A CAMPUS
(9 RAINWORKS
mia CHALLENGE

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA'S

GROWING TOGETHER:

The Story of How a Winning Entry is Making
a Real Difference to Andrew Hamilton School

Trust, equity and collaboration are the hallmarks of the
University of Pennsylvania (Penn) team's demonstration
project that won the first prize for the category for
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2020
Campus RainWorks Challenge. The team of 12
students from multiple disciplines, led by a faculty
advisor, proposed a redesign for the schoolyard of
Andrew Hamilton School—an elementary school in
the lower-income neighborhood of West Philadelphia
that lacks greenspace and adequate access to fresh
food. Additionally, because the schoolyard is mostly
paved, when it rains the water flows directly into the
"combined sewer system" (sewers that carry both
stormwater runoff and raw sewage in the same set
of pipes) that can overflow into nearby Cobbs Creek
during heavy rainstorms. The Penn team's experience
with the Campus RainWorks Challenge highlights
the value of their working directly with the students
and teachers at the school to come up with creative
green infrastructure solutions as well as their following
through with the school to make the vision happen.

The Campus RainWorks Challenge allows and
encourages university teams to work with K-12 schools in
their communities. The Penn team, led by advisor John
Miller, worked with Penn's Netter Center for Community
Partnerships to engage with Andrew Hamilton's students
and teachers during the design process to understand
how green infrastructure ideas could improve the
day-to-day life at the school and in the surrounding
neighborhood. "We wanted to understand how the space
was used before completely changing it. Therefore, we
had to consider the teacher parking lot and a play area
where children enjoy recess and line up before class. We
also visited the site a few times to understand where there
were current green spaces, even just grass, that we could
utilize," explained team member Corey Wills, who was a
graduate student at the time.

The team's design features rain gardens and
permeable paving to soak up the rain and raised
garden beds and a "food forest" (diverse, edible
planting that mimics the surrounding ecosystem)
for students to grow their own food. Judges of the
competition appreciated how the design highlights
how properties that have been largely paved over can
be redesigned to manage rainfall on site and better
protect nearby streams from polluted runoff.

"External stakeholder engagement and
collaboration were excellent. The plan
addresses CSOs and community needs,
while also integrating an equity
component."

"The design benefits are described in
terms of mental, physical, environmental,
social and economic health."

"Terrific continuation of the university's
existing partnership with the school.
Clear evidence of trust developed."

2020 Campus RainWorks Challenge Judges

Since winning the competition, Penn team members
raised funds to build the garden beds, hired a graduate
student gardener, and solidified a partnership with the
Philadelphia Orchard Project. Building the garden with
school students began in Summer 2021, and that fall,
the school started planting the food forest and hosting
an after-school gardening club five days a week.

During the 2022-2023 growing season, the garden,
predominantly composed of eight-foot by three-foot
wooden beds, produced over 550 pounds of produce.

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Figure 1 Image of the raised planting beds from team's
design boards.

Team members plan to help start a free and low-cost
farmers market to share produce grown at the school
with the broader community. The team also plans
to work with teachers to develop STEAM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) curricula using
the ongoing improvements to the schoolyard as a living
laboratory. These activities are coordinated through the
Netter Center as part of its strategy to support Andrew
Hamilton as a comprehensive University-Assisted
Community School, which involves bringing university,
school and community partners together and linking
school day and after school curricula to solve locally
identified, real-world community problems.

Team members reported how much they enjoyed
collaborating with their fellow teammates from different
Penn departments such as Landscape Architecture,
Earth and Environmental Science, and Economics. The
interdisciplinary team was able to figure out together,

and with the input of the school partners, how to work
within the constraints of the site and develop solutions
to address multiple issues. Over the past two years, the
Netter Center has coordinated many new partnerships
between Andrew Hamilton, Penn departments and
community partners around the use and expansion
of the garden space. Penn students and faculty from
multiple Penn schools, including Nursing, Medicine,
Design and Education, regularly support the garden
programming. The experience also shaped career
aspirations for members such as Ms. Wills who said,
"(my) participation in the Challenge has definitely made
me consider working with educational gardening and
green infrastructure in the future."

By infusing enthusiasm into their project, the Penn
team made a difference in the education experience
of the Andrew Hamilton students while showcasing the
value of the Challenge for all the schools who have
participated in the past 10 years.

Figure 2 Planting beds built at school (Fall 2022)

Acknowledgements

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Campus RainWorks Challenge would like to thank the University of
Pennsylvania team for providing images and information for this case study.

Learn More

To learn more, visit EPA's Campus RainWorks Challenge. To sign up for e-mail updates or ask
a question about the Campus RainWorks Challenge, e-mail RainWorksgepa.qov.

oEPA

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