North Seattle College
EN-3: Student Life

Before Covid, between fall 2018 and spring 2019, an environmental focused club, named EcoLogic was formed by students. They are seeking to assist with sustainability efforts and outreach on campus. Prior, a Student Environmental Club, named EARTH, met as recently as 2015. Standing for 'Environmental Action and Restoring the Heritage' they work to increase action regarding environmental and social issues on campus. In part, this club was transformed into the Student Leadership Sustainability Board where the campus is encouraged to attend its weekly meetings to get involved in its outreach campaigns.

Other active sustainability-related groups include the Black Student Union, Feminist Alliance (dormant AY 2020-2021), La Raza Unida, LGBTQIA+ Club, and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE).

Student clubs have been significantly impacted by the lack of in-person instruction during COVID, but we are welcoming back more students in fall 2021 and plan to reinvigorate our student clubs and affinity groups.

https://northseattle.edu/campus-life/student-clubs

We proundly host the Licton Springs Seattle City P-Patch, representing the first partnership between the City and Washington State to make an organic, community garden.

https://northseattle.edu/licton-springs-p-patch

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Before COVID, between fall 2018 and spring 2019, the Governance and Advocacy for Equity and Sustainability Board of Student Leadership hosts yearly Earth Day Symposiums/Events that includes presentations and tabling from local non-profits.

Since fall 2019, this Board has also hosted campus wide EcoChallenge. Additionally, a faculty member and student leader collaborated on a campus presentation about climate change and campus' response to this crisis.

https://nscstudentleadership.home.blog/

The Art Gallery hangs six shows per year, four of which are curated group shows by local and national artists. In addition to these four exhibits each spring quarter we mount the annual Student Art Exhibition and each summer quarter we mount the annual Continuing Education Art Exhibition.

The Art Gallery seeks to foster the appreciation of the visual arts on the North Seattle College campus. It is a vibrant place to exhibit work whose purpose is to simultaneously serve as a teaching gallery for our diverse student population and a destination gallery for Seattle. We actively engage the college community through dynamic learning opportunities that directly demonstrate cultural and artistic diversity. Through exhibitions based around specific themes the gallery is invested in showcasing art that questions concept, is inclusive to a variety of viewpoints, and excels visually.

For Love/Money: Art & Funding Panel: A discussion with Artists of Color about funding and the Arts. Artist Panelists: (Collaboration with the NSC Library, NSC Art Gallery, and Student Leadership) March 6, 2019

Do You See Me Now? (Nov. 19, 2019 - Jan. 17, 2020)
With a performance by storyteller Sharon Nyree Williams (Dec. 5, 2019) and an artist talk by Michael B. Maine (Jan. 14, 2020)

This exhibition highlights the artwork of Michael B. Maine made in collaboration with Lhorna Murray for a photoshoot made for this show. The work in this show was 5 large format images of local cultural and political figures who are working to take back their power as well as other photographic projects by Michael B. Maine that center race.

The Implications of a Simple Landscape (Jan 29, 2020 - March 15, 2020)
With a visiting artist lecture by Nat Evans (February 20, 2020) who is a musician and urban farmer
We made short videos with the 5 artists in this exhibition which are available on the NSC YouTube Channel.

We live in a time and place where our relationship to the land is tenuous. Day-to-day weather could very well go unnoticed as we navigate our days within the shelter of houses, offices and cars. Through modern convenience we are able to ignore the direct impact of nature on our health and well-being. Yet it is also a time that whole continents are burning and entire populated islands are disappearing beneath a rising sea. We are more and more aware of a larger environmental catastrophe.

Landscape painting marks the relationship between human and nature. It has always held more than the easy, beautiful, and superficial representation of what is “out there”. The strongest examples are packed with metaphor, meaning, and psychology. They are documents of loss and notations of a colonized or uncolonized-able land. In this exhibition, we are thrilled to present five examples of artists whose work takes this deeper dive. The landscapes in this show address climate change, the future, the human role in the spread of invasive species, genocide, and how landscape can serve as a formal play, becoming the basis for everything. As a viewer, what do you see implied here, in what may otherwise seem a simple landscape?

Participating Artists:
Tim Cross: www.timothycross.org
Etsuko Ichikawa: www.etsukoichikawa.com
Mary Ann Peters: www.maryann-peters.com
Nicole Pietrantoni: www.nicole-pietrantoni.com
Markel Uriu: www.markeluriu.com

https://northseattle.edu/campus-life/art

An Environmental Science instructor regularly takes his class and other interested students to learn about glaciers, volcanoes, and rock formations on a tour of Mount St. Helens. Sustainability principles are essential to all of this instructor's courses. Other faculty offer one-credit field trips to look at shorelines, wetlands, and edible plants. Typically, at least one is offered each quarter and all incorporate sustainability, like Leave No Trace principles.

The Integrated Studies program uses sustainability-related themes regularly.

Annually, during Earth Week and EcoChallenge in October, students, faculty, and staff learn various ways they can be more sustainable on campus, at home, and in their community. Both events cover the wide range of sustainability topics, including food, water, waste, energy, and transportation.

The Sustainability Office supports a number of work study and student leadership sustainability board members. Students align sustainability with their professional and academic goals while being able to provide a breadth of sustainability related tasks built largely around the AASHE STARS framework.

https://northseattle.edu/student-life/governance-and-advocacy-equity-and-sustainability-board

The Sustainability Office supports instruction by providing co-curricular support.

North does have a sustainability fund that was established many years ago, but that fund was established through a one-time investment and does not have any renewal mechanism. Furthermore, students have not been actively involved in the management of the fund, so unfortunately they are not developing socially, environmentally, and fiscally responsible investment and financial skills at this time.