Please click on a title to read the full article. Online version of the newsletter available at
http://sustainabilityinprisons.org/resources/spp-publications/. Banner photos by Ricky Osborne and Shauna
Bittle.

By Joslyn Rose Trivett, SPP Education and Outreach Manager

Clockwise from the top left, Sadie Gilliiom (ball cap), Ricky Johnson, Daniel Cherniske, Conrad Ely, and Lindsey
Hamilton working in prisons. Photo of Conrad by Ricky Osborne.

SPP Winter Newsletter 2017

Page 1Our winter newsletter is about the many, wonderful students who work for the Sustainability in Prisons Project(SPP). SPP could not be what it is without them.
SPP's founding director at The Evergreen
State College hired graduate students to
support prison programs beginning in
2008; that was when SPP was gaining
traction as a more formal effort, and was
growing in scale and scope (moreabout history here). At first, the workload
demanded just one or two students at atime, and those individuals worked
broadly—for multiple programs—to build
partnerships and disseminate results. Overtime, the number and complexity of
programs being coordinated by SPPEvergreen increased resulting in thecurrent model: a student coordinatingeach ecological conservation and
SPP-Evergreen team, 2011. Unknown photographer.
environmental education program.
We rely on student-staff Program Coordinators in myriad ways. They are the ones most often going into theprisons. They serve as the face of a program, and the leads for communicating details—large and small—that
are part of the program's
successes. They
continually add to theeducational breadth of eachprogram in many forms:
formal presentations,seminars on scientificpapers, hosting a partnerscientist's visit,
recommending readings,
and countless conversations
about programs' plans,
impacts, and larger context.
Students also study SPP
programs; they help trackand evaluate the quality ofeach program, and ten haveconducted formal research
SPP-Evergreen graduation party, 2013. Photo by Tony Bush.
on SPP topics (a few
examples here). Each student brings a unique perspective to SPP, and our programs are enriched by theirenergies and cutting-edge ideas.

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Graduation brings an end
to student-staff employment.
Each coordinator trains theirsuccessor, which is as muchabout introducing them to theculture and ways of thinking as
it is about program policy andprotocols. Each turnover isbittersweet. We have to say
good-bye to someone we haverelied on and invested in, and it
is painful to see them go. At thesame time, we get towelcome someone new, andtheir fresh perspectives help
SPP to continually improve; we
can't get stale! Also, there is thesatisfaction of seeing SPP
SPP-Evergreen graduation party, 2014. Photo by Daphne Harwood.
alumni go on to newand valuable endeavors, and wetake pride in supporting their ongoing careers and aspirations.
Choosing just a few students tohighlight in this newslettermeans not highlighting most, andthat is hard to do. Thirtyeight Evergreen students haveworked for SPP so far. All havebrought something importantand enduring to our programs.
You may learn more about mostof them on our staff page. We
hope that the following articles
will serve to illustrate the range
and diversity of their character,
expertise, and strengths. These
are wonderful humans, and it issuch a pleasure to celebratethem!

DOC staff, Evergreen staff, and student-staff pose following a successful frog release, October,2015. Photo by Woodland Park Zoo staff.

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By Susan Christopher, Butterfly Technician, Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women
The butterfly technicians from Mission
Creek Corrections Center for Women(MCCCW) would like to express ourheartfelt gratitude to our departing
program coordinator, Mr. Seth Dorman.
Mr. Dorman was with the program forabout a year and a half. During that time,
his dedication and work ethic inspired us
to be the best workers, students, andscientists we could be.
He was both an excellent student andteacher. He learned very quickly about
DOC policies and SPP’s butterfly program.

On his last day in the program, Seth holds a thank you card from the butterfly
technicians. The article's author is second from the left. Photo by Keegan Curry.

He treated us with respect,encouraged us to thinkoutside the box and to stepoutside our comfort zone
and share those ideas. He
displayed tremendous
patience and a great senseof humor, even while trying
to explain the concept of a“null hypothesis” to us.
Mr. Dorman’s coordination
efforts produced, for the
first time ever, theopportunity for two
technicians to join abutterfly release. Also due
Seth and butterfly technicians carefully work through "spring wake-up," the time when the caterpillars
to his efforts, all fourcome out of winter dormancy. Photo by a technician.
technicians attended the
Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly working group meeting, where we had input on region-wide efforts to protect andrecover the endangered species.
We consider ourselves fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Mr. Dorman: Thank you, Seth; wewish you the utmost success in all your future endeavors.

