The Botanical University Challenge: Bridging isolation and empowering plant‐aware students

Societal Impact Statement In some indigenous languages, plants are referred to as ‘those who care for us’, reflecting their essential role in tackling global challenges. Yet, urbanisation and other factors have reduced engagement with plants and botany, decreasing awareness, especially among students. To combat this, three botanists launched the Botanical University Challenge (BUC) to inspire plant-aware students in the United Kingdom and Ireland. We show how, through competition, BUC fosters a community of budding botanists, equips students with skills to tackle environmental issues and bridges fragmented interest in plants. Its success has sparked similar contests internationally, showcasing BUC's broad appeal and potential to elevate botany globally.

Summary The Botanical University Challenge (BUC) competition was first devised by three academic botanists in 2015 to champion plants and plant-aware students and to help connect disparate and disconnected student botanists across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Since then, BUC has grown in popularity to become the largest annual botanical contest in Europe (and possibly the world) with teams competing from a total of 33 higher education institutions from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland answering questions on the full breadth of the botanical sciences. Through running the competition and (since 2023) an associated Student Botany Festival, the BUC Planning Team has had the opportunity to engage with a diverse cohort of plant-aware students, from undergraduate to doctoral level, enabling them to share their values, passions and concerns for the future. We discuss the development of BUC and our ambitions concerning the future growth and impact of the BUC competition and the ways in which BUC has supported plant-aware students, such as skills training and career pathway development. We also present two international case studies where the BUC format has been used to facilitate student education and engagement in other countries. We envision BUC as a vehicle to enable connections between plant-aware students, not only nationally within the United Kingdom but internationally, by encouraging and supporting other communities in similar endeavours.