In its third iteration in Spring 2025, the Honors Service-Learning Seminar in Urban Ecology and Environmental Conservation enrolled twelve new 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 six 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.

This year, we welcomed one new organization to our growing list of community partnerships, and we were excited to welcome back an organization from our first semester pilot.

As in our previous semesters, this blog reflects students’ ongoing 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. It also serves as a record of how the course is taking shape over time.