CBF and Hampton University to Develop Pioneering Living Shoreline Course Through CBF Grant

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is collaborating with Hampton University to pioneer one of the first college living shoreline courses in the country under a new grant announced this month.

As part of the project, CBF will also work with students and community volunteers to create more than 1,200 feet of shoreline protection, almost an acre of new wetlands, and new oyster habitat along the banks of the university’s campus.

The roughly $1 million grant awarded to CBF by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s (NFWF) Chesapeake Small Watershed Grants Program will support the creation of a specialized Chesapeake Bay Landscaping Professionals (CBLP) course at Hampton University.

This course, designed and taught by living shoreline experts, will accommodate at least five students and teach them how to design and permit their own living shoreline. The students will then put their learning into action by installing the living shoreline on the Hampton University campus.

The course will notably recruit students in both the marine science and architecture fields so they could work as partners, said Dr. Deidre Gibson, Chair and Associate Professor at Hampton University in the department of Marine and Environmental Science.

“I would love to see that collaboration between the two types of students and seeing them getting involved in a real-world project—one that actually is going to happen; something that they’re planning, they’re designing, and that we implement,” Gibson said.

“I know we’ve never had a class like that,” she said. “A lot of our courses go out in the field, but not like this. So that’s what I’m really looking forward to.”

CBF will receive the grant and work with partners at the university and the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council, a nonprofit conservation landscaping advocacy group, to create and deliver the new curriculum.

Living shorelines are created by planting native wetland plants, wetland grasses, shrubs, and trees at various points along a shoreline. Plantings are often paired with carefully placed bioengineering materials, such as manmade coconut-fiber rolls (or biologs), to protect vegetation and soils or in some cases oyster shell or restoration material. And, where viable, oysters can be included as well.

In fact, these new living shoreline projects will complement oyster reefs CBF recently installed in the Hampton River using other NFWF grant funding.

Hampton Roads has been identified as the second most vulnerable U.S. region to risks from sea level rise in the country—and living shorelines can help address these threats.

“I think it’s critical that we have this type of experience for undergrad and graduate students who are already strongly considering fields in conservation or related to conservation work,” said Stacie McGraw, Director of Operations and Living Infrastructure at Wetlands Watch and the Virginia Director for CBLP.

That would include environmental and marine sciences—but also conservation-adjacent professions like architecture and engineering, McGraw said.

“To have that sustainable conservation lens going into that work as their career is invaluable in really shifting the needle on how our built spaces are designed and how our natural resources are protected through the next generation.”

The education component of the grant is most long-lasting and impactful, said Kati Grigsby, Hampton Roads Restoration Coordinator for CBF.

“That students will have a tangible impact on campus is pretty cool,” Grigsby said. “It could be a standard offered at our universities. Hampton University is leading the way on that effort.”

Courses where students are able to be outside and interact with the environment necessarily increase their connection to place, said Dr. Joey Reustle, Assistant Professor of Marine and Environmental Science at Hampton University.

“I think it’s a pretty powerful message that they don’t have to fly 3,000 miles away to work in some other system, but that they can do research, they can restore habitat, they can make a big difference close to home,” Reustle said.

“And that they can monitor that and effect change is a really powerful message.”