Most high school science programs have a lab. Bishop O’Dowd has a hillside. What began in 2000 as a student idea to reclaim a former quarry has grown into a 4-plus-acre living classroom that now touches nearly every discipline on campus, not just biology.
Quick Answer for Busy Parents
O’Dowd’s Living Lab is a 4-plus-acre ecological restoration site built on a former quarry, now marking its 25th year in 2025. Paired with the LEED Platinum-certified Center for Environmental Studies, it anchors a required 9th-grade course, Science and the Environment, and extends into biology, theology, and service learning across all four grades. More than 10,000 students have taken part since its founding.
From Quarry to Classroom: How the Living Lab Began
O’Dowd’s 20-acre Oakland Hills campus originally included a hillside that had served as a rock quarry before the school’s founding. In 2000, students proposed restoring it rather than leaving it alone, and the Living Lab was born. A quarter-century later, that hillside has become a certified wildlife habitat and native plant community spanning four distinct local ecosystems, home to beehives, chickens, and rabbits, alongside water catchment systems used for research and irrigation.
The Center for Environmental Studies
Completed in 2014, the Center for Environmental Studies (CES) is a 5,000-square-foot, LEED Platinum-certified, Zero Net Energy-verified academic building that connects directly to the Living Lab. It includes two indoor laboratory classrooms and a large covered outdoor classroom and amphitheater, built with locally sourced and reclaimed materials, roof-mounted solar panels, and rainwater harvesting systems that double as teaching tools rather than hidden infrastructure.
Built to Teach Sustainability, Not Just House It
The building’s low-flow fixtures, solar array, and stormwater systems aren’t just efficiency measures; they’re incorporated directly into the environmental science and engineering curriculum, giving students a working example of the systems they’re studying rather than a diagram in a textbook.
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How the Living Lab Shows Up in the Classroom
Every O’Dowd 9th grader begins their science sequence with Science and the Environment, taught in and around the Living Lab itself. From there, the Lab extends well beyond a single course: Biology classes use it for fieldwork, and even Theology classes draw on it to explore connections between environmental stewardship, spirituality, and social justice, tying directly into the school’s own Charism of finding God in all things. Students can also take on Before and After School Service or Saturday Service Days in the Lab, caring for native plants, composting, and tending animals.
25 Years of Measurable Impact
O’Dowd marked the Living Lab’s 25th anniversary in 2025 with a set of figures that are genuinely striking for a single high school program: more than 10,000 students have taken part in hands-on environmental education there since 2000, students have logged more than 13,000 service hours in the Lab since 2020 alone, and the Lab and cafeteria together have diverted nearly 22,000 pounds of waste into compost. The campus’s 425 solar panels have produced 1.63 million kilowatt-hours of clean energy in just three years.
| Metric | Figure |
| Living Lab Founded | 2000, on a former quarry site |
| Living Lab Size | 4+ acres, four distinct local ecosystems |
| Center for Environmental Studies | 5,000 sq. ft., LEED Platinum, Zero Net Energy Verified |
| Students Served Since Founding | 10,000+ |
| Service Hours Since 2020 | 13,000+ |
| Compost Generated | 21,972+ lbs |
| Clean Energy Produced (3 years) | 1.63 million kWh |
Why This Matters for Applicants
The Living Lab isn’t an extracurricular add-on tucked into O’Dowd’s course catalog; it’s the entry point to every student’s science education, starting in 9th grade, and it’s part of why the school holds both Blue Ribbon and Green Ribbon federal recognition. Families evaluating O’Dowd against other Bay Area Catholic and independent schools should treat this as a genuine academic differentiator, not just a nice campus feature, especially for a student with real interest in environmental science, sustainability, or hands-on fieldwork.
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