UNC Maintains Tree Campus USA Status
For the fourth consecutive year, the Arbor Day Foundation has recognized the university with Tree Campus USA designation.
Tree Campus USA is a national program created to honor colleges and universities for effective campus forest management and student and employee engagement in conservation goals.
The program’s standards include maintaining a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures toward trees, an Arbor Day observance and student service-learning projects. There are 254 campuses across the United States with this recognition.
The university is also a certified arboretum recognized by the National ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program. In addition to the campus’s 3,700 trees, the arboretum includes more than 17,000 flowers, hundreds of perennial plantings, a xeric garden with neighboring community garden plots, and a Colorado grassland exhibit.
Jazz Greats Gather
The UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival attracts around 8,000 guests to Greeley for world-class performances and educational workshops each year. This year, on April 21-23, the 46th annual festival reunited UNC Jazz alumni.
The gathering celebrated the success of a program that has received over 100 Downbeat Magazine Student Music awards since faculty member William Gower started the first big band at UNC in Fall of 1958.
The reunion also honored former Director of Jazz Studies Gene Aitken in a ceremony preceding the Saturday evening concert. Aitken served as UNC’s Director of Jazz Studies for 27 years.
Business Major Starts Nonprofit to Raise Awareness of Sex Trafficking Issue
UNC business major Megan Lundstrom is passionate about her efforts to raise awareness of sex trafficking in northern Colorado. Lundstrom — herself a victim — is putting what she’s learning in UNC’s Monfort College of Business to use by founding a Greeley-based nonprofit called Free Our Girls. The organization focuses on addressing sex trafficking in Colorado by providing awareness, training and prevention programs.
In addition to organizing a week long series of educational activities, Lundstrom is meeting with local law enforcement agencies and local and state government officials to push for increased enforcement and more severe penalties for offenders.
Work Begins on Campus Energy-Savings Projects
UNC has partnered with McKinstry, a national company that focuses on energy and operational efficiency, to implement building and operational improvements that will save the university $547,000 annually through reduced utility and operational costs.
Most improvements will be to buildings’ lighting, heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems, making them more energy-efficient and enhancing the learning environment.
The partnership also includes implementing McKinstry’s three-year behavior-focused energy awareness and operational efficiency program this fall to engage students, staff and faculty across the campus in energy, water and waste conservation efforts.
McKinstry also helped secure $286,000 in utility rebates to offset initial improvement costs. The annual energy and operational savings from the improvements over the next 15 years will pay for their $8.86 million cost.