INCORPORATING LOCAL ISSUES: EXPLORING SERVICE LEARNING PROJECTS WITHIN WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY’S CORE ARBORETUM

The Core Arboretum is an outdoor education, research, and recreation facility located along the Monongahela River in Morgantown, West Virginia. Purchased by West Virginia University (WVU) in 1948, the 91-acre facility contains nearly 3 miles of hiking trails and a variety of natural habitats. Because the arboretum is frequently visited by residents and is easily accessible to WVU students, it provides an excellent opportunity to design service learning projects focused on promoting civic engagement and highlighting important environmental issues facing the community.

To test the feasibility of future arboretum service learning efforts, students enrolled in a sophomore-level field methods course completed a pilot project in the spring of 2017. These students explored an important environmental issue: heavy metal contamination within soils due to prolonged human activity. The Core Arboretum is proximal to several coal-fired power plants (nearest ~1km), is only 200m from a coal transportation and warehousing facility, and is less than 4 miles from nearest petroleum and natural gas well site. Within this framework, students designed projects to characterize the spatial distribution and concentrations of heavy metals within arboretum soils. While each group approached the problem differently, they successfully developed testable hypotheses, established a clear work plan, collected a suite of soil samples that addressed the broader project objectives, and presented their work to their peers.

Although students responded favorably to the experience, we recognize that modifications are necessary for future iterations of this project. Some important outcomes for the future of this project include: increasing Earth literacy, introducing students to specific local, regional, and global environmental concerns, and promoting civic-minded engagement. We hope that through this project students will become advocates for positive change and data-driven policy-making within their communities, while respecting the traditions of West Virginia’s natural resource based economy. We believe it is critical to design service learning projects that incorporate specific local concerns in order to teach students about the applicability of earth science to their everyday lives.