can solve that spent fuel problem,” Nollet said.
“So rather than having spent fuel that last for thousands of years, we can turn it into spent fuel that lasts a few decades,” he said. Another advantage of sodium reactors is their ability to handle raw uranium, which comes right out of the Earth and into a reactor without being refined, Nollet said. The more an element like uranium is enriched, the more it becomes a weapon grade material, so it’s advantageous to keep these resources less refined in terms of safety.
FLC’s thermal hydraulics lab is researching corrosion in reactors, which is inevitable regardless of what kind of coolant is used, Nollet said. The lab has also developed the unique design to pump the liquid sodium coolant through the reactor.
“Basically, because sodium is volatile, because it’s dangerous, we do everything we can without touching it,” he said. “So we can push the sodium without touching it, we don’t have any propellers or shafts that have to go through and seal.”
“Think of a neutron like a worker bee,” Nollet said. “If you have a lot of them in there, you can do a lot of things. In a water cooled reactor you have very few, but you need a lot of them keep the fission reaction going. In a sodium reactor, we have more workers which frees up more of them to do other things.”
Transmutation involves taking that spent fuel and beating it up with more neutrons during fission. This makes the spent fuel break down into material that doesn’t stay radioactive as long, Nollet said.
“With a closed fuel cycle, that fuel— once it’s burned up— could be more or less returned to the Earth,” he said.
It’s a moving magnet pump, which picks up the molten metal and moves it through the reactor to cool down and maintain the explosions of fission, Nollet said.
In new sodium reactors, the neutrons come in at a much higher speed, which means that it gives the particle it runs into a lot more energy, which is what it needs to blow itself apart, Napora said.
Another task these neutrons can be assigned would be to transmute, he said.
Sodium cooled reactors are getting close to a closed fuel cycle. As of late-2019, highly radioactive spent fuel is essentially contained forever, Nollet said.
A COLD TRAP COOLS A PORTION OF THE FLOW, ALLOWING OXIDES TO PRECIPITATE OUT AND COLLECT ON STAINLESS STEEL WOOL. CLEAN SODIUM IS THEN RETURNED TO THE SYSTEM.
This particular type of research for sodium cooled reactors could become the new, fourth generation of nuclear reactors, which are still being researched and developed, he said. Right now, the world uses generation two and three reactors to contribute to energy production, and they use water, Nollet said. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, France generated 72 percent of its energy with nuclear power in 2018, while the U.S used 19 percent. “We’re always solving very specific problems in this huge puzzle piece that is a reactor,” he said. “And in particular, our puzzle piece is cooling systems. So the radiator in your car— that’s basically what we do.”
Kim Cassels
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Does Gene Mapping Really Tell You Who You Are?
M
any people have participated in some sort of genealogy test— a research study that collects DNA from as many people possible to track the migration patterns of human ancestors out of Africa. Geneaology companies provide a simple kit to collect those precious epithelial cells that hold the key to your biological archive. Whether it’s blood or spit you’re shipping off, DNA tests can reveal significant differences from what someone may have previously believed to be true about their family history. That’s what happened to Delbert Anderson. Delbert is a trumpeter in the Four Corners Area who composes funky tribal licks along with teaching jazz. He was born in Shiprock, N.M. on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Although Delbert wasn’t raised in Navajo tradition, his birth certificate states that he is 100 percent Navajo, he said. He was compelled to learn about his genealogy when a family friend contended that his great grandfather could have been Irish due to his vibrant red hair, he said. Seeing that scarlet locks aren’t common among his tribe, but don’t necessarily indicate that his musical chops came from a line of bagpipe players, he looked into it. While his birth certificate states he is only Navajo, his results told him otherwise. The data showed that Delbert is 60 percent Pueblo, 18 percent Navajo, eight percent Hispanic and four percent Asian, he said. “A lot of Native Americans think they are the original, primitive people of their land,” he said. In 2002, the Navajo Nation placed a moratorium for genetic testing on the reservation, according to the National Congress of American Indians. The ban was put in place to protect tribal members’ information from studies they would not agree to, according to the NCAI. “The whole reservation would have to get a DNA test, and it’d be interesting to have more information for the Native American side,” Delbert said. “There’s so many questions
The Independent i I have because I can’t help but wonder how accurate it can be, and I’m not sure of how that even works. I think it’s really strange.”
the mental capacity to decode the organic matter with the help of computer programs, Fenster said.
