Originally published October 9, 2015
By Daniel Perez
UTEP News Service
The University of Texas at El Paso is taking the first step in an effort where UTEP students, faculty and staff take a more active role in maintaining a beautiful and sustainable campus.
Volunteers will meet at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, at Leech Grove for the inaugural “Adopt A Landscape” program intended to build on the personal responsibility of the Miner Nation to preserve the hard work that went into the recent campus transformation.
The event will lead off with a brief presentation about Centennial Plaza and then a special lecture by Bruce Erhard, UTEP grounds supervisor and a horticulturalist of more than 40 years, about work safety and the ways to identify a weed in the University’s unique desert landscaping. The participants may then select a part of campus to work on or accept an assignment from Erhard or other members of the groundskeepers’ team. The event will conclude by 11 a.m.
Organizers hope the volunteers will agree to continue to oversee their assigned portions of campus for the remainder of the semester, and that there is enough interest to schedule three such events per year. The concept is similar to the popular Texas Department of Transportation’s “Adopt-A-Highway” litter prevention effort.
Bill Hargrove, Ph.D., chair of the campus sustainability committee, called this effort a “baby step” in a larger University-wide plan to engage those who work and study at UTEP to be more concerned about protecting the environment and being energy efficient.
“This is a small step toward a heightened awareness,” said Hargrove, who also directs UTEP’s Center for Environmental Resource Management. “I want to emphasize that this effort is more than just pulling weeds. We are looking to build personal responsibility for the sustainability of campus. That’s the big picture.”
Hargrove’s team is developing a campus communication plan and engagement strategy to raise environmental awareness among students, faculty and staff.
“We’re plowing new ground here,” he said during an interview at Leech Grove with Erhard and Luis Perez, a CERM manager and Adopt A Landscape organizer.
The trio said the idea behind the volunteer effort came from Mara Cohn, program manager at UTEP’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). Her job duties keep her walking around campus and she noted some unwanted weeds growing among the colorful native plants around Centennial Plaza. She sent a suggestion to University President Diana Natalicio in early August 2015 about a volunteer effort to augment the good work done by UTEP’s grounds crews.
“The Campus Transformation is beautiful, but it’s created a lot more work,” Cohn said. “It’s more than just mowing and pruning. I told (President Natalicio) I’d be the first to volunteer. All of us need to make it our responsibility to keep the campus looking really great. We need to do our part, even if it’s just picking up a piece of trash.”
Cohn praised President Natalicio for promoting the idea among campus personnel who developed the Adopt A Landscape effort. The OLLI employee plans to attend the Saturday kickoff and said she would like to adopt an area around the Lhakhang on the northwest edge of the plaza. She understands these campus efforts take time to gain traction, but she would like to see Greek organizations and academic departments buy into the effort.
Erhard welcomed the campus community to call him or send him an email if they saw something on the campus’ 420 acres that concerned them such as an ailing tree or a growing weed colony. He can be reached at 915-747-7129 or bwerhard@utep.edu.
“I’d appreciate the call,” he said. “I can’t see everything on campus. It won’t hurt my feelings.”
CERM’s Perez said that he has received help from UTEP’s Center for Civic Engagement to promote this activity and register volunteers through its Community University Engagement tool. He said interested Miners and friends may register for the program by contacting him at lgperez@utep.edu or 915-747-5511.
To learn more about Adopt A Landscape, visit utepn.ws/utepcce.