By Celina Steinberg PZ ’27

What is the Outback Preserve? Since long before the inception of the Newsprint Magazine that bears its name, the Outback Preserve — a largely undeveloped nature preserve home to a diverse array of indigenous Southern California plants and wildlife — has been a foundational part of the Pitzer College community.

The Outback Preserve is central to both Pitzer’s community life and institutional history. Originally spanning across about one-third of Pitzer’s entire campus, years of development on top of it has led to the Preserve now containing only a little over three acres of land on the northeast section of Pitzer behind the East and West Residence Halls.

Over the years, multiple environmental analysis courses have utilized the Outback Preserve as a resource for students to engage with the local ecosystem in their studies. The preserve has undergone ecological restoration through the combined efforts of Pitzer students, staff, and faculty. It is a place on Pitzer’s campus where community members can visit, attend events, and connect with the native flora and fauna in their own backyard.

Paul Faulstich, professor emeritus of environmental analysis at Pitzer, has advocated for preserving the land of the Outback Preserve throughout his time at Pitzer. He spearheaded the development of the course “Restoring Nature: The Pitzer Outback,” which is an environmental analysis course that utilizes the preserve as a resource to teach and provide students with hands-on experience while learning about ecological restoration.

“I’ve utilized the Outback as a teaching resource,” Faulstich said. “I think that the more it can get used without being overused, the more value it’s going to have to an educational institution like Pitzer, and the more reason there is for protecting it.”

Although recent community engagement with the Outback has been dwindling, some newer students have still found time to explore the preserve. Blue Byrnes PZ ’27 talked about their experience engaging with the Outback as a first year.

“I go there to draw a lot, to read, or just to listen to music and hang out in nature,” Byrnes said. “It’s very relaxing.”

While they have had the opportunity to engage with the natural ecosystem of the preserve, Byrnes described how many students do not know the full extent of what the Outback Preserve has to offer.

“I feel like a lot of people I talk to don’t appreciate the fact that we have this full nature trail on campus, and they assume it’s just another vague walkway,” Byrnes said.

The emergence of an Outback Preserve Club in recent years aims to promote awareness of this space on campus. The events hosted by the Outback Club vary from concert sessions to markets and restoration activities, all of which take place in the preserve.

The Outback Club is still fairly new and only formed at the beginning of last year. Maggie O’Connor PZ ’25 is a co-founder of the Outback Club and described what the club aims to achieve as an organization.

“The goal of the club is … To start the process of creating an institutional memory of the Outback … [And] our larger goal is to make it synonymous with Pitzer,” O’Connor said. “Pitzer is the Outback, and Pitzer would not be Pitzer without the Outback.”

For many alums, Pitzer’s identity is synonymous with the Outback Preserve. Faulstich described his experience attending Pitzer in the 1970s and highlighted the drastic reduction of the preserve’s presence on campus from its original state.

“When I was a student at Pitzer in the 1970s, the Outback was a third of the campus,” Faulstich said. “So the campus is approximately 33 acres, and 11 of those acres were the Outback. It stretched all along where the pool is [and] where the big parking lot [is] … All of that was the Outback.”

Emphasizing the historical importance of the Outback Preserve to Pitzer’s community, Faulstich described the social activism that surrounded it in the mid-1970s. 

“Harvey Mudd College was starting to do some development on the east side of their campus, and they brought bulldozers out … And they actually intruded onto Pitzer’s campus unknowingly,” Faulstich said. “But … [Sheryl Miller] went out there along with some students and stood in front of the bulldozers … And they halted that intrusion. In the process of that, they also brought awareness about that undeveloped part of campus.”

The preserve was a much more prominent aspect of Pitzer in the past, but over the years it has been gradually reduced due to developments on the land. Faulstich expressed his concern about the reduction of the Preserve to a far smaller area than it originally occupied.

“In the past, the Outback was taken for granted in a way that it isn’t anymore because it shrank so much,” Faulstich said.

O’Connor shared Professor Faulstich’s concern about possible future development on the Preserve, citing Pitzer’s ever growing need for student housing. Still, when discussing her hopes for the future of the Outback, she shared her wish to see respectful engagement with the preserve from the community at Pitzer.

“My only real wish is that it [the Outback] stays here forever, and that it becomes more synonymous with the Pitzer community,” O’Connor said.

Faulstich shared his aspirations for the Preserve moving forward. 

“I hope that it continues to be a prized piece of Pitzer’s campus,” Faulstich said. “And that it inspires people on campus … to take care of the land that we have left.”