The progression of Allegheny College’s campus ecosystem management has been driven by a belief that campus is the ideal site for hands-on learning. By connecting sustainability goals to the mission of student learning, Allegheny College has overcome barriers and turned sustainable ecosystem management into one of its defining features. Presenters will discuss how students, faculty, and staff have fostered a culture of collaboration by focusing on place-based and hands-on solutions to ecosystem challenges. From using courses to develop a campus garden; to adopting an integrated pest management plan researched and drafted by a student intern; to installing a permaculture food forest proposed, designed, budgeted, and planted by a student group; to the creation of a Campus Ecosystem Working Group to guide decisions; this session will offer inspiration for how other campuses can transform the management of campus grounds while creating unique learning and engagement opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and the community.

Collaborative engagement in campus ecosystem efforts have resulted in rain gardens to manage stormwater runoff; native ornamental beds to replace turf; an organic production garden with an orchard, renewable energy greenhouse, and beehives; bat and bird boxes; sustainable forestry management including control of invasives and strategic horse logging; and many other student- and faculty-led research efforts. Since 2001, Allegheny College has been composting on-site, a practice that has since expanded into an organic turf management policy and a campus garden that grows over 2,000 pounds of organic produce annually. The garden also serves as an outdoor laboratory for faculty to teach about sustainability agriculture and for paid student worker positions to gain hands-on gardening experience. Partnership with campus dining allows garden harvests to be served at dining halls as herbal tea, hot sauce, salsa, and more. Garden harvests are also used for co-curricular events, such as jewelry making, bouquet pop-ups, textile dyeing, and creating skincare products infused with garden-grown botanicals.

This session will be of particular interest to attendees who work with their campus ecosystem, but it will also be applicable and engaging for any attendee who is interested in embedding sustainability into curricular and co-curricular programming to advance sustainable campus ecosystem management and reproduce the success of these programs.