Celebrating EHUM in 2025: Educating for a Culture of Human and Environmental Flourishing

January 20, 2026

Environmental Humanities (EHUM) is grateful for a year of growth and deepened community with partners at Baylor and in Waco. Through classes, public events, hands-on education, and partnerships with many on and off campus, EHUM has involved thousands in 2025 in pursuing ecological and human wellbeing and prepared students for culturally effective and just environmental care in a wide range of callings.

Hands-On, Holistic Education Healing Environments and Communities

Images of Student Projects and Engaged Learning

In 2025, we expanded class offerings and community-engaged learning to build an Environmental Humanities program that stands out from others in the nation. Our curriculum builds on Baylor's unique capacities as a Christian research university to provide hands-on interdisciplinary study of how human environmental action is driven by critical and ethical reflection, aesthetic expression, historical awareness, theological imagination and faith practice, and the contexts of diverse communities and cultures. By pairing interdisciplinary thinking with hands-on learning in a region, Central Texas, on the frontline of new challenges to human and environmental health, we are preparing students to address complex environmental problems and injustices in a changing global climate through a wide array of professions.

Here are related highlights from 2025:

We integrated 13 new classes with 6 more scheduled for inclusion in 2026. EHUM now offers a distinctively robust range of 32 environmentally focused arts and humanities classes in flexible combination with options in the social and natural sciences, including professionally focused courses in healthcare, law, and social work. Students can select from over 75 courses from 20 academic programs.

EHUM’s curriculum stands out from other U.S. programs with a uniquely deep list of classes in the humanities and arts. Courses equip students to discern how challenges to human and environmental wellbeing in a changing global climate can be approached through aesthetic expression, theological imagination and faith practice, critical and ethical reflection, historical awareness, and respect for the insights and contexts of diverse communities and cultures.

We have involved 66 class sections from 16 disciplines in hands-on projects, workshops, and service learning in campus-and-city wide initiatives contributing to livable futures for our neighbors, human and other-than-human.

The great majority of these engaged learning projects and experiences occurred in 2025. Courses represented the humanities, arts, social sciences, and STEM. Most participated in the Baylor Community Gardens (BCG) program, which EHUM guides in coordination with a team of campus and community partners. Two BCG campus gardens nourish engaged and experiential learning across disciplines, student and community well-being, care for creation through arts and culture, and fresh produce for our neighbors. The BCG contributes to our participation in the Sustainable Community and Regenerative Agriculture Project (SCRAP) @ Baylor. The lead faculty for SCRAP@Baylor include Dr. Stephanie Boddie (Social Work, Education, Truett & EHUM Affiliate), Dr. Jenny Howell (Honors & Theology, Ecology, and Food Justice Program at Truett), Dr. Kevin Magill (Education), and Dr. Joshua King (English, EHUM Director). SCRAP@Baylor brings together the campus, community, and city to address Waco’s pressing challenges in food insecurity, food waste, and related health and environmental impacts through place-based education and an ecosystem of gardening, composting, and educational programs.

Many arts and humanities courses in EHUM contributed engaged learning projects to these and allied efforts. Here are just a few highlights:

