Sewanee's Integrated Program in the Environment includes a variety of offices, programs, and laboratories across campus that focus on sustainability, management, recreation, pre-historic land use, spatial analysis, biodiversity, and faith-based environmental initiatives.
The Office of Environmental Stewardship & Sustainability offers students a myriad of opportunities to engage with the outdoors. Whether your passions are natural resources management, food production, animal care, field research, or sustainability, there's a place for you to get your hands dirty on the Domain!
Approximately 3,000 acres of the Domain have been set aside for management purposes (harvest, prescribed fire and other treatments). The goal is to show students what management looks and feels like and for our land base to be an example of good stewardship. Two recent videos highlight our use of local wood and prescribed fire in a restoration context.
The field of archaeology is expanding in both the humanities and the sciences. At Sewanee, with the application of innovative instrumentation and techniques, and access to interdisciplinary approaches, you’ll have an opportunity to address new questions spanning human history, subsistence technology and foodways, ancient migration, mortuary practices, and prehistoric ritual.
Since June 2016, effluent from the adjacent treatment lagoon at the Sewanee Utility District has been flowing through the three experimental wetland basins. Goals of this research wetland include investigating wetland processes as a cost effective means of removing contaminants from wastewater effluent. The wetland will also serve as a focal point for raising public awareness about water and wastewater issues. As the constructed wetland monitoring program continues, the Sewanee/University of Georgia research group will share results of water quality testing with the community.
The Landscape Analysis Lab (LAL) is a geospatial science education and research laboratory at the University of the South. Its mission is to advance the scientific understanding of the environment through the application of geospatial science and technologies.
The Sewanee Herbarium contains specimens from 12 states, with a focus on Tennessee specimens from Coffee, Franklin, Grundy, Marion, and Van Buren counties. Our earliest collections are from 1948, and we collect new specimens in the present-day. We have nearly 9,000 specimens, including a permanent loan of specimens used to inform the Flora of Fall Creek Falls. We are in the process of creating our own flora for the Sewanee Domain, which consists of 1,118 taxa, along with information on characteristic habitats.
The Sewanee Outing Program (SOP) gives students the chance to explore Sewanee’s 13,000-acre campus, the surrounding region, and wilderness areas across the United States.
The University of the South created the Center for Religion and Environment in order to develop educational programs and public forums that unite environmental learning and action with faith practices. The Center connects the University's College of Arts and Sciences, its School of Theology, and All Saints’ Chapel. It is the latest manifestation of Sewanee’s long-time commitment to the environment.
The Sewanee Natural History Society aims to revive and cultivate interest in the field of Natural History, a vitally important lens through which to view the natural world that has lost popularity in the wake of emphasis on more formal and divided scientific study. Rather than separate observation, study, and appreciation of the earth into distinct fields, the SNHS aims to create a holistic understanding of nature. As we walk through the woods, wade through a pond, or admire a rock formation, we think of how every element of our surroundings has influenced and is influenced by what we see.
Each summer dozens of Sewanee students received internal funding to work on environmentally-oriented internships or faculty-student research projects. Students work with faculty on the Domain, on St. Catherines Island, in Uganda, for the Nature Conservancy, on the Yale Forest, and in Haiti among other places.
The Sewanee Amber Collection consists of 154 pieces of fossil-bearing Baltic amber. The amber was collected from a mine near Kaliningrad, Russia (formerly Koenigsberg, Prussia) in 1889 by American mining engineer Henry de Meli. In the spring of 2000, Geology professor Martin Knoll transported the collection to the University of Hamburg, Germany, where the samples were systematically studied by renowned amber expert Dr. Wolfgang Weitschat. Select samples were prepared and photographed by Weitschat.
