MORRISVILLE, NY—Morrisville State College, recently named a Tree Campus USA, will celebrate Arbor Day on Friday, April 24.
The campus and community are invited to join two plantings that will occur on campus from noon-3 p.m. Eastern redbud ‘Rising Sun,’ tulip tree ‘Aureao-marginata,’ and scarlet oak trees will be planted in the Pond Quad portion of campus by horticulture students.
Silviculture students will be giving away tree seedlings and Arbor Day posters at STUAC. Seedlings are courtesy of the NYS DEC Seedlings for Schools Program. The landscape trees are made possible through an award from the National Arbor Day Foundation—Tree Campus USA Celebrate Arbor Day Contest.
The Tree Campus USA program, launched in 2008 by the Arbor Day Foundation, recognizes best practices in campus community forestry throughout America.
Morrisville State College became a Tree Campus USA campus in 2014. The aim of the Tree Campus USA program is to honor college campuses and the leaders of their communities for promoting healthy urban forest management and engaging the campus community in environmental stewardship.
To become a Tree Campus USA, colleges have to meet five standards: have a campus tree advisory committee, create and use campus tree care plan, have a campus tree program with dedicated annual expenditures, observe Arbor Day and conduct a service learning project. Throughout the years, Morrisville students have been involved with many volunteer opportunities including the pruning of campus and community trees, conducting a street tree inventory for the village of Morrisville, volunteer orchard maintenance, and annual Arbor Day tree plantings.
The Arbor Day Foundation is a nonprofit conservation and education organization of one million members, with the mission to inspire people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees. Toyota has been a partner of the Arbor Day Foundation since 2001, and is the sponsor of the Tree Campus USA program.
Morrisville State’s curricula are enriched with applied learning and pave the way for opportunity at both the Morrisville and Norwich campuses. An action-oriented, interactive learning lab, the college is a national leader in technology and has been lauded for its exemplary, innovative and effective community service programs.
In addition to being named to the 2014 President’s Higher Community Education Service Honor Roll, the college was recognized by U.S. News and World Report as an institution in the top tier of the Best Regional Colleges list and ranked second among regional colleges nationwide for outperforming its anticipated graduation rate.