A young white woman with long hair and wearing a baseball cap crouches in a field as she plants lettuce. She has her face turned up toward the sky, smiling as she feels the sunlight on her skin. A young white woman with long hair and wearing a baseball cap crouches in a field as she plants lettuce. She has her face turned up toward the sky, smiling as she feels the sunlight on her skin.
Campus & Community

One year at Waterman

Just a hop, skip and a jump from the ’Shoe, a 261-acre living laboratory is growing food, innovation and a crop of students steeped in tech, research and opportunity.

Photos by John D. Rice ’94 and Brooke LaValley
 

June 10, 2026

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the high-tech greenhouse, experimental fields and woods, brand-new animal science buildings, or a community gathering hotspot. 

What Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory always is: fertile. 

With plants and animals, yes. But more important, with Buckeyes activating big ideas to make the world work better. In a year that brought to life the new Multispecies Animal Learning Complex, the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences sent a pair of photographers across Waterman to document nuggets of what happens in each season. 

At the corner of Lane and Kenny, the scientific process bloomed and faculty, staff and students found ways to care for nature and one another. — Jenny Applegate

Spring 2025

Two toddlers, a boy and a girl, play on a chalk-drawn spider and spider web on asphalt. Their moms are nearby, alongside potted sunflowers and large posters explaining how to cook from foraging and how seeds are dispersed in nature.
Leaning over a folding table covered in plant cuttings, a woman hands a brown paper bag to a young child, who's supported by her mom standing behind her. They're all smiling.
An Asian man stands in scaffolding above the fllor of a greenhouse, as another older man on the floor points to a row of potted plants.

Inside the Controlled Environment Agriculture Research Complex, grad student Gaoshoutong Si ’19, ’22 MS (top) and Associate Professor Peter Ling (floor) work on a system to spot bacterial problems at the cellular level in tomatoes.

A young Asian woman wears safety goggles, a yellow hard hat and matching work shirt as she watches a fire burn over a patch of dark ground. Alongside is green grass.
On hands and knees, a middle-age white woman looks up and smiles as she weeds a garden bed. Behind her is a short retaining wall.

Master gardener Sabine Kuhn ’82, ’84 MS, ’88 PhD works in a garden that collects rain runoff from the Kunz-Brundige Extension Building. Learn more about the program at go.osu.edu/OSAM-MGV.

Summer 2025

Four white teenagers laugh outside a small, modern-designed building. Three sit on a concrete sidewalk and another points and laughs. She wears cowgirl boots in addition to her shorts and T-shirt., wearing

At the Kunz-Brundige building, 30 teens spend a day training to lead younger 4-H campers later in the summer.

An Ohio State employee walks backwards while sharing points about the greenhouse to a crowd of Asian men walking forward along the path. They're smiling and taking in everything around them. The greenhouse is an excellent example of construction, so people come from near and far to learn more about it.
Backed by a wall of windows and tables full of kids, two young Black children sit at a table with small instruments. A white man leans between them and laughs with the girl he's speaking with.
Against a pretty blue sky, framework for a new long but low building rises. A yellow tarp hangs over the roofing while the vertical metal frame is bare, creating a striking silhouette.
Two boys crouch in a row of a field, with leafy plants growing in front of them. Someone off camera holds a pitchfork toward them. Between two tines is a dirt-caked potato. One boy reaches for it; both boys seem fascinated by it.

Professor Colleen Spees ’87, ’11 PhD uses the Garden of Hope to study how providing healthy food and learnings can influence families with kids, including these two.

Fall 2025

Two young men draw with markers on pumpkins that are taller than round. One young man is focusing on his drawing; the other laughs as he checks his phone--presumably a design inspiration.
A young man, a student at Ohio State, hunches a little to compare petri dishes he's holding in his right hand with a trad he lifts away from a tree trunk in his left. The trap looks like two individual soda bottles connected mouth-to-mouth. Inside the bottom one is a while coiled rope-seeming thing.

Grad student Tom Paul traps invasive ambrosia beetles to help determine whether standard pest control methods work against them. With a mix of young and mature trees, plus a variety of habitats, Waterman provides a great field lab.

In the distance, three people stand on a lush lawn looking toward a robotic mower. That is at the front of the photo—a squarish plastic looking piece of tech that is surprisingly flat.

Master’s student Brian Miller ’25 (left) is investigating whether frequent autonomous mowing produces a more weed-free lawn than homeowners’ typical routines.

Wearing a safety vest and hard hat, a young woman focuses a camera on a closed tripod within a construction site.
Buildings under construction are now enclosed in a gray exterior with bright scarlet touches.

Winter 2026

Cows poke their heads throughs rails to feed
Three female students wearing hard hats check posters on the wall.

Students examine the MALC’s floorplan, designed to allow them to move seamlessly between classrooms and working animal units.

Inside a building, a girl runs between a railing taller than her head and a wall of windows. On the side of the railing closer to us is a dirt ring, such as for exercising horses. On the other side of the windows are a snowy field and, far off, a woods. More snow is falling. The girl’s mother trails her.

The complex officially opened just days after a big snowstorm, making a snowy field the backdrop for this child and mother on the outer walkway.

Behind a window and along side techy-looking equipment, a worker wearing a safety vest
A woman laughs as she speaks with a man. Another woman faces them, her back is to the camera but it looks like she's smiling.

Keep following along

The College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences shares stories and photos of life at Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory. Find more on their website.

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