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Students help make FLC a Tree Campus USA
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Students help make FLC a Tree Campus USA

For decades, trees across the Fort Lewis College campus have provided students myriad cultural, educational, and psychological benefits. Now, their presence is receiving official recognition, thanks to an Arbor Day Foundation “Tree Campus USA” certification awarded to FLC in 2019.  

To be certified, campuses must establish a campus tree advisory committee, show evidence of a campus tree care plan, verify the plan’s dedicated annual expenditures, observe Arbor Day, and create a service-learning project aimed at engaging the student body. Spearheaded by Ross McCauley, professor of Biology, faculty members have worked in earnest to satisfy these requirements.

“A college campus is a built urban environment on a small-scale, and having trees not only adds to the aesthetic, but it also improves the academic environment we work in every day,” McCauley says. “I heard about this program a few years back and thought it was a wonderful opportunity for FLC.”

As part of the annual recertification process, FLC incorporates trees into its pedagogical approach. To do this, McCauley is partnering with Biology Lecturer Aurea Cortés-Palomec’s Evolution & Diversity of Life classes to tags trees with QR codes that reveal arboreal facts about each species when scanned.

“It came out of an idea I had to catalog all the trees on campus,” McCauley says. “We want to make students aware of the trees themselves. The tags we place on them make students stop and acknowledge that they are actual living organisms with a name and a history.” 

Eventually, McCauley adds, all trees on the developed part of campus will be tagged, catalogued, and geolocated on a campus arboretum webpage. To help inform which trees are selected, McCauley has been working closely with FLC’s Environmental Center. Sadie Magnifico, assistant coordinator of the Environmental Center, has been a vocal supporter of student input, advocating for students to select which species to plant and where they should be placed. 

“Having students engage with the selection and planting of these species gives them a stake in their campus,” Magnifico says. “It fosters a sense of commitment and responsibility.”  

Recently, an EC work team planted a hackberry tree near Animas Hall. The species is known for its sturdiness and its ability to be water-wise. Sera Wecasey, a senior studying Environmental Science was on-site supervising the planting that day.

“Everyone was getting involved,” Wecasey says. “It was an Environmental Stewardship launch class, and it was great seeing the students excited and working together.”  

Wecasey, like many other students at FLC, appreciates the often overlooked environmental benefits of tree-planting, from reducing campuswide water usage, to providing shade for buildings that would otherwise be cooled by electricity, and absorbing carbon dioxide emissions from the air. Every sapling planted is a little victory in FLC’s larger fight against climate change. 

“It’s so nice to sit outside in the shade of the trees we have and enjoy the beauty of our campus,” says Wecasey. “But there can always be more… it’s important to enact change on a scale you’re able to.”  

Copyright 2024 by Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado
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