Founded in 1861, North Central College is an independent, comprehensive college of the liberal arts and sciences that offers more than 65 undergraduate majors and graduate programming in six areas. Just 30 minutes from Chicago’s Loop, North Central’s campus is located in the Historic District of Naperville, Illinois. With more than 2,900 undergraduate and graduate students, North Central College is committed to academic excellence; a climate that emphasizes leadership, ethics, values and service; a curriculum that balances job-related knowledge with a liberal arts foundation; and a caring environment with small classes.

NCC has a strong interest in sustainability, and as a part of that effort has worked on adding several native plant gardens around campus. In addition, campus community members have been working on maintaining a tree inventory, with the goal of making the campus an urban arboretum. Joining Budburst continues its attempt at being a local leader in citizen environmental science.

“North Central College has worked hard to populate our campus with many plant species native to this area of Illinois. By joining Budburst, we are thrilled to bring more citizen science to campus - visitors are invited to be citizen scientists, learning more about how the world around them changes with time of year, while collecting important data for a global database on phenology.”
    - Chandreyee Mitra, Assistant Professor of Biology, North Central College