The students from LMC 3308: Environmentalism and Ecocriticism are memorializing a fallen tree in an exhibit at Clough Commons.
When a willow oak spontaneously split near the Student Center last fall, the campus community mourned its loss, placing mementos and candles on its stump before it was fully removed.
A group of students took that tribute a step further by dedicating part of their classwork from the fall semester to presenting Fall of a Champion, an exhibit now on display in Clough Commons.
The students from LMC 3308: Environmentalism and Ecocriticism, taught by Associate Professor Hugh Crawford and in partnership with Serve-Learn-Sustain, the Honors Program, and the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, spent the semester studying the connection between trees and people. When they came to class on Tuesday, Sept. 18 — the day the tree fell — it seemed only natural to make it part of their work.