
Students from Cooper Rosin's Invasive Species Monitoring and Management capstone course at Teal Pond Wetlands. (Photo: Cooper Rosin)
UW–Madison students can experience the Arboretum as visitors, volunteers, employees, researchers, and learners. Some students visit the Arboretum once or twice during their years in Madison, while others become much more deeply engaged. A subset of those engaged students are environmental studies majors from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies who take capstone courses offered in partnership with the Arboretum.
Capstone courses are required for undergraduate students enrolled in the environmental studies major. Capstones provide students opportunities to engage with real-world projects, often through partnership with organizations like the Arboretum. The students learn new skills while navigating the needs of the partner organization. In turn, the organization gets to work with a group of highly engaged students who lend valuable insight, time, and hard work to their projects. Multiple sections of capstone courses are offered each semester, each with a different theme. In fall 2024, the Arboretum partnered with two sections: Invasive Species Monitoring and Management, taught by Cooper Rosin, and Environmental and Sustainability Education, taught by Kim Wahl.

Rosin’s class worked with the Arboretum in previous semesters, and their return this fall is a testament to the value of the partnership for the students and the Arboretum. The students comprehensively surveyed the Lost City Forest for invasive bittersweet, honeysuckle, and buckthorn, building on similar work done in the Grady Tract by the previous cohort. They learned a lot about what it takes to prepare for and carry out field work in challenging conditions – including trying to navigate through thickets of woody invasive plants to find survey points! This fall’s cohort was mentored by Michael Hansen and Danielle Tanzer; previous cohorts have worked with Susan Carpenter and Brad Herrick, among other Arboretum staff.
Hansen shared, “The data they collected has informed our understanding of where invasive woody plants are or are not present, how they have increased or decreased over the last several years, and how they’ve responded to our land management, all of which will aid us in our future management. We’re really grateful for the collaboration with Cooper and his students and the work they’ve done, and we look forward to teaming up with them again in the future.”
Fall 2024 was the first time the Environmental and Sustainability Education section was offered. Students in that cohort split into three teams to update and refine lesson plans for Arboretum youth programs. Each team was mentored by an Arboretum staff member (Maddie Smith, Annie Isenbarger, and me). As students refined their skills in curriculum development while working through the iterative process of designing and testing lesson plans, their Arboretum mentors learned from the students’ thoughtful approach and bountiful ideas for enhancing learning experiences.
Fiona Wang, a student in the class, stated, “This semester-long capstone project working with the Arboretum has been a meaningful experience for me. In this community-based learning experience, we had the opportunity to apply our knowledge and also learn from diverse perspectives, ideas, and landscapes in the Arboretum. Most importantly, I am glad to be part of this great learning community!”
Wahl added, “Collaborating with the UW Arboretum education team was an exceptional teaching and learning experience for this class. The staff mentors were supportive and incredibly invested in the learning process for students, who learned extensively about curriculum and lesson plan design as they connected to indoor and outdoor experiential learning as well as to state and national educational standards.”
The spring 2025 semester brings yet another capstone partnership to the Arboretum. Exploring the Depth of Place – Practicing Land Care through Environmental History is a newly-offered capstone section, taught by Ben Lebowitz and Ryan Hellenbrand. This group is mentored by Susan Carpenter, who will use the Arboretum and our archives to support the students in developing skills for telling multilayered stories of place.
Environmental studies undergraduate capstone classes are just one example of how UW–Madison students engage with and contribute to the Arboretum. To me, the capstone classes illustrate that the physical distance separating the Arboreum from the main campus doesn’t stop the fruitful exchange of ideas, skill-building, and opportunities that benefit both students and the Arboretum. Everyone learns through these partnerships, and we’re excited to see what we learn with capstone cohorts of the future!
– Anne Pearce, education program manager