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By Carl Elliott, Kelli Bush, and Joslyn Rose Trivett, SPP-Evergreen Managers
Fawn Harris fills her days to overflowing,
and navigates her many activities withgrace and patience. She is a Master ofEnvironmental Studies student, employee
and volunteer with West Sound Wildlife,
regularly active in her cultural communityand environmental movement, and shecoordinates SPP's prairie conservation
nursery program at Washington
Corrections Center—a relatively newprogram with unusual and complex
demands.
Fawn is the first member of her family toattend college. She is passionate about
education, the environment, and building
Fawn brought Princess Remington, a turkey vulture, to the lecture series at Staffordcommunity. She successfully juggles the
Creek Corrections Center, and held the class' full attention for a solid hour (moremany elements of her life.
about her presentation here). Photo by Joslyn Rose Trivett.
At Washington Corrections Center, she works
and studies with men who are cognitively
disabled, and finds ways to make science andenvironmental education accessible andrelevant to them. Partneringwith this population is a new challenge for
SPP, and Fawn has been central to theprogram's success thus far. She has shownpatience and perseverance with everyone
involved.

Fawn works on plant pressings with a student at Washington Corrections Center.
Photo by Carl Elliott.

Above all, Fawn is a wonderfulcommunicator. She knows how to captivate alarge audience, describing the habits of birdsof-prey in a way that makes a lasting
impression. She will take the time with astudent to explain and discuss complex topics Fawn works on plant pressings with a student at Washington Corrections Center. Photo
by Carl Elliott.
until the student feels satisfied. She also
stands up for herself, and says what she needs, so that she is both safe and effective in her work. We are so
impressed by Fawn and so happy to be working with her!

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By Paula Andrew, Roots of Success Liaison, Training Coordinator, and "Chicken Lady" at Washington
Corrections Center for Women“There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goesout of their way to make life beautiful for others.” ~ Mandy
Hale
When I first came to work at the Washington Corrections
Center for Women nearly 5 years ago, I came from abackground of work in men’s prisons, large and small.
Looking back, nothing could have prepared me for the
impact I would feel working with female offenders.
My heart went out to the women I encountered on a daily
basis. The more I got out of my office and observed, thehungrier I became to try and bring some kind of normalcy
to the women that were longing to make the best of their
shattered world.
I was delighted when I found out I would be working withan organization called the Sustainability in Prisons Project –bonus for me! A group of caring Evergreen students andstaff who want what I want for these women: a little doseof culture from the outside they can embrace and expand
their world with...their little tiny corner of their now
restricted world needs expanding.
Enter Brittany Gallagher, Lecture Coordinator for the
Sustainability in Prisons Project. Her job was to plan,
organize, and recruit speakers for ourmonthly Sustainability lecture series. My job was to workwith her to put things together on the prison end to makeit happen. What a treat it was to work with her! She
immediately had the respect of the women in the audience
From top to bottom: Brittany Gallagher, Tiffany Webb, andfor the lectures. You could tell the women were excited
Liliana Caughman at work in SPP’s lecture series. Photo ofwhen she talked about things they could do in their own
Brittany and Anna Thurston by Shauna Bittle.
community upon release, and it gave them hope for asustainable future. Brittany’s quiet smile spread warmth throughout the classroom that was contagious! When
Brittany graduated from Evergreen College, like all good graduate students do, I felt like I had lost a good buddy.
She was off to the world of exploring her universe, and I was sad to see her go, but excited for her at the sametime.
. . . And then along came Tiffany Webb, pretty much the exact opposite of Brittany, with her wide grin, her
dancing eyes, and her thirst for sharing her passion for all things sustainable with the world. Tiffany was quick
to share her enthusiasm with the students and show them glimpses of life beyond the metal bars. Her
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stories were laced with leadership, compassion, and strength. Tiffany had a way of involving the students to thepoint there were actual tears among the lecture-goers when she left. It was a sad day when we had to say
goodbye to Tiffany, but waiting in the wings was . . .
. . . Liliana Caughman! Dear Liliana quickly became a reliable source of information to the women, one withgood listening skills and a patient manner. She continues the Brittany/Tiffany legacy with passion and conviction,
all the while spreading the word that these gals can make a difference in the world.
Brittany, Tiffany, Liliana are definitely “someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others”!

