Burke Museum Final Reflection

Prompt:
Remember that as a final step in your Experiential Learning Project, you are required to write a
reflection of the experience. This reflection should be included in your Honors portfolio along
with your original application and an artifact from the experience. We have provided some
prompts to consider when writing your reflection, but feel free to address other questions, or
include different information if you wish.
Look back at your original application for your Experiential Learning Project. How has your
completion of the project changed how you would answer those questions? How has this project
furthered your educational or personal goals and experiences? How does it connect to your
future or current coursework? How did your project contribute to the work of the organization
or your partners? Do you see yourself continuing to work with the organization or partners, or
on issues related to this project? What did you learn about yourself and the importance of this
project over the course of the last quarter?
For your convenience, a copy of your proposal is included below. Please complete the form at
the bottom of the page to submit your final reflection, and remember to keep a copy in your
online portfolio!

At the end of this period of my Experiential Learning project, I stand by my answers to the
reflection questions I wrote at the beginning of the quarter, and I hope in future months I will be
able to continue and deepen the collaborative potential of the Burke Meadow project. I did not
find myself as engaged with analyzing research at this phase of the project as I had hoped, but
this is set to begin next quarter, and I will get to learn more about this part of the project while
another student researcher will lead the research portion. However, I did continue to gather
research data by collecting monthly plant composition surveys, carrying on the data-collection
work of this project into its fourth year. While I did not learn many new things about data
collection and research, since I continued with a routine I had learned previously, I got the ability
to continue working on a project I’m very passionate about and consider how the management
actions I take for the meadow will lead to future research outcomes and inform future meadow
management.
This project has furthered my educational goals by building practical skills in native plant
landscape management. For example, I had the opportunity to work with team members to create
a plant list for a native meadow planting and work with vendors to ensure that it happens. Since I
am very passionate about native plant design, deepening my understanding of how native plant
projects come together as well as the maintenance of those projects (a critical piece of any
project) is central to the work I intend to do. Even further education will come from watching the
effects of the work I’ve contributed to this quarter, such as various meadow management
decisions like removing thatch buildup (grass-like plant material) and seeding the meadow.
This project connects to my coursework since, when doing plant design, I often design native
meadow plantings. The plant lists for these projects are often informed by the work I’ve done for
this project. I also gain a better understanding of what would be needed to maintain meadow
plantings I design, and the effects of the seeding and other management practices I contributed to
this quarter will further that understanding. When the data I’ve helped to collect is analyzed, I
will gain even more understanding of the impacts of meadow management practices taken during
and before my time on the project.
My work this quarter contributed to the goals of the Burke Museum and the UW Department of
Landscape Architecture (UWLA) by continuing to work with and grow a landscape which
functions as a collaborative space for native meadow ecology & culture. I helped to gather more
data for UW Landscape Architecture’s meadow monitoring project, which will deepen
understanding of native plant management techniques in urban settings for both UWLA and the
Burke Museum and help the Burke Museum to chart future meadow management. My work
planning a fall work party and seeding the meadow will help to increase meadow diversity and
the health of camas and other Indigenous cultural foods in the meadow.
I hope to continue to work with this project as long as I am in school at UW. I was interested in
this project before I even set foot on UW campus as a student, so its success is something I’m
very invested in. I hope to continue to learn from it even after I graduate, since the integration of
native plants into urban environments is one of my central passions in landscape design.
While working on the project, I learned about the difficulties of group communication when
trying to organize tasks. While there were no major issues, I faced frustration as I had several
email communications and phone conversations between project partners and a native plant
vendor about a plan to purchase nodding onion bulbs for the project. I seemed to leave many
conversations still with a lack of clarity about the next steps of this task. I think I could benefit
from entering meetings or phone calls with more specific outcomes in mind or ask for more
particulars when having these sorts of meetings. Thankfully, we were able to agree and purchase
the bulbs, and I planted them recently. This quarter, I also got to see how the Burke Meadow
benefits other collaboration partners like Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center – the partnership
helps those doing similar work to learn from each other’s practices.