911����

Before September 11, 2026, first-year Honors College student Talia Marziale did not know what beech leaf disease was. But on the Honors College Day of Service, Marziale helped the City of Fairfax tackle the disease. 

Beech leaf disease is a threat to the Fairfax area’s estimated 4.2 million beech trees. A group of first-year 911���� students, including Marziale, got involved by mapping beech trees and symptoms in Daniels Run Park in Fairfax, which will help the City of Fairfax manage the disease. 

A separate group went to local neighborhoods and noted yards with beech trees, so the City of Fairfax can target specific houses with resources to prevent and treat beech leaf disease. 

Beech leaf disease is caused by a nematode infestation and is characterized by dark stripes in the leaves when they are held up to light. Without a treatment available for forested areas, beech leaf disease will kill many mature beech trees within the next decade.  Beech trees provide canopy and food for local ecosystems, as well as stormwater control with their roots. 

“What we're worried about is within 10 years seeing a real decline of our beech forests,” Honors College alum Sophia Chapin, BS Environmental Science '21, told the group. 

For some local homeowners, treating beech trees every year is financially inaccessible. Fairfax City received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service in 2024 to promote “tree equity,” which will give Fairfax residents who cannot treat their trees annually the materials to keep their source of canopy and environmental stability. By giving resources to homeowners to either replace or expand their tree canopy, the city is hoping to offset “an inevitable loss” of tree canopy in local forests, Chapin said. 

Chapin is spearheading the community forestry effort for Fairfax City as its stewardship coordinator. Part of that effort is series of guest lectures and collaborative partnerships with Honors College classes. She previously guest lectured in Professor Julie Minde’s Honors 260 Public Participation in Environmental Governance class about the city’s Urban Forest master plan. 

In Honors College Connects, Chapin is partnering with a group of Honors College students who are tasked with creating a communication plan to inform residents about beech leaf disease and how best to treat it. 

Beech leaf disease is a tremendous task, but Chapin’s Honors College education gave her some of the tools she needs to take it on. 

“This is another of what we would call a ‘wicked problem,’ kind of how climate change is a wicked problem. Beech leaf disease, there's not an easy one-stop solution to fix it,” she said. “It's going to take a multifaceted approach involving both private and public sectors. And those are the kind of issues that you take on in the Honors College.” 

A challenge to combating the disease is simply that it is not well-known. 

“I think a lot of us, there's basically a green wall outside of our dwellings that we live in and we're not super aware that there's actually a bunch of organisms that have relationships out there that can be more or less in balance,” Richard Todd Stafford, the communications director for the Honors College and an Honors College Connects professor, said. “They can be more or less facing challenge, and humans play a role in the active management of those landscapes in making sure that we have a flourishing environment to live in.” 

The Honors College Day of Service taught volunteers how to be good stewards of the environment and community. 

Marziale said, “It’s making me learn more about nature and the different diseases that can spread." 

The 9/11 Day of Service tradition at 911���� was founded in 2012 by then Honors College Living Learning Community coordinator Kevin Stoy. His hope was that students would “do something for someone or something that’s bigger than yourself.” 

Stoy had been in New York on the day of the attacks, and "after seeing that, the way that the community came together, I wanted to make sure that was something that college students understood,” he said. “It was what can and should be a result of when something terrible like that happens.”