Gain a hands-on or basic understanding of a particularly practical or scientific aspect (taxonomy, life-cycle, ecological niche) of the natural world (plant, marine, mineral, and non-human animal life) by engaging in a service-learning project or placement within an on-campus or nonprofit space dedicated to preserving that space and encouraging community engagement with it (the community partner). 
 
Analyze human engagement with the natural world by reading and writing about literature (poems, drama, fiction, belles-lettres) about the natural world in light of their practical experience with the community partner. 
 
Reflect upon the environmental, personal, and social benefits of campus or urban green, wild, or sea spaces through a public-facing final project.

Since individual texts and placements will vary from year to year and instructor to instructor, this outline is just a sample:   
 
Placements: UGA Founders’ Garden, Latin American Ethno-Botanical Garden, UGA Museum of Natural History 
 
Unit 1: What are plants? (3 weeks) 
 
Readings from: Tom Michaels, The Science of Plants (open-access); Camille Dungy, ed., Black Nature;  James Baldwin, ed., Six Centuries of English Poetry (open-access)  
 
Initial placement and schedules for weekly site visits established 
 
Unit 2: What are trees? (2 weeks) 
 
Readings from: Jacob Levison, Studies of Trees (open-access); John Evelyn, Sylva (open-access); Richard Powers, The Overstory (very long book; will read over the course of the semester) 
 
First individual project due by end of this period 
 
Unit 3: What are animals? (2 weeks) 
 
Readings from: E. Connolly, Introduction to Zoology (open-access lecture notes and illustrations); Edmund Topsell, The Historie of Four-footed Beasts and The Historie of Serpents 
 
Schedule for each group to visit others’ sites again established 
 
Unit 4: What are stones? (2 weeks) 
 
Readings from: N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season trilogy; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone;  Johnson, Affolter, et al., Introduction to Geology (open-access) 
  
 Unit 5: What is “cultivated” land, and what is “wilderness”? (3 weeks) 
 
Readings from: Francis Bacon, Essays (open-access); Walter Ralegh, Description of Guiana (open-access); Edmund Spenser, View of the Present State of Ireland (open-access); James Oglethorpe, “Some Account of the Design of the Trustees for Establishing Colonies in Georgia” (open-access); Andrew Millison, Introduction to Permaculture (open-access) 
 
Second individual project due by end of this period 
 
Unit 6 (final unit, 4 weeks) 
Student groups work together intensively on their projects, reading more specialized material related to their placement and briefly sharing their progress with their classmates once a week. 
 
Final project (group) due by end of this period