According to a press release from Weber State University last month, that is exactly the question one research duo on campus is aiming to answer with an ongoing study that has already spanned multiple years.

The study is being conducted by Sarah Herrmann, psychological science associate professor, and incoming senior Taylor Evans, a psychological science major with a botany and neuroscience minor. Evans was part of the Office of Undergraduate Research Fellows program, which — according to the press release — “pairs students with a faculty mentor for high-impact learning opportunities.”

Herrmann told the Standard-Examiner her research typically looks at experiences and performances of students in an academic context — specifically, minority students. Evans had been a student of hers and chose Hermann as an advisor and mentor on a project of interest.

“As we hashed out ideas, one thing that she suggested was, ‘Do you think there might be any difference in a classroom that has plants — like her botany classroom does — versus our psychology classrooms that have no plants in terms of student performance?'” Herrmann said. “We decided to merge her interests and mine and pursued this topic.”

Evans told the Standard-Examiner she went into the experiment without any major expectations.

“I didn’t really want to get my hopes up for anything just because with research, anything can happen,” she said. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up that we would change everyone’s lives.”

However, she said she had some belief that plants would have some impacts on classroom performance.

“I kind of expected there would be better perception of the class if you had plants in the classroom,” she said. “At least for me, in my experience, it feels more comfortable when it’s not just a gray, sterile room.”

In order to move forward with the study, Hermann and Evans applied for and received grant money through Nature and Human Health Utah, the Office of Undergraduate Research, the Sustainability Practices and Research Center and the Research, Scholarship, and Professional Growth Committee. The plants were purchased from Ogden’s Jungle Room Plant Co.

Herrmann said that research projects around the benefits of adding plants to work and education spaces aren’t necessarily new.

“There is quite a bit of research at this point on the beneficial effects of greening in office spaces and, to a certain extent, there’s been research done in elementary and middle school classrooms, but not so much at the college level,” she said. “Based on that literature, we hypothesized we would see higher performance and better experiences in the classrooms that had plants versus those that did not.”

She said the study she and Evans have been working on began two years ago.

“We did our pilot project, initially, that put a plant in one classroom where we held most of our Intro to Psych classes,” Herrmann said. “We had a plant in there Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and we took it out on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we surveyed students that semester and found that students who were in the classroom taking classes on plants days had significantly higher growth mindsets than those who had not had the plants in the classroom.”

From there, the study expanded.

“This year, we expanded it to the entire building (Lindquist Hall),” Herrmann said. “We put plants in half of the classrooms and we tried to account for what floor the classroom was on, how big the classroom is, whether it had a window or not, which direction it was facing. On Tuesday nights, I’d walk around and take care of the plants in the building and, pretty much, at the end of the semester, we collected average grades for each of the courses.”

She added that they compiled data for the fall semester while the spring data is still being processed. According to the press release, 14 classrooms in Lindquist Hall were equipped with plants while 15 went without. Evans noted that each room was supplied a small plant and a larger plant in highly visible areas.

It was here that Evans said they ran across a little snag in the initial results.

“When we first collected our data, we compared nonplant classrooms to plant classrooms, what we found for the 2024-2025 year was that the no-plant classrooms had significantly higher grades than the plant classrooms,” she said. “That surprised me and we were very disappointed for a long time just because it looked like plants weren’t helping. … We knew something was off going through our analyses.”

With further testing, Herrmann said the results started to shift once again.

“We compared grades across time,” she said. “Basically, if you take an introductory history class in Fall 2023 and then you compared it to an introductory history class in Fall 2024, when you add a plant to that class, grades are significantly higher. That was not the case for classes that didn’t have a plant the previous year and continued to not have a plant this year. In fact, that’s a stronger demonstration of our hypothesis that, across time, we actually have significantly higher grades in classrooms when you add a plant to the classroom.”

How much higher? According to Herrmann, there was nearly a quarter of a GPA point rise in grades between the semester without plants in the classroom and the semester with plants in the classroom.

Evans speculated that grades rose because plants in the classroom boost the experience for students, even if it is in subtle ways.

“It’s a pretty simple change, and I know that plants require upkeep and you have to pay for them,” she said. “But when you’re looking at the success of students, putting a few plants in the classroom is not the craziest way we could improve their grades.”

Herrmann said the findings largely mimic previous studies.

“There’s a good deal of data at this point suggesting that having plants, usually in an indoor space like an office or a classroom improves subjective mental health and well-being,” she said. “People who are in rooms that have green feel better. And we also know that there’s a strong connection on the other side between mental health and well-being and academic performance. Students who feel better tend to perform better.”

However, the study isn’t done quite yet.

“We will be doing it again (this coming year),” Evans said. “We’re planning on switching the plants so that the classrooms last year that had plants will no longer have plants and those plants will go to classrooms that didn’t have them last time so we can see if there’s a change.”

Herrmann said she’s excited by the results that have been compiled so far.

“It’s always satisfying to have a result that’s consistent with your hypothesis, even if it didn’t come about in the most straightforward way,” she said.

Evans said she’s enjoyed conducting the study and looks forward to continuing it into the future.

“It’s been a really good experience,” she said. “Dr. Herrmann has been an amazing mentor and I think it’s just been so cool to get involved with research so early. I started as a freshman, so I got more time doing research than a lot of students probably do. And it’s just been a great way to get more involved and learn more with hands-on experience. I’ve also gotten more opportunities to talk to the department and talk to our sponsors, I’ve learned how to write grants and it’s just been a great experience. I’ve learned a lot from it.”