Green Oaks Term

What you're doing on Green Oaks Term

1. Living with about a dozen other students in a renovated horse barn at our 700-acre Green Oaks biological field station, 20 miles from campus.

2. Taking unusual interdisciplinary classes. Examples: ecology, anthropology, nature writing, nature and art, utopian societies, regional natural history, sustainability. Plus: field trips, visits from guest speakers, and a barn dance.

3. Doing field work in the aforementioned 700 acres, which are home to tallgrass prairie, old growth oaks, second-growth oak-hickory forest, lakes, and streams. And then doing a final project that explores a focused topic in a range of possible ways: creative work, research, scholarship, or a hybrid approach that no one has tried before (which is the general spirit of Green Oaks).

4. Being part of -- actually, building -- a small, experimental, high-functioning community that happens to be fully integrated into its natural surroundings. 

5. Re-wiring your brain. Being transformed. Seeing the world differently -- and changing your life accordingly.

Brooke Bellmar is a biology and environmental studies double major from Oak Park, IL 

When I did the Green Oaks Immersion Term during the spring, we had 12 students, two post-baccalaureate students, and two professors in our group. For 10 weeks, we lived at the Green Oaks BiologicalField Station, a restored prairie and field station about 30 minutes from campus. We took three classes: Landscape Art, Botany, and Anthropology. 

We did lots of reading about the environment and connecting to the land. We were asked to find a “spot” that calls to you. Our homework: sit in the spot and observe it. Make landscape art of our spot. By having the opportunity to live and experience the specific spot regularly, we gained a connection to the land, the woods, and the ecosystem.

Green Oaks Term transformed me as a person and as an environmentalist. It was especially wonderful being from the city and knowing this is how humans experienced nature for a really long time. Not many get a chance to do that. 

I learned exactly how I am impacting the woods. I can label and name the plants and animals and landscape…each thing has a name and is part of the community. I’m in the space of nature.

As students, we became really close friends because of our shared experiences. Also, we got close to the professors. I have a connection: they really know me and will support me. I know their family and pets and I’ve been to their house for dinner. 

Green Oaks Term along with my summer independent research on bioregional herbalism and my study abroad focused in the Black Forest of Southern Germany and the Swiss Alps, confirmed that I want to do environmental work and study food systems.