As a society, we are experiencing biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation on a global scale, primarily due to human activity. Ecological restoration, a sub-discipline of ecology, aims to address these challenges by rehabilitating damaged ecosystems. Salt Lake City's restoration ecology program, located near Red Butte Garden on campus, focuses on rebuilding native plant communities that are resilient enough to withstand competition from invasive species and adapt to hotter, drier climates resulting from climate change. Our restoration efforts center on rebuilding the food web by helping to restore vital connections between plants and the species that rely on them. Many of the plants that make up our native communities are not well understood or are difficult to utilize in restoration projects. Students participating will get to have independent research projects that will help close knowledge gaps in native plant material development by testing species under both field and greenhouse conditions. In doing so, they will learn the fundamentals of restoration ecology, native plant production, farm production, common garden studies, and plant community restoration processes.