Overview

The Environmental Leadership Program's Climate Science team partners with local schools and the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest to offer place-based, hands-on field trips for middle school students. Students explore old-growth forests through interdisciplinary environmental education focusing on phenology, tree identification, microclimates, and wildfire ecology. In the context of the climate crisis, these field trips foster a deeper understanding of the natural world while strengthening real-world exploration, critical thinking skills, and land stewardship.

Environmental Leadership Program

The University of Oregon’s Environmental Leadership Program provides undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in environmental education as both students and teachers. Through collaboration with community partners, the program and Climate Science team seek to deliver meaningful environmental education and experiential learning.

Undergraduate students develop key professional skills, including but not limited to:

Curriculum development and implementation
Group facilitation
Team collaboration
Critical thinking and problem-solving

Mission Statement

The Climate Science team aims to foster students' connection to the natural world and create future environmental stewards who recognize that nature is not separate from us, but a part of who we are. Informed by environmental education theory, curriculum is developed and implemented to not only engage students with the outdoors through the lens of climate change but also improve student development, academic performance, and land stewardship relationships.

Study Site

The HJ Andrews Experimental Forest has been a prominent research site for forestry and ecology since 1948. It sits within the Western Cascades, and is managed by both the research and management arms of the US Forest Service in partnership with Oregon State University. With a focus on sustainable timber harvest in its formative years, the now Long Term Ecological Research site informs forest management practices with scientific research funded by the National Science Foundation. The Environmental Leadership Program has been proudly partnering with the forest for nearly 20 years.

Land Acknowledgement

The HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, the land on which we learn, work, and gather, is the traditional homelands of the Kalapuya and Molalla peoples who were forcibly removed from their homelands by the US government in the winter of 1856. We honor their resilience and contributions, past and present, to stewarding the Western Cascade mountains through spiritual, cultural, and ecological relationships with the land.

This land acknowledgement recognizes our team's place in the hundreds of years of colonization. It is meant to serve as one small part of our larger focus of centering indigeneity and Native peoples perspectives in all of our work.

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