Pando Days Project Updates
Twenty-one Pando Days projects are now pushing to the finish line for the 2025/26 school year, with 16 universities making it into the final lineup.
This year’s projects have already been capturing headlines, along with Pando Days projects from past seasons that are continuing to make impact. Among them:
TEST PLOT (USC), Alexander Robinson’s Pando Award-winning urban park restoration project rooted in community care and ecological stewardship. Test Plot takes on the revitalization of a new urban area every Pando Days season – in the process, creating a chain of native, drought-tolerant green spaces across LA County.
Rainbow Canyon is the focus of the team’s work this season, where they recently engaged 60 volunteers to plant 230 native species and begin investigations into stormwater infiltration options.
LAist profiled what they’re up to – check it out!
STORIES OF SUSTAINABLE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY (CSUN) is Sheila Steinberg’s Pando Days project that has blossomed into a major institutional effort for strengthening Valley sustainability, deepening the involvement of students, faculty, and staff in regional sustainability efforts, and elevating a localized Pando project into a much broader movement.
The CSUN team’s ambitious initiative includes a convening of Southern California’s wildfire prevention leaders. Find out more: CSUN Newsroom Article or watch this Vimeo link.
CLIMATE MIGRATION AND FAITH (Pepperdine) is Professor Chris Doran’s Pando Days project developed over two seasons that in aggregate has produced educational and study-group resources for church communities to use in exploring how best to put faith-community assets to work for climate migrants. Paradoxically, his own Malibu community was heavily impacted by the January 2025 fires.
Now, his new book is coming out from Eerdman’s press with a July 31 release date: Climate Migration: A Christian Call to Action in a Warming World. The book is the first of its kind, sounding a faith-based call-to-action to mobilize on behalf of “neighbors” far and wide – whoever is in need.
And from CSULA, two updates:
Shikha Upadhyay’s PURE WATER, SHARED FUTURE has attracted interest from around the world in creating replicable toolkits. Interest was sparked when the project reached a national stage at the 2025 Marketing and Public Policy Conference in Washington, DC.
Meanwhile, colleague Mine Ucok-Hughes has recently published a case study based directly on her previous season’s Pando Days project, KEEPING NATURE ACCESSIBLE. The paper aims to inspire other marketing educators to embrace community engagement – and encourages fellow Pando participants to share their work in academic settings.
These are just recent Pando Days highlights, with more, much more, to come. Stay tuned!