Prof. Sarah Mosher (Theatre, EHUM Faculty Affiliate) and students in her Research Methods in Sustainable Design class (THEA 4306) partnered in a transdisciplinary data and sustainable fiber art study and public installation on virtue development with Tina Linville (Fiber, Art and Art History), Dr. Rachel Wilkerson (Data Science, Engineering), and their students. The students and researchers worked with colleagues in the Baylor Libraries and members of the Baylor and Waco community to create a sustainable fiber arts installation in Baylor’s Moody Library (May-Oct. 2025) that visualized a study by Dr. Merve Balkaya-Ince (Psychology, Wake Forest University) of Islamic adolescents’ reflection on virtues including gratitude during the month of Ramadan. Natural fabrics and yarns were colored with biological dyes from indigo, cochineal, and bluebonnets, with materials locally and ethically sourced to reduce environmental impact through emissions and support local economies. Click to read more about this fantastic project.
Dr. Joshua King's (English, EHUM Director) students in three diffrent EHUM literature classes collaborated with campus, community, and regional partners on semester-long projects to promote local food justice, environmental resilience, community wellbeing, and a culture of creation care. “Seeds of Change,” an online exhibition published in Spring 2025, was created by his Fall 2024 Literature and Environmental Justice class (ENGL 4365) in partnership with members of SCRAP and University Libraries. The exhibition pairs stories and voices of SCRAP members at that time with students’ creative reflections on working with SCRAP, including growing a pollinator garden in the Baylor Community Gardens program. The pollinator garden was also certified as an official Monarch Waystation. In Fall 2025, a new Literature and Environmental Justice class resumed partnership with SCRAP through service learning and planting another campus pollinator garden at Teal. The class and work focused on the theme of “cultivating refugia”—pockets of healing and life in a wounded world—and students created a new online exhibition reflecting on cultivating refugia with SCRAP, such as the pollinator garden, while creatively inviting others to join the work of healing. The exhibition will soon be linked via QR code to the pollinator garden they created. Also in Fall 2025, Dr. King’s EHUM-themed British Literature survey (ENG 2301) completed a project to spread care for our 3,000+ campus trees in collaboration with Dr. Sarah VerPloeg in the Office of Sustainability and Hector Marines-Chio, Regional Urban Forester. Students wrote meditatively about Baylor trees over the semester in dialogue with over 1,000 years of literary portrayals of trees. This spring, their “Tree Stories,” their reflective and creative responses to the trees, will be digitally linked to the Baylor Urban Forest map housed on Baylor’s Sustainability Map, allowing visitors and members of campus to tie a canopy of student stories to the canopy that shelters our education. Dr. King’s new EHUM British Literature students are teaming up again in Spring 2026 with Sustainability and Mr. Marines-Chio to keep the campus literary forest growing.
Dr. Kristen Pond (English) taught a special EHUM Women Writers class (ENGL 4305) in Fall 2025 on how diverse women have written about their engagement with the natural world. Her students pursued multiple engaged learning projects with the community and SCRAP, including leading a Waco Walk tour that highlighted notable women in Waco history buried at Oakwood Cemetery. The tour was featured in the local news—click here to watch the story! Dr. Pond’s students also hosted a table on Baylor’s Fountain Mall in collaboration with SCRAP member Kay Bell’s National Women in Agriculture Association to educate students about monarch butterflies and how individuals and businesses can become Waco Butterfly Friends.
Dr. Anne Jeffrey (Philosophy, EHUM Faculty Affiliate) taught an EHUM-themed Fall 2025 Contemporary Ethics class (PHI 4360) on how humans can live well in relation to the whole of creation. Partnering with many SCRAP members, her students developed a proposal for an Earth Day Symposium at Baylor in April 2026 to empower students at U. S. universities to contribute to the thriving of all creation through evidence-based practices and community partnerships. We look forward to working with Dr. Jeffrey, students, SCRAP, and campus partners like the Office of Sustainability to realize their proposal!

Events, Programs, and Partnerships Pursuing Flourishing for All

Through special events, the Baylor Community Gardens, and collaboration with partners on campus and in the community, EHUM engaged thousands of people in 2025 in celebrating and promoting the flourishing of all in healthy environments.

EHUM engaged 631 people through 10 events foregrounding contributions of the humanities and arts to environmental care and justice and building community in the minor. Highlights include . . .

Sustainable Materials in Costume Design: Professor Sarah Mosher (Theatre Arts and EHUM Faculty Affiliate) showed a large audience how naturally sourced materials, including bioplastics, are making the performing arts more sustainable. We are grateful for the partnership of the partnership of the Baylor Initiative in Christianity and the Arts.
Symposium on Saving the Earth through Agriculture: This Earth Week symposium was hosted by SCRAP nonprofit Global Revive in collaboration with EHUM faculty (Dr. Joshua King, Dr. Jake Abell, and Prof. Sarah Mosher) and minors, along with campus partners including Office of External Affairs and Office of Engaged Learning. Panels and special events highlighted work by Waco and Baylor members to renew environments, community, and culture through agriculture, the humanities, and the arts.
Flourishing for All Garden-to-Table Celebration: EHUM worked with the Baylor Community Gardens Program, Student Government, Baylor Dining Services, and SCRAP partners to host a Garden-to-Table Dinner celebrating the Baylor Community Gardens as a nucleus for learning across disciplines, cultivating care for the living world through cultural events, and relieving hunger on campus and in the community.
Second Annual Green Film Festival: Led by Dr. Jake Abell (French, EHUM Faculty Affiliate), EHUM, the Office of Sustainability, and Modern Languages and Cultures hosted the second annual Green Film Festival. Participants watched three films exploring environmental sustainability and cultural connections to land around the world. Filmmaker Sisa Quispe joined to talk about her award-winning film Kusi Sonríe (Kusi Smiles) at a tea for EHUM faculty and students and a roundtable for the public.
Climate Change Action Theatre, Climate Quilt Creation, and Community Mural Painting: EHUM and partners hosted a series of creative and cultural events at the Fellowship Garden in the Baylor Community Gardens program. With support from the Office of Sustainability, Prof. Sarah Mosher (Theatre, EHUM Faculty Affiliate) and students performed four short plays about our relationship with the planet and each other, followed by group creation of a climate quilt reflecting participants’ hopes, fears, and commitments to a sustainable future. Dr. Joshua King (English, EHUM Director) teamed with Creative Waco on two community painting days to create bed murals at Fellowship Garden designed by Baylor students (Saralyn Knapp and Meagan [Eila] Gerhardt) using ecofriendly paints donated by Pinnacle Coatings Group with sponsorship from Student Government. Since then, celebrated Waco artist Ema Sweetz has added an additional mural to the garden shed to complete the project!

