Origin of Our Project

In 2016, Lauren Zahn was assigned a Multigenre paper for an English class at CSU Channel Islands and was told to pick a topic she was passionate about. The paper, assigned by English faculty member Dr. Kim Vose, was aimed at utilizing a large variety of genres, such as short stories, interviews, and poetry, to convey or paint a picture of a specific research topic. With these papers, students were allowed to focus on any subject that interested them and could utilize any form of storytelling within their papers. Being an English major, with a minor in Environmental Science and Resource Management, Lauren wanted to illuminate her love for environmental concepts by focusing her research on the detriments of oil spills in our local coastal communities. Using the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill as her inspiration, she highlighted the damage that one spill can cause to a coastal ecosystem. One of the genres she chose to include in her paper was an obituary, which sparked the interest of professors Dr. Stacey Anderson (English) and Dr. Kiki Patsch (ESRM). Using this idea of an obituary to sea life, both Dr. Anderson and Dr. Patsch collaborated in coming up with the idea to focus on a memoriam for the beaches themselves. With Lauren on board and students of the Performing Arts Department, they crafted the idea for the 2018 Arts Under the Stars performance entitled, “The California Coast: In Memoriam”.

A Special Thanks to Our Team