By Joey Burgess, Prairie Conservation Nursery Coordinator, Stafford Creek Corrections Center
Drissia Ras served as Conservation Nursery Coordinator at Stafford
Creek Corrections Center from 2012-14 while completing her Master ofEnvironmental Studies degree at Evergreen—the same position I am innow. For Drissia, performing weekly educational workshops andlectures was the most important aspect of her work. She believed that
education was crucial to the transformation of this vulnerable
population into valuable members of society with a future. She also
appreciated the hours spent getting her hands therapeutically dirty
while cultivating prairie plants. It was a much-needed break fromacademic endeavors.
During coursework for Drissia’s Master’s degree, she found herself in
Yakima County working with farmers, county officials, and otherstakeholders on preserving water quality in local watersheds. A
Staff photo fromhttps://friendlywater.net/ABOUT.

representative from a non-profit
organization, Friendly Water for the World, wasalso involved. They invited her to embark on a
research project to evaluate the performance ofa household water filter, BioSand, for removing
arsenic, and this became the subject of her
Master's thesis. She found that the water filter
was extremely effective at removing arsenic, avaluable finding for applications of thetechnology in developing communities.
Following graduation, Drissia continued to workwith Friendly Water for the World, and became
their Administration & Operations Director.
SPP Winter Newsletter 2017

Bri Morningred, Jaal Mann, and Drissia Ras, all three prairie
conservation nursery coordinators, smile during an SPP celebration in
2013. Photo by SPP staff.

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Drissia says her experiences from SPP serve her well in her current work. She appreciated the openness andflexibility that her supervisors provided; it meant she could get the experience she needed. SPP’s management
style was perfect for her. She was guided effectively, and empowered to develop project-management andpersonal skills. Working in a prison with Department of Corrections staff, she expanded her communication skills
in ways that now help her establish and maintain relationships with global partners.
For the future, Drissia plans to continue working with non-profit organizations. Although she recognizes thatevery organization is distinct and dynamic, she finds SPP especially unique because of the network ofpartnerships it has formed. She hopes to implement a similar networking strategy into her future work with
marginalized populations.

By Brittany Gallagher, External Affairs Manager, The Nature Conservancy
When I was looking into graduate
schools, I searched for anenvironmental studies program inwhich social justice was an integral–and integrated–part. As a Returned
Peace Corps Volunteer, I was
sensitive to inequitable global
environmental policy and its
detrimental effects to community
economic development on both aglobal and a personal scale. I wasinterested to fill in my gaps inexperience and knowledge with amore thorough understanding ofenvironmental and social justice athome in the US. Though Evergreen’s
Graduate Program on the
SPP Graduate Research Assistant Brittany Gallagher helps an Oregon spotted frog takeits first leap into the wild. Photo by Matthew Williams of the New York Times.
Environment seemed like a good fit,
it was the existence of the“Sustainable Prisons Project” (as it was called at the time) on campus that sealed the deal for me.
Thanks to a generous Sara Bilezikian Memorial Fellowship supporting students working for justice in theenvironmental arena, I was able to begin my time as an MES student even as I moved to Olympia from out ofstate. I had also emailed SPP staff before I arrived, applying for a job that didn’t exist yet, but thanks to somepersistence and a fortuitously timed grant, I became the Education & Evaluations Coordinator for SPP. Alongside
my studies, I spent my two years at Evergreen running a pair of lecture series at Stafford Creek Corrections
Center and Washington Corrections Center for Women. I also worked to evaluate SPP’s various ecologicalconservation programs. Out of this effort grew my Master’s thesis, examining the social and human effects of

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participating in SPP’s conservation programs on the inmate technicians who cared for frogs, dogs, butterflies,
and prairie plants.
In the years since graduation, I have mentioned SPP in every job interview I’ve had, as well as dropping it into
casual conversation on dates, and with strangers sitting next to me on airplanes. We may forget it on our supergreen Evergreen campus in the “upper-left” USA, but SPP’s model is fascinating to people. Working with stateagencies, prison staff and inmates, academics, and volunteers from the community gave me the skills needed toengage across cultures and value sets to achieve a common purpose. These experiences translate, and they havecontinued to pay off as I’ve gone on to work in international development and education, and in my current
position as External Affairs Manager for The Nature Conservancy in Washington. Now more than ever,cooperation and collaboration with perhaps-unlikely partners for the good of people and the planet is the way
to go, and I am proud to have been a piece of SPP’s important and continuing great work.