With many partners, we built and rebuilt the Baylor Community Gardens and engaged learning projects during and after an EPA Grant:

An Environmental Protection Agency Community Change Grant ($938,141) led by Dr. Stephanie Boddie (Social Work, Education, Truett & EHUM Faculty Affiliate), Dr. Joshua King (English, EHUM Director), and Dr. Kevin Magill (Education) spurred growth at the Baylor Community Gardens in collaboration with SCRAP, particularly by creating a new Community Garden and Urban Agriculture Outreach position held by Andrea Valdez in partnership with EHUM and the Office of Sustainability. The grant also enabled Dr. King and campus and SCRAP partners to launch and hold events for a Community Change Teaching Fellows Program to partner faculty and community organizations through mini-grants for student projects advancing food security, sustainable agriculture, and climate resilience in disadvantaged Waco communities. While sudden federal termination of the grant ended the position and program, momentum has continued through the engaged learning projects and workshops noted above. The Baylor Community Gardens program was reorganized and expanded under EHUM’s leadership over summer 2025 in coordination with campus and community partners to form a supporting Garden Team of faculty, staff, students, and community leaders representing Baylor programs, student groups, and SCRAP organizations. The team has grown to include 2 Graduate Assistants supported by the Office of Sustainability (OoS) and the Theology, Ecology, and Food Justice Program.

EHUM engaged 1,429 people through a total of 31 events and workshops led in collaboration with campus and community partners at the Baylor Community Gardens and elsewhere on campus with SCRAP

With the Baylor Community Gardens program and Garden Team, including the Campus Kitchen student group, EHUM involved hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and community members in work and service learning at the gardens. People volunteered for 790 recorded hours to transform 3,990 lbs. of food waste into 3,965 lbs. of compost, nurturing 789 lbs. of fresh produce to address hunger on campus and in the community.

Seeds of New Growth

We are grateful for the new growth in 2025 and seeds planted for flourishing in the year to come, both on campus and where former students and collaborators are now carrying on good work. Here are a just a few:

First graduates!

In May 2025, we celebrated our first graduating EHUM Minors: Graham Butterfield (now pursuing an MA in Theology, Ecology, and Food Justice at Truett), Justin Demsky (now in Poland!), and John Castronovo (pursuing an MA of Science in Medical Science at Baylor).

New Student Leadership:

In Fall 2025, we held applications among EHUM Minors for inaugural Student Representative positions on the EHUM Core Leadership Team. The selected students—Anna Ingram, Jonathon Lee, and Anna Grace Varnell—will join faculty on the team in helping EHUM continue creating classes, opportunities, and events that serve students’ interests and aspirations while building community between students during and after their time at Baylor. Click here to learn more about each of our Student Reps!

Former Community Garden Manager Directs Burnett Bayland Community Center in Houston:

The Baylor Community Gardens program took off in 2025 with the superb leadership of an EPA-supported Garden Manager, Andrea Valdez. Termination of the grant meant this beautiful partnership came to an end, but through this time of hard change, seeds of a new beginning were planted that are now bearing abundant harvest in Houston. Andrea is now working alongside diverse communities for mutual flourishing at the Burnett Bayland Community Center in the Gulfton/Sharpstown area of Houston, where she directs many community wellness and holistic wellbeing programs, supports pollinator and community gardens, and contributes to food security initiatives, such as a free pop-up grocery store that helps residents access rescued food while reducing waste (see linked story).

Sustainability Leadership Committee and Common Home Fellows:

Baylor convened the Sustainability Leadership Committee under the leadership of Gary Cocke, Senior Director of Sustainability, with members appointed by the President’s Council to create a bold vision and plan for Baylor’s unique contribution to sustainability across academics, campus culture, infrastructure, and local and global engagement. Faculty appointed to the SLC are Dr. Jenny Howell (Honors & Theology, Ecology, and Food Justice Program at Truett), Dr. Joshua King (English, EHUM Director), Dr. Bill Sterrett (Education), and Dr. Sascha Uscenko (Environmental Science). Over 2025, the SLC defined its vision, set goals, and convened working groups. In partnership with the Institute for Faith and Learning, the SLC launched the Common Home Fellows program, awarding fellowships to 14 faculty for a series of gatherings and a retreat in Spring 2026 to develop innovative ideas for interdisciplinary environmental teaching and research.