This past month, MSEM students found themselves spending a lot of time on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. With its mosaic of ecosystems and sweeping views of the Bay Area, Mount Tam is one of the richest outdoor classrooms we have right in our backyard. For students in the Environmental Management program, especially those in the Ecology concentration, there’s no better place to bring concepts from lecture to life.
Earlier in November on a clear blue day, students in our California Ecosystems class headed out on a full-day field trip to explore the mountain’s major habitats, including maritime chaparral, coastal scrub, grasslands, mixed evergreen forest and oak woodlands. Students hiked through the different ecotones with Jepson Guides, field notebooks and binoculars in their bags. They were also armed with their charged phones, loaded with a few modern additions to the ecologist’s toolkit, including the Merlin Bird ID app for identifying bird calls and Seek by iNaturalist for helping with tricky plant IDs. Taking diligent field notes, including species counts, distributions of plant families, animal behavior, and dominant species in the canopy, understory and herb layer, students began to better understand ecosystem structures. Professor April Randle also prompted them to think about ecosystem drivers, like drought, fire, flood, rainfall and soil types. Being out in the field brought the classroom to life, and the mix of expertise in the cohort made the trip even more interesting: mycology enthusiasts pointed out mushrooms in the leaf litter, botany buffs helped identify obscure shrubs, and students with restoration experience shared their field stories, tips and tricks. Park rangers were available to chat about maintenance of the area, making the challenges of management more tangible.
Trips like these highlight a unique offering from the MSEM program: in addition to fitting more easily into a full-time work schedule, longer Saturday class days (typically 9 AM – 4 PM) allow time for immersive field experiences, something shorter class periods simply can’t offer. Students in the California Ecosystems class, one of our many class offerings in the Ecology concentration, are able to easily observe a large number of the dominant California ecoregions in one class session — other ecology classes take advantage of nearby wetlands, riparian ecosystems, coastal access and more. These trips allow students to step outside the classroom into the environments they hope to one day manage, practice their field skills, observe California ecosystems directly, and begin to form a deeper understanding of the landscapes they’re studying.
Students from the Class of ’26 and ’27 also visited Mount Tam for fun! On a free weekend, program manager Sarah Griffin organized a casual hike on the Cataract Trail. Conditions were a bit less forgiving, but under a drizzly overcast sky students were still able to bond — identifying plants with Seek, experiencing the stunning views, getting in a little forest bathing, and letting off a little steam on their day off from classes and work.
The day was both an outdoor adventure and an informal community-building moment, showcasing yet another uniquely wonderful aspect of the MSEM program: small, tight-knit cohorts are able to actually know each other, share knowledge and spend time exploring the places they study.
These visits to Mount Tam highlight a core strength of the MSEM program: our proximity to world-class open spaces and our commitment to using them. For MSEM students, learning about the environment goes beyond the abstract. It’s hands-on, field-based, and rooted in the incredible natural spaces just beyond campus, because the first step to managing a system is understanding it. Mount Tamalpais is only one of the many open spaces available for students to explore; we’re lucky to have it as part of our extended classroom.
