GreenServe Native Plantings Draw Pollinators and People

 

A student enjoys GreenServe 2018’s on-campus project. Photo courtesy of Dr. Andrea Overbay.

GreenServe 2018 saw the expansion of native plantings on campus.  Sixteen volunteers filled an empty bed behind the Abell Library with six different native species selected with the help of Dr. George Diggs.  Drs. Peter Schulze, Keith Kisselle, and Mari Elise Ewing helped with the effort alongside Thinking Green Campus Awareness student co-leader Julian Coronado.  Even President Steven O’Day and First Lady Cece O’Day dug in and got their hands dirty!

President O’Day digs in. Photo courtesy of Dr. Andrea Overbay.
Native pollinator garden volunteers. Photo courtesy of Dr. Andrea Overbay.

Austin College President Emeritus Dr. Marjorie Hass and the Board of Trustees launched Austin College Thinking Green in 2011 to serve as an umbrella for all campus greening initiatives.  One of the outcomes was the formation of Thinking Green Campus Awareness, a committee of students who identify, organize, and publicize greening activities on campus.  Dr. Mari Elise Ewing, Professor of Environmental Studies, serves as the Director, and Katie Collins and Julian Coronado, both seniors, serve as the two student co-leaders for this academic year.  The mission for Thinking Green Campus Awareness is to increase campus participation in environmental responsibility and sustainable utilization of resources so that students will enrich their communities beyond Austin College.

Organized by Thinking Green Campus Awareness, GreenServe engages students from around campus in a morning of service focused on environmental responsibility and sustainability. Students volunteer at places like Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, Eisenhower State Park, both the Sherman and Pottsboro Community Gardens, and elsewhere throughout the Texoma community on projects such as trail maintenance, invasive species control, and habitat restoration.

A butterfly hovers over Purple Mistflower. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mari Elise Ewing.

GreenServe often includes an on-campus project.  For GreenServe 2016, the on-campus project consisted of expanding the native plants around the LEED Gold certified IDEA Center.  Ninety volunteers planted over 550 native plants paid for by the Student Sustainability Fund, created in 2011 by a vote of the entire student body and maintained through a five dollar annual student fee.  The project increased awareness of and interest in native plants on campus, which lead to GreenServe 2018’s pollinator garden project.

Over the summer, the native plants were in full bloom, drawing numerous butterfly and bee species.  Native plants and pollinators share an important symbiotic relationship, contributing to the health of their ecosystems.  Pollinators use the nectar and pollen they gather for food.  During foraging, they often carry pollen from one flower to another, which is a vital part of the reproductive cycle for many native plants.  Over the years, pollinator populations have declined through habitat loss, disease, and pesticide use.  Planting your own pollinator garden is a great way to help pollinator populations recover, and the pollinators are fun to watch!  More information can be found at the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s pollinators page.

The native plants draw lots of pollinators. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mari Elise Ewing.
A bee lights on some Mealy Sage. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mari Elise Ewing.

If you’d like to recreate our pollinator garden at home, here is the list of species we planted, all native to this area of North Texas:

Gregg Sage (Salvia greggii)

Mealy Sage (Salvia farinacea)

Mistflower (Eupatorium coelestinum)

Coneflower (Echinacea species)

Rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala)

Desert willow (Chilopsis linearis)

 

For photographs and more information about the plants listed above as well as other Texas natives, visit UT Austin’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center webpage.

The pollinator garden in full bloom. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mari Elise Ewing.

Grace Fullerton ’20 Wins Honorable Mention in Thoreau Essay Contest

Grace Fullerton, Class of 2020, won Honorable Mention in the 19-21 age group for the 2018 Live Deliberately Essay Contest put on by the Walden Woods Project!  You can read her essay here.  This year’s contest saw a record number of entries, with over 2,400 submissions across three age groups.

This year’s prompt was “In an essay of 750 words or fewer, describe a time in your life when you pursued a path that was ‘narrow and crooked,’ but felt like it was the right path for you.  In what ways are/were you able to, as Thoreau advises, walk that path with ‘love and reverence?’  How has navigating that path shaped you into the person you are becoming?”  The essay was an assignment in Dr. Mari Elise Ewing’s Janterm course, “A Deliberate Life,” which explored meaningful ways to live a more environmentally and socially sustainable life.  Grace wrote about lessons she learned in Ecuador during a gap year.

Originally from Austin, Texas, Grace plans to pursue a career in education after graduating.

