Sustainability Team and Community Design Collaborate for Nature Preserve
Students on the Sustainability Team partnered with seniors enrolled in Community Design this spring to create original, eye-catching signs, maps, and stickers promoting the Purchase Nature Preserve.
The new graphics identify walking paths and help brand the College’s approximately 100-acre site, while encouraging visitors to respect and maintain the Preserve’s natural environment. The custom-made logo and text, “Please Take Care of Our Forrest,” and “Protect the Purchase Nature Preserve,” visually highlight and increase awareness of the area as a shared campus resource.
With interns rising junior Maddie Andree (Theatre and Performance), rising senior Modesto Fontanez III (Environmental Studies: Ecology), and Django Miceli ’25 (Art History) on board, the Sustainability Team and senior-level design students fabricated the distinctive signs that were placed at trailheads and points of interest along Blind Brook Forest, Alumni Woods, and Cottage Avenue Preserve.
“What they came up with is really amazing,” says Allyson Jackson, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies.
“It was a great collaboration because the sustainability interns were involved in every step of the process, providing input about what the signs should say and offering helpful feedback.”
David Carchipulla ’26 (Graphic Design) was hired as an independent contractor to complete the Nature Preserve site map he started in last fall’s Community Design class. His illustrated rendering points the way to areas busy with research projects, native plant habitats, biodiverse gardens, and even a potential sighting spot for one of Purchase’s river otters.
Guided by Josh Tonsfeldt, Lecturer of Graphic Design, the Community Design class “runs like a small design studio,” he said, “with students working in teams and collaborating with other departments and faculty members on campus.”
“I helped facilitate and guide the designer-client process, but the outcome of the work is entirely the product of the creativity and hard work of the student teams,” says Tonsfeldt.
Funded by Con Edison, the collaboration is part of Purchase’s core commitment to the stewardship, preservation, and sustainability of its biodiverse ecosystem.