unf.edu/coehs/childhood-education
UNF's Early Childhood Development Department is an academic powerhouse dedicated to training the next generation of educators. They focus deeply on play-based learning, nature education, and the profound developmental benefits children experience when interacting with the natural world.
Two Years of Collaboration with UNF Early Childhood Development Building immersive urban playspaces and studying real-world nature learning in the heart of Jacksonville.
For the past two consecutive Fall semesters (2024 and 2025), FunGardens has proudly partnered with the brilliant minds at UNF. This deep academic collaboration bridges the gap between child development theory and hands-on community impact.
This partnership was championed by the incredible Adrienne Malek-Lasater, who passionately integrated this real-world work directly into her classes. In our first year, UNF students and faculty rolled up their sleeves to help us physically build our immersive outdoor playspace in Jacksonville's Urban Core.
They followed that success by designing custom, nature-based learning games tailored to our environment. Looking ahead to our upcoming season, we are expanding this partnership to have UNF co facilitate our outdoor classes allowing researchers to observe in real-time exactly how children thrive, learn, and grow when the sky is their classroom. (Link: Read the full feature article in the UNF Newspaper here)
unf.edu/iere
The IERE at UNF is dedicated to environmental research, sustainability education, and community engagement, providing students with hands-on, real-world experiences to solve local environmental challenges.
Our partnership with UNF stretches even further! We teamed up with the IERE at UNF to host a brilliant student intern. This collaboration brought fresh academic energy directly into our digital outreach, helping us design, structure, and supercharge our Instagram page to keep our community fully connected and updated on our garden’s progress.