2011 Cohort: Senior Project Brainstorm Session!!

Hey all!
This week in our mini-course meeting the Juniors started brainstorming ideas for our Senior project. We threw out a lot of ideas for projects and for goals we wanted to accomplish. Remember, these are just quick notes and we will flesh out the ideas we like the best later. Comment on any ideas you particularly like and would like to see implemented!

Senior Project Notes
Goal: You can do individual projects or use something river stewards related for thesis or a independent projects.
-build on the other seniors project

The River’s Institue:
1) Brining Dayton to the river
2) Undergraduate research- connect what you’re studying to the river
3) UD to the river

Ideas:
- Canoe/kayak, run, bike triatholon
- -Children’s education
- River-mobile
- Dayton Photo-saturation – do a photo contest
- Beyond brown but specifically for enviro stuff and outdoors things
o Website for events
- Make portage improvements- and boat launch improvements
- Mural- …. Judy Baca- contact her about that kind of stuff. Garden Station is looking for people to do murals as well.
- Kids in city school do an (art) project along the river. Work with inner city schools
- Nolan says we have a lot of Marble and materials from the McMurf Center.
- Terrace levees- Betsy Damon
- Ferrying students to the bball game……not practical

Insight: We need more service stuff not just outdoor stuff. Think bigger than the recreation stuff.
- Continuing education stuff, adopt a classroom
- Go to a community near a river and talk to them about how they can connect to the river
- Bioremediation- plan for dorm waste-water treatment.
- Monitoring storm water runoff as a research project – city of Dayton dept of water.
o You can turn this into an edu outreach thing and have kids do the work
- Campus west land- have river access nearer to here.
- Having a concert on the river- amphitheater in the river- do something with that
o In c-bus there was a fire and water show way cooler than lasers
- Floating gardens/wetlands
- NCR land – “boat the moat” –races or something\
- Boathouse- do something with that- fix it up

Insight: we could have multiple project teams and bring everything together at the end.
- River week- re-format that. People really liked going out on the river. We could do that more often and do a trip every other week (river club much?)
o You could do bio stuff with this- every time you go out do some water testing stuff.
o People have to get training for that
o There is training in May on the Fitz Center’s tab!!
- River club but with kids

What do we want to accomplish:
- Bring students (younger) down to the river
- UD students to get off of campus – you don’t hear much about the rivers unless you are in the river’s institute
- Raise money for stuff (maybe)
- Make the river more accessible for people in general
- Reasonably accomplishable – don’t make it so big that people drop out. Don’t leave it off for others to finish.
o but at the same time you also want a legacy or tradition. Not a one time event.
- Service-centered project
- Benefit city of Dayton