July closes out UM’s 2025–2026 theme year, A Year of Life-Changing Education, and we want to highlight a few of the many ways MBGNA serves as a hub for meaningful learning through immersive, hands-on experiences, from early childhood to adulthood.
In 2025, MBGNA’s education team hosted over 110 field trips, leading over 4000 children in immersive nature experiences. Community members of all ages gathered for Wonder Walks and Volunteer Workdays. UM students across disciplines used our spaces as hands-on classrooms. Here are just a few examples from the past academic year.
Class at Campus Farm
Environ 425, Ecological and Organic Farming Practicum, taught by MBGNA’s Jeremy Moghtader, is a hands-on, field-based course taught on-site at the Campus Farm. Students gain hands-on experience in sustainable agriculture, focusing on biodiversity, agroecology, and crop production. Throughout the semester, students turn theory into community action, cultivating over 40,000 plant starts for Keep Growing Detroit, a food sovereignty nonprofit in Detroit.
Botanical Interpretation
Art students turned science communicators? Currently on display in the conservatory is an interpretive exhibit created entirely by students in the course, ‘Making Science Visible,’ taught by Patricia Beals. Students spent hours studying and sketching the plants in the conservatory, and then turned those sketches and research into fully formed interpretive panels. The panels feature “lift panels” that reveal a fun fact about each focus plant. Catch the exhibit on display through the summer.
Landscape Lit Reviews
English 125 students visited Nichols Arboretum and Matthaei Botanical Gardens as part of their class exploration of green spaces at U of M. Each student conducted a literature review of a green space on campus, exploring how the UM community is impacted by them. This assignment also included a public outreach component, where students synthesized what they learned into digestible social media posts. You can explore their posts across the landscape through this story map link.
Poster Design
In the winter semester, Professor Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo’s poster design students collaborated with MBGNA to each design a set of six posters. Whimsical, eye-catching, creative, colorful; each poster set is singular, but each communicates something core to MBGNA's values.
Herbaceous Flora
In the fall, SEAS students led by Mike Kost participate in a field course focused on native herbaceous flora. Students learn to identify important indicator species and gain field skills in native plant ID. At the end of the semester, field sessions shift indoors, and students work with herbarium specimens to learn to identify plants based on biological features.
Marketing 470:
In Winter 2026, Ross Business Students in Marketing 470 were tasked with investigating how exposure to nature influences well-being. They then created Social Impact Marketing Campaigns for MBGNA targeting UM students and to encourage more frequent visits to the Arb and the Botanical Gardens. Their final projects included a series of flyers or posters, infographics, a social media campaign, and a 1-page strategy brief.
SEAS Capstone Projects
In addition to field trips and classes, MBGNA partnered with several School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) master’s capstone projects. All advised by MBGNA curator Mike Kost, these projects covered a wide breadth of ecological topics, from ecological surveys to beaver coexistence strategies. Read more about those projects at the links below.
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Dam Worth It: UM Graduate Student Research Supports Strategies for Beaver Coexistence
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Looking for Lepidoptera: Bio Blitzes at MBGNA Reveal Rich Diversity of Moths
These examples represent just a small sampling of the learning that happens at MBGNA each year. As we close out the Year of Life-Changing Education, we're proud to continue serving as a place where learning happens for U-M students, local schools, and lifelong learners alike.