By Sadie Gilliom, SPP Turtle Rehabilitation Program Coordinator
When Rachel Stendahl started work with the Sustainability in
Prisons Project in 2013, her dream was to become a marine ecology
professor. However, something about her experience as an
SPP Roots of Success Coordinator must have stuck: in the years
since she left SPP, she figured out how to bring environmental
education to juvenile detention centers!
After researching the relationship between paths of whale
migration and shipping, Rachel graduated from The Evergreen State
College with a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies. Rachel
was hired by Educational Service District 113 to be their Regional
Science Coordinator. She took over the job of running a watershededucation program called the Chehalis Basin Education Consortium.
This program supports stewardship of the Chehalis Basin watershedby providing environmental education resources to educators.
Through this program, hundreds of youth throughout the Chehalis
Basin watershed learn how their watershed works, how to test thewater quality of their streams, rivers, and lakes, and how to present
their water quality data

Rachel Stendahl talks with a Roots of Successinstructor during a graduation celebration forstudents of the environmental curriculum. Photo by
Joslyn Rose Trivett.

After getting into the swing of things, Rachel realized that not all of the students in the Chehalis Basin werebeing provided these same hands-on learning opportunities. In particular, she was concerned with thestudents inside of juvenile detention centers. With the help of another previous SPP employee, Bri
Morningred, Rachel successfully completed, submitted, and was awarded the No Child Left
Inside grant. Rachel began to implement a new environmental education program at the Lewis County Juvenile
Detention Center.

SPP Winter Newsletter 2017

Page 9SPP shared Rachel’s internship opportunity on their listserv and I applied for the job. We worked together tocoordinate the first-ever environmental education program provided to the youth at the detention center. It has
been a great success! Rachel plans to continue the program and hopes to expand to Green Hill Juvenile
Detention Center. Go Rachel!

By SPP Director for Evergreen Dr. Carri LeRoy

During an MES fieldtrip to the Elwha River, Carri (purple raincoat),talked with MES students and adjunct faculty Sarah Hamman (blueraincoat, also an SPP partner!). Photo by Shauna Bittle.

While reading a draft of the newsletter this quarter,
I was overwhelmed by memories of SPP students
past, inspired by SPP students present, and could
barely contain my excitement about meeting the
SPP students of the future! One of the great
benefits of being the Co-Director on the Evergreenside of the SPP partnership (SPP is a partnership
between The Evergreen State College andthe Washington Department of Corrections) isinteracting with our phenomenal undergraduate
and graduate students.

I was able to cultivate particularly strong
relationships with SPP graduate students while I
spent three years as a faculty member in Evergreen's Graduate Program on the Environment (MES) and had thedistinct pleasure of mentoring sixteen thesis
students. Of these students, half of them also
worked as SPP Graduate Research Assistants, andfour of them did their thesis projects on SPP. It was
through many months of collaborative learning
about their thesis research that I really got to know
these students and their strengths and passions.
They are inspiring individuals! Many of themenrolled in the MES program and moved across thecountry with the hope of being able to work for SPP.
The MES program's interdisciplinary curriculum andopportunities to do thesis projects that blend
natural and social sciences make it an ideal partner
for SPP. We like to think of SPP as a fantastic
example of the three pillars of sustainability in
During the first national meeting of SPP programs in 2012, Evan Hayduk andaction (environmental stewardship, economic cost
Carri LeRoy talk during a tour of Cedar Creek Corrections Center. Photo by
Shauna Bittle.
saving, and social justice), so it is easy to choose
aspects of the program to study from many angles.
We are grateful for the dedication, enthusiasm, and time SPP Graduate Research Assistants put into their work
for SPP. Their work is clearly appreciated by SPP staff, WA Corrections employees, incarcerated students, their
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Page 10peers, and outside agencies (as evidenced by the articles written in this issue of our newsletter). Our students
have gone on to pursue PhDs and do excellent work after graduation for federal, state, and non-profit agencies.
Evergreen students are truly a force to be reckoned with, and our SPP graduates are an elite group! I thank all ofyou (past, present, and future) for your contributions to SPP!

Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) brings science,
environmental education and nature into prisons. We
work cooperatively with diverse individuals andorganizations to create prison programs and bring
benefits to partners inside and outside the fence. To
learn more, contact us at spp@evergreen.edu andcommunicate with us through our social media sites:sustainabilityinprisons.org
www.facebook.com/sustainabilityinprisons/twitter.com/SPP_WA

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