Putting an Emphasis on Local and Healthy Living

Local First is an organization located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that works to promote a lifestyle built upon local product consumption. Local First works with a wide variety of compa-­‐ nies to achieve this goal and is not limited to one specific area of the market. Four students from Grand Valley State University have teamed up with Local First to address and improve ar-­‐ eas in need of attention. Nutrition, Diversity, and public awareness of Local First are current areas described as needing improvement by both the students and the Local First executive as-­‐ sistant. Students designed, printed, and distributed a brochure specifically focused on increas-­‐ ing public awareness of the importance of eating nutritional food, as well as how to do so through local food sources. Determining what information is most effective for the limited space a brochure offers is one of the challenge we dealt with during the early design stages of the project. Despite the initial success of the brochure, further work is needed with Local First in order to keep expanding on the importance of nutritional eating achieved locally. Future partners should focus on working with more Local First partners (restaurant owners, farmers, local market owners, etc…) in order to provide the Grand Rapids community with more options on where to obtain nutritional local food

Putting a Gag on Farm Whistleblowers: The Right to Lie and the Right to Reamin Silent Confront State Agricultural Protectionism

Whistleblowers play an important role in filling gaps in government food safety systems. Unfortunately, several dominant food-producing states have pursued legislative initiatives that punish farm whistleblowers and silence investigative tactics. First, this research describes various state legislative initiatives that curb criticism of agriculture. The work analyzes the federal food safety system and how these protections limiting agricultural criticism contravene that food safety net. Further, the research analyzes the free speech concerns in the newest protectionist laws. The analysis recommends strategies and future research to improve agricluture safety and protect free speech in an evolving food safety landscape

Clover Care: Website and E-Marketing Development

Clover Care is a geographically diverse company with both caregivers and clients spread across multiple counties. Efficient resource management and communication is critical for such a broadly distributed company. Clover Care also expects to continue expanding its geographical service area, making a solution even more critical. Clover Care was interested in updating and expanding their existing website to address this need. The centralization provided by using a website allows caregivers, clients and their families, and managers a way to quickly and effectively communicate. The primary Clover Care forms that were to be centralized included the caregiver timesheet, client case management form, and client invoice. Four distinct roles were identified as needing access to information: Caregiver, Client, Case Manager, and Administrator. Administrators required read and write capabilities for all objects. Case Managers required read capability for Caregiver timesheets and users, and write capability for case management forms. Caregivers required write capability for timesheets. Clients required read capability for timesheets, case management forms, and invoices. Access to the secure forms was provided using a central logon page. Users were then taken to a dashboard that allowed them access to forms based on the user’s role. The user would then read from and/or write to a form based on the permissions associated with their role. The website interface was developed using the PrimeFaces JSF library. Back-end functionality and security was provided using Spring and Hibernate. MySQL was used to store forms and user information for the purposes of development. This website is expected to be hosted using an Amazon hosting service (AWS), using their database service. Once the web site is publicly hosted on AWS, statistics gathering and analysis will be performed to assist Clover Care in focusing on the geographical locations with the most usage. Our goal is to find an effective e-marketing strategy to increase the visibility of Clovercare in targeted geographical areas.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1022/thumbnail.jp