The communities of Grays Harbor will be our learning laboratory for our investigation into what makes communities work. We will use a multidisciplinary approach in the examination of how these communities evolved and the role that local schools and educational institutions played as the region grew and developed.

This year-long program will help students develop the skills needed to assess their communities, capture their observations, and articulate them in a useful form. Students will work to improve critical thinking, research methods, analytical reading and writing, and understanding across differences of socio-economic class, race and ethnicity. This program will support students pursuing advanced degrees or careers in the field of education, government and non-profit service organizations.

Students will work in teams as they learn research skills, participate in field activities, and keep a record of their progress through a variety of assignments, such as mapping, journaling, oral histories, and data analysis. One of the primary objectives of this program will be to give back to the communities we are studying by adding to historical internet archives and creating photo journals, stories, poems and published articles.

Our contextual focus will be the formation of communities in the “Harbor” – generally speaking the geographic region that is connected to the communities of Aberdeen, Cosmopolis and Hoquiam. Special emphasis will be given to the evolution of the region’s public school system and to current educational issues from policy to classroom practice.

Our examination of the history of the region will seek out answers to how past events inform the current issues in education and community development policy that the Grays Harbor region is facing now and in the future. Students will learn how to work with primary source material and conduct research as a means of learning skills that are transferable to a broad range of social science disciplines.