‘Loyola’s Best-Kept Secret’: Restoration Club Reconnects With Nature

Every other Saturday, Loyola’s Restoration Club becomes an ecosystem of its own. 

After driving an hour and a half to Loyola’s Retreat and Ecology Campus, also known as LUREC, club members literally get their hands dirty, working into the late afternoon to help restore the land’s biodiversity. 

Whether removing invasive species, burning excess wood or sowing seeds of native plants, the Restoration Club’s members divide and conquer, working as a cohesive ecological unit across LUREC’s 98 acres. 

The lifeblood of the operation is Dr. Roberta Lammers-Campbell, founder and faculty sponsor of the Restoration Club and a former professor in Loyola’s School of Environmental Sustainability and Department of Biology. 

Though she retired in 2018 after 28 years of teaching, Lammers-Campbell still spends every workday at LUREC, driving between groups and facilitating the club’s synergy. 

Lammers-Campbell said she was one of the faculty members selected to tour LUREC before Loyola purchased it in 2010. Despite the snow and cold temperature when she first set foot on the campus, Lammers-Campbell said from that moment on she “never really left.” 

Lammers-Campbell’s dedication to the club and love for LUREC were recognized in November 2023, when she was awarded the inaugural SES Emeritus Faculty Leadership award and LUREC’s fen was officially named in her honor. 

Fondly recalling her history with LUREC, Lammers-Campbell explained the significance of having a place where students can engage with the environment, conduct independent projects and reconnect with nature, saying she knows many who have been fundamentally changed because of their time at the campus. 

“It seems like LUREC is one of Loyola’s best-kept secrets,” Lammers-Campbell said. “And that’s always puzzled me.”

Restoration Club co-president and second-year Nat Kath said cultivating a welcoming atmosphere was one of their core reasons for joining the club’s executive board. The environmental science major said the club can be a great experience for anyone interested in spending time in nature, regardless of their major, prior knowledge or past experience. 

“This is such an amazing club, and it’s something that really helped me feel welcomed my freshman year,” Kath said. “So I wanted to give back to this wonderful experience and help contribute to it.”

During the club’s Feb. 22 workday, Kath helped Lammers-Campbell lead a mini orientation. After discussing the day’s goals — picking invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle and burning the wood of recently chopped oak trees — the duo broke the students into groups and led the way onto the land. 

First-year environmental policy and English major and Restoration Club’s Freshman Representative Tessa Ferrara said she’s come to love LUREC since her first workday in September. Smiling at memories made last semester, Ferrara said she loves seeing LUREC change with the seasons.

“Not a lot of students at Loyola get to see this campus and use it unless you’re here for retreats or something like that,” Ferrara said. “So the fact that we get to come out here twice a month and really interact with the land and see how it changes and grows is really cool.”

Ferrara said she’s always loved spending time in nature, attributing this environmental appreciation to time spent with her family in Wisconsin. She said it’s especially important to spend time outside now and to be aware of how climate change is affecting the environment in both insidious and overt ways. 

“I really love the memories that I’ve made outside and I want to make sure that nature’s still going to be around for future generations to come,” Ferrara said. “And I think that should be something that’s at the forefront of our considerations.” 

Mark Monette, a fourth-year environmental policy and economics major and veteran Restoration Club member, said he’s also always loved the environment. He called spending time in nature “a family thing,” from fishing trips in Utah’s Uinta and Wasatch Mountains to working on a farm in Salt Lake City. 

“Nature and environmental protection has just always been part of who I am,” Monette said. “So I really wanted to combine the environment and community service.” 

Monette joined Restoration Club as a first-year and said he went to almost every LUREC workday his first two years at Loyola. Although he hasn’t had as much time as an upperclassman, he still tries to join the club whenever possible.

Restoration Club workdays often incorporate controlled fires, either burning the wood of invasive trees or — on special occasions — facilitating a prescribed burn, where fire is strategically applied to manage vegetation and restore natural resources, according to Kath. 

Fire was the focal point of the students’ work as they spread across the campus Feb. 22. While three groups disseminated across Lammers-Campbell’s fen and the adjacent wetland to collect invasive species, another group chopped the wood of oak trees already removed from the wetland. 

No matter where the kindling started or what group collected it, it always ended up at the bonfire, where a group of students — including Monette — would carefully add it to the blaze, maintaining the flame while ensuring it didn’t grow too large. 

“It’s hypnotic,” Monette said. “I can’t talk about it without sounding like a pyromaniac.” 

Despite this self-ascribed pyromania, Monette isn’t just in it for the fires. He said Restoration Club has generally kept him passionate about being outside — something he said is important as an environmental studies student living in a big city. 

“It’s hard if you’re not actually outdoors doing work,” Monette said. “It just gets weird and abstract. It can’t be like ‘I like the environment,’ and then you’re just at Bop n Grill and in class all day. There’s got to be a hands-on aspect, which is why I like Restoration Club.”

Environmental science major Jack Rourbaugh said living in the city can make it easy to lose touch with green spaces. The first-year student said although he had done restoration work in high school, he was hesitant to join the club. However, upon attending the Feb. 22 workday — his first one — Rourbaugh said the welcoming atmosphere made it a place students could “really find themselves in.”

This ability to combine hard work with outdoor amusement is seemingly a tenet of Restoration Club’s mission. Between bouts of picking invasive plants and throwing logs from chopped trees into the roaring fire, students frolicked in the forest and slid around on sleds, enjoying the snow when they weren’t chatting by the fire to get warm. 

This mission of the club is two-fold. Not only are members there to restore the land, but they also cultivate connections with nature and other nature-lovers alike. 

Billy Wade, a third-year psychology major, said he wasn’t particularly connected to nature until he took a class on ecology and spirituality that inspired him to seek community in the environment itself.

“I had always used nature in a utilitarian sense,” Wade said. “So I love to ski, great — but I climb the mountain myself. I ski down. I never took the moment to appreciate brother snow and all of the mountain that was surrounding me, and sister horizon as I’m climbing the mountain and looking at the sky turn pink above me.” 

Monette also described his relationship with nature in an almost sacred way, saying driving out to LUREC brings him back to the natural splendor of his hometown in Utah despite their vastly different natural scenes. 

“There’s really nothing like in Utah,” Monette said. “But going out to McHenry County with the Restoration Club is the closest to that hands-on, almost spiritual contact with nature.”

At the end of the February workday, the still-glowing bonfire transformed into a campfire ripe for making s’mores. Students huddled in a circle, munching on marshmallows and chewing on chocolate as they reflected, laughing, on a job well done. 

While Restoration Club is full of students whose outdoor experiences and environmental appreciation range from life-long to brand new, Lammers-Campbell said there’s something particularly special about LUREC — and the work the club does there together.

“I can tell you stories about people who so identify with that piece of land that it just becomes part of them,” Lammers-Campbell said. “Many students who come out become literally transformed.”