Greening the Campus: Environmental Restoration and Ecology Education as Student Outreach

In university campuses across the United States, students engage in service projects that endeavor to protect, restore, or interpret native landscapes. These projects range from dorm-room native plant nurseries to large-scale mitigation projects aiming to roll back decades of environmental damage. Research has shown that civic engagement and making connections to the local landscape help to encourage academic achievement, increase retention, and serve as a venue for integrating students that are struggling to make social and spiritual connections to their on-campus home. However, little data exists on the social outcomes of these efforts to connect college students to place. This paper will examine the impact of campus-based ecological restoration efforts on incoming freshman at two universities in the Pacific Northwest.