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My name is Ishaan Swami, and I’m so happy to be working as a Whitman Community Fellow with the Water and Environmental Center at Walla Walla Community College. The Center puts on events like the annual Return to the River Salmon Festival. It also hosts the offices of many environmental organizations such as the CTUIR Fisheries, the Washington Department of Ecology, the Snake River Salmon Recovery Board, and more! 

In my role as a Community Fellow, I have gotten to meet with the leaders of over ten different environmental organizations in the Walla Walla Valley. As a senior, it has been valuable to meet with people working in the exact fields I am interested in. There are many ways to work together to manage water and the environment in our valley, and everyone I have met is incredibly collaborative and fills a unique niche in this work. 

One of the things I love the most about science is sharing science with others through education and communication. So when my supervisor and I designed my work plan together, we made sure to emphasize both in my job responsibilities. When it comes to education, I have been attending Whitman’s science nights at local elementary schools. At these events, volunteers from Whitman’s science departments set up interactive educational stations for the second grade students. I come with the Water and Environmental Science team with our stream table. 

Stream tables are so cool! They’re filled with sand that you pump water through, in order to model the way that streams flow and change over time. I used one as a student in my sedimentology class at Whitman, and now I get to use one to teach elementary schoolers about erosion and stream morphology. It’s a big hit at the science nights, and I really enjoy getting my hands dirty and teaching science. I especially love when the students decide to play as if they were beavers and try to construct dams to stop the water from flowing. 

I also focus on science communication through design. The Water and Environmental Center hosts so many unique co-locator partners and programs, and part of my job is updating and creating new interpretive signage around the center. The idea is that anyone who walks through the building would get a sense of the  current projects in our center. 

My first design was in collaboration with the Blue Mountain Audubon Society. The Water and Environmental Center has a lot of large glass walls, and unfortunately, birds can’t always recognize that these are solid surfaces to avoid. The Audubon Society helped install a treatment of dots onto the glass that helps birds avoid them. But now the question is how to raise awareness about this project for anyone who might not know what these dots are for. That’s where I came in and designed a vinyl sticker that can go on the glass wall itself. My goal is that this design helps people learn more about the impressive and practical conservation efforts happening all over Walla Walla. 

In science careers, there is always a demand for people with both the scientific training as well as the communication skills to share important information with people who aren’t specialists in our fields. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to use this fellowship to expand my awareness of different ways to do conservation work, to create a larger portfolio of my science education and communication abilities, and to share my love of science with the Walla Walla Valley.