Brenda Bohan completed the first phase of her education in Wisconsin, going to high school in Verona. Fifteen years, three kids and four states later, she”s back in Wisconsin and back in class. Although, she admits, some of the best learning experiences have taken place outside the classroom.

Take, for example, a weeklong field trip she took this past summer to help build a playground for the Chief Dull Knife College childcare center on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana.

Bohan decided to make it a family affair: her twin teenage sons, Colin and Casey, accompanied her and pitched in.

“Awesome,” is how Bohan, a landscape architecture student in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, describes the experience.

“I really liked the feeling of volunteering and making a difference and actually seeing this work happen. I get a lot of satisfaction from that and it”s almost more fun for me than taking a vacation,” says Bohan. But, she admits, “I think I slept for two days when I got home!”

The trip was part of the American Indian Housing Initiative, a multi-university project designed to foster self-sufficiency on the Reservation by developing and teaching sustainable, green building methods.

“We do the work on the tribal college campus so that the leadership on the job site [is] in Cheyenne hands. The goal is to build a model that”s sustainable socially, as well as environmentally,” says Sam Dennis, the landscape design director for the Initiative and an assistant professor of landscape architecture in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. “The idea is we don”t just build things, we put together a system so this can be taught and replicated after we”re gone.”

Bohan”s contributions didn”t end when she left the reservation. As an independent study project, she is designing two teaching gardens, one shady and one sunny, for the play area. Her designs will be implemented during next year”s trip.

She and Dennis hope the gardens will be a place where the children can learn as they play and will encourage interaction between the children and their elders.

“Like many tribal nations, the Cheyenne are concerned about loss of culture, particularly the specific knowledge of plants and language,” says Dennis. “We can”t do much about the language, but we can definitely do something about plant knowledge.”

This dedication to Cheyenne culture and independence has led to what Dennis feels is the most positive outcome of the project, the long-term relationship that has formed between the Northern Cheyenne and the Initiative.

“In service work, it”s important to be held accountable for the work you do [since] in my field, typically you drop in somewhere, you do some work, and you leave and you never go back,” says Dennis. “We keep going back, so we get to honor our commitment and deepen the connection with the people there.”

For more information about the American Indian Housing Initiative, contact Sam Dennis (sfdennisjr@wisc.edu, (608) 263-7699)