How does genealogy work? Is it just a bunch of blood-
So, that encoded spit and blood is now a decoded page of thousands of genetic sequences. Genes can be seen for all they’re worth, what they do, who they’re associated with, where they’ve been and— gosh it sounds like gossip.
sucking creatures hiding out in Transylvania bullshitting Delbert? And if the vampires are actually reading his
DNA, how are they doing it? DNA is made up of nucleotides, which can be thought of like words. The arrangement of those words write your biography, or genome sequence. In your biography there are going to be typos, or mutations, that are called genetic markers. If you’re a male, your genetic markers from your dad have the exact same typos on the exact same pages of his own biography. Thanks a lot dad. Genetic markers are what scientists are paying attention to because it’s a lot easier to look for them than to read your whole life story. Not that it isn’t interesting, it’s just that your genome sequence has three billion base pairs, said Steve Fenster, Ph.D. in cell biology. Because genetic markers are passed down to each generation, it gives a fairly straight line of information about someone’s ancestry. After the DNA flees the confines of the cell through a chemical process, it is placed inside a small tray with a bunch of compartments that slips into a machine Fenster calls Khaleesi. The dragon queen machine, as Khaleesi is known, looks like a tiny scanner, which then creates many, many copies of the DNA through a process called polymerase chain reaction. This reaction takes only a few pages from your biography because, again, it’s just not necessary to read all of it, Fenster said. “Every single cell in your body, except for maybe a few, has the same genetic information,” Fenster said.
ancestors had to fight off, if they had allergies, parts of their personalities, and how recently some of them got it on with Neanderthals. “Part of it is based on artifacts and part of it is based on skeletons, and also language groups, which has its own evolutionary pattern,” she said.
This is where genealogy comes in, and how migration patterns can be associated with genes.
For Delbert, the 60 percent of his DNA he shares with Pueblos makes historical sense to him.
“They’re probably looking for certain markers that have been identified in populations that might be specific for those ethnic groups,” Fenster said. “They’re not saying that those genes they’re looking at are actually what make people have darker skin, or curly hair or blue eyes.”
Pueblo Indians lived in eastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. The Spanish colonized Pueblo lands in the 1500’s, and the Pueblo Revolt would follow a century later.
So, how do the genetisists associate ethnic groups with geographic areas from thousands of years ago? Dawn Mulhern, Ph.D. in anthropology, says that the technology today can grab genetic information from skeletons that are hundreds of thousands of years old. The age of a skeleton does affect how much DNA it can provide, but the amount of bone needed for a sample has gotten smaller and the programs to read it have only gotten better, she said. “From archaeology, we do know a lot about the movement of people,” Mulhern said. An example of this is skin color variation in proximity to the equator. Light skin has only been around for six to 12,000 years, which seems to coincide with longitudinal areas and the development of agriculture, Mulhern said. The theory is that these pale newbies figured out how to get vitamin D and other nutrients from their crops since they couldn’t catch any rays, she said.
Scientists need a bunch of copies of the same pages of a DNA sample for fact checking purposes, he said.
This is where those mutations come into play, because significant changes like pigmentation only occur with genes that give a population an advantage to reproduce in their environment, Mulhern said.
These copies are then sent off to facilities of mega brain power that have people with
Areas of ancient and modern genome sequences can tell us what illnesses people’s
After the Pueblo Revolt, many Pueblos sought refuge with nearby settlements of the Navajo. That’s bingo for his Pueblo and Navajo DNA. His DNA’s Hispanic portion is associated with Central and South America and could also be a result of Spanish colonization. The small percentage of Asian descent Delbert says could possibly come from the theory that Asians crossed the Bering Strait into North American about 25,000 years ago. Results aside, many more people from Delbert’s family and the Navajo Nation would need to contribute their DNA to create a more accurate picture of his ancestry, Fenster said. “It’s only as good as their database,” Mulhern said. “Native American data in particular is lacking, because people tend to not want to give their DNA. There’s cultural and historical reasons for that.” For Delbert, he isn’t concerned about what the scientists have to say against his birth certificate. “What really defines an ethnic group,” Fenster said for how people identify in relation to their culture. “I think it’s dangerous when we try to classify people based off of their DNA.”
