Description

SCoRE supports projects that protect our urban watershed and promote their cultural, ecological, and educational importance.  With a special focus on creative place-making and cultural preservation in the Utoy Creek, Sandy Creek, and Proctor Creek watersheds, SCoRE has nourished strong partnerships with West Atlanta Watershed Alliance and Cascase Springs Nature Conservancy.

West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA) is an internationally recognized, community-based organization advancing environmental justice, environmental education, and environmental stewardship in Atlanta's historically Black neighborhoods.  Founded in 1998 by local elders and regional volunteers, WAWA works to:

• Support communities in Northwest and Southwest Atlanta towards collective empowerment
• Promote environmental education and advocacy
• Protect and restore local ecosystems, especially vital urban waterways

WAWA stewards the City of Atlanta’s Outdoor Activity Center, which includes a 26-acre old-growth forest in the Bush Mountain community. Their mission is rooted in the deep connection between people and place, honoring the cultural and ecological significance of West Atlanta’s natural resources.

Key highlights of our partnership include:

• Longtime partner in Georgia Tech’s summer internship program
• Founding member of three collaborative networks:
  • RCE Greater Atlanta
  • Greater Atlanta Community Science Collaboratory
  • ReBuildATL Coalition
• WAWA staff have served as partners-in-residence, External Advisory Council members, and co-authors on research publications
• We hit a milestone in 2025, when we designed and built an Afro-centric outdoor classroom in the OAC’s nature preserve  – the result of a three-year partnership between WAWA and the VIP course, Building for Equity and Sustainability, co-founded and co-taught by SCoRE.  Read more about the outdoor classroom in these articles: An Outdoor Classroom Built by Yellow Jackets, Students Build Outdoor Classroom to Serve Community and Nature, Touching Grass While in Class.

Cascade Springs Nature Conservancy (CSNC) is Atlanta's first Black-led conservancy, stewarding a 125-acre old-growth urban forest located in the Cascade Heights neighborhood. The preserve contains rare ecological and geological features - including artesian springs, a waterfall, diverse native species, and 250-million-year-old rock formations - and is the most forested property within the City of Atlanta, forming a core habitat within the Utoy Creek Watershed.  Guided by the mission to conserve nature and strengthen communities for a resilient future, CSNC is building institutional capacity to serve as a trusted source of science-based conservation, ecological restoration, and community-enaged stewardship.  Central to this strategy is the Atlanta Nature Center Initiative, a multi-institutional effort to establish a Living Building-certified nature center as dedicated research and educational infrastructure for watershed-scale resource management across Utoy Creek.

Through a strategic partnership with Georgia Tech's Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE), part of the Brook Byers Institute, CSNC is advancing feasibility research, applied learning, collaborative governance, and interdisciplinary inquiry in support of the Atlanta Nature Center Initiative.  This work support research on ecosystem services, forest management, aquatic habitat function, policy alignment, and long-term stewardship of what may be the nation's largest urban forest.

Key Highlights of the CSNC-SCoRE Partnership are:

• Appointment of Executive Director David Lloyd Davis as SCoRE's 2025-2026 Partner in Residence, supporting community-engaged sustainability research
• CSNC's role as a partner site for SCoRE's VIP Team, including multi-semester applied research and course-based learning
• Collaborative advancement of the Atlanta Nature Center Initiative, including feasibility research, Living Building precedent analysis, and interdisciplinary partnership development
• Participation in SCoRE's summer internship and faculty fellows programs, with CSNC serving as both internship host and annual field site

SCoRE/BBISS Lead

Jennifer Hirsch, Senior Director, SCoRE

Disciplines & Faculty

WAWA's and CSNC's combined emphasis on community, culture, forest and water stewardship, and environmental sustainability makes this collaboration welcoming to disciplines across the board.  Faculty involved to date have come from history and sociology, computing, city and regional planning, earth and atmospheric sciences, and building construction. 

Other Partners Involved

Other partners that have worked closely with SCoRE in our collaborations with WAWA  and CSNC include ECO-Action, the Atlanta Watershed Learning Network (a program of WAWA and ECO-Action), Lifecycle Building Center, ReBuildATL, and SKANSKA. 

Keywords

environmental justice, environmental stewardship, water stewardship, African-American communities

Associated SDGs

4 (Quality Education), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 13 (Climate Action), 14 (Life Below Water)