Campus as a Living Laboratory: Conservation Areas that Create a Community Who then Ensure Its Sustainability

Since the founding of Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) in 1997, its campus—which has integrated urbanized development into extensive conservation areas—has been one of the school’s most unique and distinctive features. The university was constructed with the typical academic core, student housing, and athletic facilities making up the urbanized half of the campus. This area of urbanization was set within natural areas that are typical of southwest Florida, including upland forests and restored wetlands. Over time, these conservation areas would make up the other half of the campus. While the integration of human and non-human landscapes at FGCU attracted some students and faculty, these green spaces have had particularly dramatic influences on how many environmentally minded members of the campus community have taught and learned, conducted research, and performed service. Working in this “living laboratory” created a feedback loop ultimately, where these same individuals then initiated programs that ensured the continued use and protection of the campus conservation areas. Where FGCU’s focus on environmental sustainability promoted conditions for a living laboratory that bridged natural and human landscapes, the ability of a living laboratory to affect the academic and professional growth of personnel who then in turn worked to sustain the central feature of the living lab should be generalizable to the specific focus of any institution interested in developing a site-specific living laboratory.