Kim Cassels
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First Launch First Year Experience, a semester-long program designed to connect freshman students with mentorship through Fort Lewis College faculty, started this fall.
Wenburg, who is an assistant professor in the English department, taught a yoga class titled Find Mountain Pose.
Michelle Bonanno, the First Year Experience coordinator, said instructors could create a community within the classes and build a relationship with students.
“If we convince students to come to Fort Lewis, we want to follow through on that promise that we can support them to be successful,” Bonanno said.
Wenburg has been a trained yoga instructor since 2014 and dealt with severe anxiety in college, she said. Her goal for the class was to demystify yoga and bring yoga resources to students.
The First Year development team consisted of seven instructors from multiple departments.
Bonanno said there are plans for a Sophomore Experience, expected to start for the Fall 2020 semester.
While teaching Find Mountain Pose, Wenburg noticed that students were more comfortable asking questions, she said.
Michelle Bonanno.....Coordinator Majel Boxer........................NAIS Callie Cole.................Chemistry Paul DeBell......Political Science Cynthia Dott..................Biology Julia Love........Academic Affairs William Mira.............Psychology Jillian Wenburg..............English
Departments are looking at a community-based curriculum for second-year students to encourage community learning and outreach, she said.
Some students had no understanding of a syllabus or office hours, she said. As they started asking questions, she was able to take the opportunity to address these issues within the classroom.
How this helps FLC retention rate
First Year Experience is an initiative, among many, brought about to improve student retention, Bonanno said. It was observed, by the First Year Experience committee, that many students often leave within the first year and second year of college, said Bonanno. According to the U.S Department of Education, 61 percent of students returned to FLC after their freshman year in 2017. Students don’t feel a sense of community, therefore retention rates drop, Bonanno said. The First Year Experience sets a goal in place to offer first-year students a chance to connect with faculty and be surrounded with support in all aspects of FLC. Through many programs like the First Year Experience at other schools, there is a result in student retention, Bonanno said. These programs, referred to as High-Impact Practices, seek to improve student retention and engagement according to the Association of American Colleges & Universities.
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Callie Cole, FLC chemistry professor, focused on chemistry and blew things up, but some people taught things that were outside their typical teaching curriculum, Bonanno said.
Courses offered The courses offered for this first run of First Year Experience were chosen around instructor and student schedules, Bonanno said. Instructors had the opportunity to teach something they were passionate about, either it being in their department or not, Bonanno said. There were more proposals for courses than courses offered this semester, Jillian Wenburg, assistant engligh professor and committee member of First Year Experience, said. “That indicates to me that we have this robust program where it’s not going to be the same classes every semester,” Wenburg said. Freshmen were offered a wide range of courses through First Year Experience, from “Health & Wellness” to “Science & Chemistry,” Wenburg said. Ethan Goatson, FLC freshman, enrolled in the course Bend Light To Your Will, he said. He learned about liquid nitrogen, something outside of his major. Tom Stritikus, president of Fort Lewis College, taught Leadership in Education, Wenburg said.
For the course Urban Sketching, the instructor got the students out of the classroom, Gishie said. The class hiked down the Sky Steps and sketched the downtown buildings, she said. “It was a fun experience,” she said. Goatson said First Year Experience was individualized and thinks FLC should continue offering First Year Experience to freshmen. Tehani Waahila, a FLC freshman, said she prefers freshman orientation to the first-year experience because it encourages students to get to know each other in a bigger group setting. “When your stuck in a classroom, it’s more of, I’m going to keep to myself kind of thing,” Waahila said. The First Year committee is assessing through course evaluations and focus groups to allow for change and growth based off this first semester, as well as celebrating the successes, Bonanno said. “That’s what good teaching is always like,” Bonanno said. “We learn as we do it, and we kind of adapt from there.”
Alx Lee
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