Euri Oh

UNST 109-I
Professor Farr
June 5, 2015
Inquiry and Critical Thinking
The inquiry and critical thinking goal aims for students to investigate and be
driven and inspired learners. The goal also seeks students to have an unbiased outlook
when researching or learning about a certain topic. Wherever a topics evidence and
reasons lead the student, the student shall follow. With that, the student should make
ethical verdicts and not let their own opinions cloud the decision they make. Rather than
letting their personal feelings get in the way, the student should use their previous
experiences along with newfound evidence as a guide to make morally right conclusions.
An assignment that shows my personal progress towards this goal is an assignment that
required me to design an infrastructure project for the City of Portland.
For this Planning in Portland assignment, we were expected to design an
infrastructure in an area in Portland that we were not familiar with. I chose to implement
my infrastructure in the Cully neighborhood in Northeast Portland. The infrastructure that
I proposed was a community center focused on music, dance, and food. I made this
decision by gathering evidence about the neighborhood. The evidence showed me that the
neighborhood has a lack of community centers, has a greater number of youth than
Portlands average, and the neighborhoods population is below poverty level. As the
inquiry and critical thinking goal strives for, I followed where the evidence took me and
made an ethical decision to choose this neighborhood for my project.
As the creator of this hypothetical infrastructure project, I had to consider not
only the cost of the project but also how it would affect the residents of the area. As I was

imagining what kind of influence this community center would have on the
neighborhoods residents, I realized that the center would provide more than just a class
or a meal. This community center could give an opportunity for the neighbors to connect
with one another. Neighbors from different backgrounds, religions and cultures could
collaborate to make the community center a home base to collectively learn and
connect.
With this assignment, I have learned that ordinary demographics and statistics of
an area can help one decide what the people of that region is lacking or what might they
might benefit from. Through my research I was able to do just what the inquiry and
critical thinking goal hopes for with their students, to evaluate multiple points of views to
make ethical judgments.