Sarah Van Frank [Environmental Science graduate student]: I looked at land management and that's kind of what my focus is within my graduate studies. And so, looking at the different types of land management from government organizations and agencies and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and how they are able to, you know, their tree planting program. And then also in the government agencies, so the Kenya Wildlife Service and how their national parks, their national reserves, which we were able to visit two national parks and also a national reserve and so also just looking at private lands as well and how those are allocated to the villages and how are those maintained.

So I think that was a really cool thing for me was that I was able to do my research the entire time I was there and then I was able to talk to every single community we went to we were able to talk to someone in that community that knew something about what we were doing our research on. It was awesome. Being in the field all the time and able to talk to people every day was a lot better than sitting in a library and reading a bunch of articles and trying to do your research that way.

Gwen Bausmith [Environmental Science graduate student]: And so it really put us in there and it really got us into the nitty-gritty of learning a lot more about them and I think that was pretty amazing in and of itself.

Sarah Van Frank: The second service learning that we did was with the Green Belt Movement. And we were all able to plant our own trees. It was right along an eroded riverbed. And so they're planting these trees (that's public land) to help stop erosion of this particular waterway. And that was a pretty cool experience. I mean, to know that you planted a tree in Kenya and that it hopefully will be there in 50 years. And it's helping to improve their environment, you know, their ecosystem.

Gwen Bausmith: We went through the entire process from gathering the seeds to helping the seeds germinate and planting them here and then replanting them. They took us through the entire process they go through in order to plant the mature trees then.