This thesis focuses on ethics and explains some of its features, specifically the concept of moral consideration, rights, and interests, through three leading ethical theories in the field, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and duty ethics. In this framework, environmental ethics is explored through three popular theories in the community, anthropocentrism, non-anthropocentrism, and holism. Furthermore, organisational ethics is discussed in the context of environmental ethics through a case study of America’s famous coffee giant Starbucks. The coffee company is used to discuss business ethics and explores some of the practices already implemented, what works, what does not, what can be done, and the critical role its members play. Moreover, the thesis argues that environmental ethics is necessary to address and mitigate sustainability challenges and create models of business that consider the natural world in its entirety.

There are unfortunately very few curricular guides that focus on community engagement within the higher education of landscape architecture. A Beginner’s Guide to Community Engagement in the Curriculum of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning to Improve Social Justice and Sustainability helps resolve this issue and serves as a resource to students, educators, designers, and more. The guide centralizes a diverse collection of resources, guides students through learning materials, shares insight, and proposes potential community engagement methods. The booklet aims to help readers understand the importance of community engagement in design and shares different curricular approaches to introduce the work to students.

Influenza virus A (IVA) poses a serious threat to human health, killing over 25,000 Americans in the 2022 flu season alone. In the past 10 years, vaccine efficacy has varied significantly, ranging from 20-60% each season. Because IVA is subject to high antigenic shift and strain cocirculation, more effective IVA vaccines are needed to reduce the incidence of disease. Herein we report the production of a recombinant immune complex (RIC) vaccine “4xM2e” in Nicotiana benthamiana plants using agroinfiltration for use as a potential universal IVA vaccine candidate. RICs fuse antigen to the C-terminus of an immunoglobulin heavy chain with an epitope tag cognate to the antibody, promoting immune complex formation to increase immunogenicity. IVA matrix protein 2 ectodomain (M2e) is selected to serve as vaccine antigen for its high sequence conservation, as only a small number of minor mutations have occurred since its discovery in 1981 in the human sequence. However, there is some divergence in zoonotic IVA strains, and to account for this, we designed a combination of human consensus, swine, and avian M2e variants, 4xM2e. This was fused to the C terminus of the RIC platform to improve M2e immunogenicity and IVA strain coverage. The 4xM2e RIC was produced in N. benthamiana and verified with SDS-PAGE and Western blot assays, along with an analysis of complex formation and the potential for complement activation via complement C1q ELISA. With this work, we demonstrate the potential of RICs and plant-expression systems to generate universal IVA vaccine candidates.

In this project, I analyze representative samples from three different fashion brands’ sustainability-related informational materials provided to the public through their websites, annual reports, and clothing tags that promote the company’s environmental initiatives. The three companies were chosen because they each represent global fashion- they are all extremely large, popular, and prevalent brands. These materials are evaluated against three frameworks for identifying deceptive greenwashing claims. I identify instances in which these frameworks are successful in categorizing deceptive claims from these companies as well as instances in which they appear to be vulnerable. To address the vulnerabilities I discover in the three existing frameworks for identifying greenwashing, I propose six new guidelines to be used in conjunction with these frameworks that will help to ensure that consumers can have a more ample toolbox to identify deceptive sustainability claims.