Schulze TEDx Talk and Princeton Review Green School Recognition

On September 23rd, 2017, Dr. Peter Schulze gave a presentation at the 2nd Annual TEDx Austin College event.  Titled “We Aren’t Going to Mars,” Dr. Schulze’s talk is an exploration of why we should not count on escaping to another planet, and how to make better decisions about this one.  He critiques four routine but errant arguments commonly used to oppose environmental protection.

Dr. Schulze’s talk is available for viewing here.

Dr. Schulze regrets that the TED format does not allow for acknowledgments included in the videos. He thanks the following people for help with his presentation: Kelby Archer, Megan Aultman, Priya Chary, George Diggs, Mari Elise Ewing, David Hall, Keith Kisselle, Lynn Womble, the many students who organized the 2017 Austin College TEDx event, and Ben, Helen, and Matt Schulze, but notes that only he should be blamed for any errors or shortcomings.

In other news, Austin College has been selected for Princeton Review’s 2017 Guide to 375 Green Colleges.  The Guide “profiles colleges with the most exceptional commitments to sustainability based on their academic offerings and career preparation for students, campus policies, initiatives, and activities.”  This marks the fifth year that Austin College was selected for the list.  The 2017 Guide can be viewed here.

Introducing Kelby Archer ‘09, the new Center for Environmental Studies Coordinator

I was in college when An Inconvenient Truth came out.  After seeing it, I remember thinking “Man, that sure does sound like a pretty bad problem…I hope the scientists can figure it out!”  The raw truth of what is happening was too massive – and painful – for me to allow it to penetrate into my daily life.  It would take another film, Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, to wake me from my comfortable, ignorant slumber.  The broad theme of that film, a rumination about humanity’s relationship to nature and technology that contains no dialogue, is “life out of balance.”  It cemented a conviction that I carry with me today: things don’t have to be this way.

Film was a significant part of my life at the time.  I graduated from Austin College in 2009 with a degree in Communications (Media Studies emphasis), and within a few months was working for a local TV station, KXII-TV, as the technical director and production supervisor for the morning shift.  I am a Denison native and felt right at home in local TV.  After a few years, I moved into a commercial production role at KXII.

I couldn’t get our ecological problems out of my head, though, and I knew I wasn’t doing much to contribute to the solution.  Sustainable lifestyles involve living in ways that are fundamentally different to the way most of us live right now, and I had a sneaking suspicion that sustainable lifestyles are more satisfying and contented, in addition to not being a burden on the Earth.  I knew there were people out there exploring these lifestyles (Transition Towns, ecovillages, homesteads, the Tiny House movement, etc.), but I didn’t know how to get started or how I could explore these alternatives without making a hefty investment.  That’s when I discovered Help Exchange.

Help Exchange is a website that connects designated hosts all over the world with volunteer helpers.  It’s very similar to WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms).  You’re expected to do 5-6 hours of labor, 5 days a week in exchange for room and board.  I began spending idle time clicking through HelpX listings all over the Western United States and daydreaming.  Near the end of 2015, I finally took the plunge – I quit my job at the TV station and declared my 2016 a belated, long-awaited gap year adventure that would afford me ample opportunity to directly experience homesteading and off-grid living.  It was like discovering a desert oasis as a man dying of thirst.

The experience was even better than I expected.  I climbed Emory Peak in Big Bend National Park, visited the Grand Canyon and Utah’s Canyon Country for the first time, and slid down sand dunes near Death Valley (in additional to a good bit of camping).  I lived on an off-grid solar-powered farm in Arizona for nearly two months, helped build a tiny house, and learned how to manage a dairy goat herd in the hills outside of Hollister, California.  Most importantly of all, I met a number of incredible people who are living more sustainably, people whom I now count as friends for life.  I made it as far as Brookings, Oregon (about 6 miles north of the California border) before deciding it was time to come home.

My campsite in Canyonlands National Park

A few short months after getting back to Texas, I saw the listing for the Environmental Studies Coordinator job and knew it was the job for me.  I’m delighted to be back at my alma mater working with a great group of people.  I’m eager to get my hands dirty out at Sneed Prairie and can’t wait to see what the next step is for the Center for Environmental Studies.  It feels great to contribute, and the students are a constant source of fun and inspiration.

It’s also great to settle down in the place that has always been home to me.  In the coming years, I hope to purchase some land and start my own sustainable homestead.  It will be fascinating to approach sustainability from two halves of a whole: how to build a sustainable community and institution at my job, and how to build a sustainable personal life at home.  I relish the challenges ahead!

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