Fashion: a word that is synonymous with affluence, beauty and confidence. However, a little known fact is that the clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world, second only to oil. Additionally, a new survey of 2,825 adult women in the U.S. shows that 36.85% of them admit to not wearing most dresses they bought. (Krupnick n.d.)So, what can two women who consider themselves “conscious fashionistas” do to save the world one dress at a time? Empowered with information and driven by technology, the Mélange team educates adult women about their fashion carbon footprint through an activity that they famously enjoy: Shopping! By leveraging the cloud platform to enable women to rent used clothes, we are solving a problem for the women by the women. We believe that this crowd-sourced resell model will drastically reduce the waste generated due to the current absence of an efficient clothing discarding system. Krupnick, Ellie. n.d. "American Women’s Shopping Influenced Heavily By Fashion Trends, Survey Finds." huffingtonpost.com. Accessed May 9th, 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/american-women-shopping_n_2764634.html.

On March 22, 2014, a massive landslide engulfed the Steelhead Haven neighborhood near Oso, Washington. In seconds, Steelhead Haven was gone and State Route 530, the primary road to nearby Darrington, was buried in debris. 43 people died. In the weeks that followed, the Darrington community contributed vital expertise, equipment, and support to search and recovery efforts. Since then, the Darrington Historical Society has launched an ambitious project: development of an archive at UW Digital Collections to document the community’s experiences (http://content.lib.washington.edu/landslidesweb/). We made three significant contributions to the project: First, we created a collection development policy that will guide the archive’s growth. Second, we designed a tracking system to organize and manage the collection. Third, we greatly increased the size of the archive by processing a backlog of photos, documents, and maps. The community’s recovery will be a long one; our work ensures their story won’t be forgotten.

The UW has a variety of mentoring programs available to students but each is implemented in their own way without a standard platform for matching mentors with mentees. This can hinder the mentoring process by creating difficulty for mentors and mentees to match up. Our website will standardize the mentoring matching process and allows mentors and mentees to find their ideal match in a more simpler way. We believe this will encourage and increase mentoring at the UW which means more lives will be improved.

Colegio Anglo Colombiano is an International Baccalaureate school located in Bogota, Colombia. The Anglo did not have a clear scope and sequence or curricular framework for MYP (grades 5-9, 6-10 in USA) research and information literacy skills. This capstone will address that void. Following the development of the scope and sequence, the ultimate goal would be implementation in all MYP classes, not just in the library. I will continue at the school next academic year to ensure this. There is also a PR element of the project, letting teachers know that the document exits and how they can use it even if the librarian is unavailable. Teachers will be highly encouraged to partner with me for at least one project in the year en order to ensure students are coming into the library and being exposed to the program regularly. Student’s information literacy skills will greatly benefit from this program.

In 2010, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was required to send records from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to the newly formed American Indian Records Repository (AIRR). This event was based on a judiciary order in the 1996 case Cobell v. Norton (now Cobell v. Salazar) which successfully argued that the United States Federal Government was lax in its handling and storage of these records and the issues related therein. Until now, NARA has been unaware as to the extent of AIRR’s holdings and has not had a way to assist information seekers in locating their needed documents. Through data sorting and analysis, I created a finding aid which now makes it possible for NARA to assist those seeking their educational, personal, and financial records.

Every admission season, schools struggle with attracting the best talent and achieve maximum conversion rate at the same time. They want to avoid both under and over filling of the classrooms. Therefore, there is a need to strategically balance the quality and quantity of incoming student population. We extracted and analyzed important features of the data provided by our sponsor Ravenna Solutions. Our predictive analysis shows how significant select factors are in determining a future admit offer or an admit conversion. Thus, our project provides key insights to admission directors of K-12 schools regarding factors influential in making admission decisions. We help admission directors in making crucial admission decisions backed by application data of student aspirants. This makes the directors rely less heavily of their instinct or “gut feeling” and instead make data driven decisions. Hence, the efficiency in decision making results in better enrollments for the schools and thereby better school admissions for the students alike.

Each year, Mount Rainier National Park receives over 2,600 requests to camp in the wilderness. Hikers can’t view which campsites are currently available, so they send multiple itineraries for the same trip. These requests must be submitted by fax, requiring over 400 hours of manual data entry by park employees over the summer. Hikers often have to wait up to one month for a response, creating anxiety and uncertainty about whether their request will be approved. To solve these problems, we created an online reservation system where hikers can view available campsites and submit their itinerary online. Every request must be reviewed by a park employee, so we created an employee portal to help streamline their process and improve response time. Our entirely new reservation system will ensure that hikers can enjoy the beautiful wilderness for years to come.

Seattle JazzED, a music education non-profit, has two substantial and growing collections: sheet music used by instructors and instruments lent to students. Because neither collection was inventoried, it was difficult for JazzED staff to track where instruments were or what song arrangements had already been purchased. We created a database for, and cataloged, JazzED’s non-bibliographic resources using custom metadata built around their needs. We constructed the database on a cloud-based platform, allowing staff and instructors to easily share and edit entries, check out instruments, make notes about repairs, and search for songs by skill level, style, and more. This project provides JazzED with a personalized system that saves their staff precious time and energy, which in turn supports their mission to empower students of all backgrounds. By dramatically expanding JazzED’s ability to manage their resources, we have contributed to their powerful impact on students and music education in our community.

In their early years, children are susceptible to vision-impairing diseases such as lazy eye, astigmatism, strabismus, and even cancer. Although these diseases can almost always be successfully treated if caught early, they often have no obvious signs. While examination by an ophthalmologist or optometrist will detect these conditions, only a small number of parents take their children for such an examination. Vision Screener iOS aims to provide parents with an iOS application to take a more proactive approach in monitoring their child’s eye health and find local specialists. By snapping one picture, parents can easily conduct at home photoscreening to check their child’s risk for these diseases. With our app, more children will be able to get needed vision care sooner and be able to see the world as they deserve.

Expensive housing prices and the desire to get out of their family homes are pushing more and more young adults to share housing with other tenants. However, group housing comes with its own heap of problems. Neglected chores, unpaid debts, and unhelpful roommates all combine to heavily strain relationships between tenants and complicate what should be the most comfortable part of our lives. OneRoof solves these complexities of group housing by directly targeting the two roots of the problem: disorganized communication and lack of accountability. Our solution features flexible task creation, and neatly organizes tasks both made by and assigned to you in one simple feed. Tenants are able to remind and keep track of their roommates’ tasks, and verify that they have been completed. By providing a tool that promotes clear communication and reliability, we help simplify household responsibilities and open up more time for our users’ daily endeavors.