Introducing Our New HBCU & MSI Engagement Page: A Corps Capstone

As a Chesapeake Conservation and Climate Corps (CCCC) member with the Alliance, my service year has been focused on increasing access and opportunities within the green workforce. The CCCC program, managed by the Chesapeake Bay Trust, places young environmentalists (ages 18–25) with host organizations across the watershed for a year of hands-on leadership experience, professional development training, and community engagement.

A major element of every Corps member’s service year is completing a capstone project that leaves a lasting impact on their host organization. Over the past several months, I have been working on mine: the development of the Alliance’s first official HBCU/MSI Engagement Landing Page.

 

Why A Landing Page?

Throughout my service year, I have supported the Alliance’s Stewardship & Engagement team on their collaborative projects with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). I realized there was no one place on the Alliance’s website to see this work with our university partners. To address this, I wanted to design a landing page so the Alliance could have a centralized digital hub that encompasses this project work. Working closely with the Alliance’s Communications & Digital Analytics Manager, Jenna Cosgrove, and my mentor Emma Gregory, the Alliance’s Capacity Building Projects Manager, I consolidated program work from the last eight years to produce the Alliance’s first official HBCU/MSI Engagement landing page. The page now lives in the Stewardship & Engagement tab of “What We Do” under “Capacity Building” on the Alliance’s website.

 

Things to explore!

Whether you are a student, university faculty, Alliance partner, or just curious about environmental projects in your neighborhood, we built this page to be fun, visual, and easy to explore! Here are a few elements you can check out right now:

Timeline feature from the Alliance’s HBCU/MSI Engagement landing page

Travel Through Time with Our Interactive Timeline: Take a stroll through history! You can click through a custom interactive timeline to see how our relationships with our HBCU and MSI partners have grown, tracing major milestones and shared achievements over the years.

StoryMap thumbnails from the Alliance’s HBCU/MSI Engagement landing page

Dive Into Interactive StoryMaps: Want to see conservation in action? Jump straight into interactive ArcGIS StoryMaps, including our Peace Park and Uhler Tract features! You can zoom in on specific restoration sites, explore forestry data, and see the exact locations where campus communities are making an impact on the ground.

Snapshot of “Latest Stories” feature from the Alliance’s HBCU/MSI Engagement landing page

Browse the Latest Stories and Updates: Curious about the latest news within this work? Navigate to the “Latest Stories” section towards the end of the page where you can discover project outcomes detailed in fresh blog posts directly from students, project partners, and Alliance staff.

HBCU/MSI Giving donation page

Donate Directly to this Work: You can now directly support this work through the new “HBCU/MSI Giving” donation page linked throughout this site!

Students kayak at the 2025 MD/DC HBCU/MSI Chesapeake Bay Summit.

This page is not just my capstone. It is a shared resource for learning about this project work. The landing page is designed to evolve as new student stories, campus initiatives, and restoration projects take shape. I invite you to explore the new hub, interact with the StoryMaps, and share it across your networks!

Thank you to all of our university partners, faculty, and students who have joined us to make this work a success.

Explore the Page