The Campus Honors Environmental Research Program (CHERP) Urban Ecology Class develops science literacy, raises environmental consciousness, and facilitates nature appreciation as a lab science course for undergraduate non-science major students. CHERP Urban Ecology is a course within the Pierre Laclede Honors College of the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL). CHERP supports active research programs in science education and urban ecology; promotes civic engagement in public land management, and promotes service learning through hands-on restoration ecology projects. CHERP students are part of the campus ecology movement to advocate for a greener campus. CHERP students engage in restoration ecology field studies to provide scientifically sound reasons for re-establishing native Missouri prairie or savannah on campus, in the midst of urban St. Louis County. CHERP students implement historical ecology projects to discover land use patterns through time. Finally, CHERP Urban Ecology students explore the local human network to learn asset-based community development for ecological revitalization.

We hope that by creating the UMSL St. Louis Green Map that students will learn community organizing and leadership skills and develop a passion for re-creating a more wild, sustainable world. As the campus ecology movement starts to take root on Campus, we hope that the Green Map process will encourage connections that will spark beneficial and desirable changes toward a sustainable university and neighborhood.