Overview of Program

Texas Nature Project offers one-semester, for-credit internships for qualified students of all majors enrolled in one of Texas’ accredited four-year colleges or universities. This integrated learning experience is especially suited to students who are seeking ways to live their lives with meaning and make a positive contribution to the world. Texas Nature Project students are enthusiastic learners and find joy and inspiration in the camaraderie that comes with being a member of a community of scholars.

The coming generation will inherit a far more fragile and uncertain world. They will be confronted with problems unlike any faced by their parents and grandparents. Climate change, overpopulation, poverty, the loss of natural landscapes, the depletion of fish stocks, aquifers, and forests, the global impact of AIDS, diminishing revenues for education, depletion of energy resources, the outsourcing of jobs, over-consumption of goods and services, and increases in cultural conflict are all potentially devastating issues affecting the fate of our planet. The ability to successfully confront and resolve these problems will depend largely on the leadership quality of the next generation. The Texas Nature Project encourages students to be leaders that recognize the importance of our eco-system.

On average, Americans now spend only about 4% of their time in the out-of-doors. By the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam freely had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in the 1970s. Average eighth-graders are better able to identify corporate logos and cartoon characters than trees and insects in their own neighborhoods. In the past two decades we have seen Americans assume a far more sedentary lifestyle. In this same period we have experienced a significant rise in childhood obesity, depression, diabetes, and learning differences. These problems do not bode well for the fate of our planet.