Going strong for a second semester in Spring 2024, the Honors Service-Learning Seminar in Urban Ecology and Environmental Conservation enrolled twelve curious, conscientious students, representing a wide range of majors and disciplines throughout the university. For the first six weeks of the semester, these students gathered in the classroom with Dr. Shannon Finck twice a week to read about and discuss various philosophies of conservation and climate mitigation. During the next eight weeks, each student would be matched with one of seven participating community partners–all environmentally-focused organizations operating in the metro Atlanta area–to undertake independently designed service-learning projects, developed in conjunction with these organizations. 

Our community outreach grew a little bit this year, welcoming four new organizations to our growing list of ongoing and rotating partnerships, and we’re excited about what this semester and the future of this initiative, more broadly, might hold.

As in our previous semester, this blog reflects students’ experiences and observations during their service-learning journeys and documents the development of their projects. Here, you can read about who they are, what they’re working on, and what they’re learning. Since, this is the initiative’s second semester running now, you can also check in periodically to see how the course is taking shape over time.