Introducing the 100th Audubon Campus Chapter: Howard University Green Coalition

Jordan McKnight didn’t intend to start the 100th Audubon campus chapter. As a sophomore at Howard University in Washington, D.C., she was just trying to meet other environmentally minded students. Growing up in Bowie, Maryland, she connected to nature through the plants and animals around her home. Two years after enrolling at Howard as a pre-vet biology major, she realized she had become disconnected from nature. So last semester, she changed her major to environmental science. She met a classmate who had recently interned at Bent of the River Audubon Center and who introduced McKnight to Gustavo Figueroa, Audubon on Campus programs manager. Figueroa suggested the idea of starting an Audubon campus chapter as a way to connect to other students who shared her goals.

Looking around, McKnight saw that Howard University already had three environmental student organizations: Fostering Animal Understanding, Nurturing and Advocacy (FAUNA), Howard University Water and Environmental Association (HUWEA), and HU Halo G.R.E.E.N.. Rather than start a new one, the organizations’ leaders convened to form The Howard University Green Coalition and became an official Audubon on Campus chapter. 

Birds represent a new frontier to the coalition’s organizers, none of whom consider themselves birders. Sydney Sauls, a senior environmental science major and former treasurer of HUWEA, has a passion for environmental justice and food security. “Howard is super, super urbanized. The trees on campus are sacred,” she explains. Planting a bird-friendly garden could help address urban heat, she says. Aminah Coleman, a junior biology major and the secretary of HUWEA, has an interest in plants that led to an interest in insects. She sees birds as an important extension of those relationships. “It’s been super cool to learn about them and I want to bring that sense of connectedness to other people on campus,” she says. Purchasing a set of binoculars is high on the organizers’ list of ideas so they can start to learn and teach others about the birds around them.

The Growth of Audubon on Campus

This practice of combining birds with other environmental interests is common among Audubon campus chapters. Many students don’t join the program as avid birders or aspiring ornithologists. What they share instead is a desire to be active in their community, says Figueroa. Audubon on Campus helps students find the intersections between their interests and bird conservation.

This is a shift for the Audubon on Campus program, which launched in 2018 to connect college students across the country with Audubon’s work and provide them with resources for supporting it. Initially, chapters focused on birding, but after Audubon began providing funding for conservation projects, they began to take on more action-oriented work like bird-friendly landscaping, window collision monitoring, and advocacy. Chapters have used Audubon funding to participate in networking events like the Audubon Leadership Conference, which McKnight, Coleman, and Sauls attended in 2025.

Over the last eight years, Audubon on Campus has hired three staff, recruited 100 chapters in 36 states, and provided them with funding. Chapters have started a climate ambassador program, created art to raise awareness for conservation, designed a tool to measure light pollution, and surveyed threatened cuckoos. What’s made the program successful, says Figueroa, is that no matter what a chapter is passionate about, Audubon helps connect it to birds.

Reclaiming Connections

Although all campus chapters work on bird conservation, they each have unique motivations for doing so. For Howard University, there’s an important cultural aspect to that choice. McKnight, Sauls, and Coleman want to explore and restore the connection between Black culture and nature. “There’s been a huge disconnect and I feel like people don’t realize just how connected we actually used to be,” says McKnight. “We have a long history of connection that we don’t even know about…and I feel like, once we educate our communities about that, they’ll understand how important it is to contribute to conservation.” Coleman mentions that Africans used to rely on a deep understanding of nature, both in Africa and while escaping slavery. “I think that relationship definitely exists with birds, and it's something I would love to explore more and be able to teach more people about,” she says.

While urban heat, pollution, and food insecurity are the more pressing issues to the coalition organizers, they think learning about birds is valuable. “I think we’re at a time where there’s going to be more interest within our communities in birding, where I think we could have some really crazy breakthroughs,” says Sauls. 

Those breakthroughs are what Audubon on Campus is all about. With each campus chapter, the bird conservation community grows more versatile, more energized, and more effective. Figueroa sees success in the form of lasting connections to conservation. “I think that the value overall is that we’re seeing these student leaders fully see themselves as part of the Audubon network,” he says. That means they remain active in bird conservation and Audubon after college, whether as community chapter members, advocates, donors, or more. Regardless of which career path students take, Figueroa hopes that they continue to engage with conservation.