The entire 150-acre parcel serves as an outdoor classroom and the two adjacent facilities share numerous site, building system synergies and design features. FAU offers built environmental education courses through its College of Education using both facilities as student teaching sites. The intention is to enrich both the FAU College of Education and Pine Jog K-5 curricula while training teachers who can intern in the Pine Jog facilities and relocate to other schools and districts, carrying the message of high performance schools, green building and environmental stewardship to other children around the country.

The partnership provides ongoing environmental stewardship of the Pine Jog Nature Preserve. The site education curriculum utilizes the entire preserve with designed learning places in and around the structures that bring the outdoors inside and vice versa. These opportunities include butterfly gardens, water re-use demonstration areas, understanding solar paths and energy through the creation of an interactive sun dial area and “Solar Plaza”, mitigation/restoration areas for older students to create themselves, and biological life cycle study areas of slash pines, gopher tortoises, native grasses, insects, lizards, and other native amphibians.

Florida Atlantic University Pine Jog Environmental Center in collaboration with the School District of Palm Beach County, is pioneering a new direction for high performance schools in Florida. The partners have integrated the curriculum by combining both traditional and built environmental education to provide a comprehensive program of ecological awareness and stewardship. The Center has received LEED Gold Certification. more