UVU’s Center for Social Impact logs trees on campus to drive environmental consciousness

Brooke Hannel

November 5, 2018

schedule 2 min read

UVU students gathered in the Student Life plaza on Oct. 25 to map trees on campus for the “Be The Change” tour held by the Center for Social Impact.

The students were given GPS’s and were tasked to go around campus retrieving GPS coordinates of the trees. The data would then be compiled  and sent to the service center.

Megan Canfield, a special education major and volunteer at the event said, “Some trees are really old, it will allow us to track them better, the coordinates will help make sure they are getting enough water and see if they’ve fallen.”

The service center plans to track the trees through the GPS coordinates and evaluate the tree’s water intake and if there are any damages to the tree.

Tree logging is one of many events that will contribute to the Be The Change tour.

“This year is the 25th anniversary of the Center for Social Impact and with that anniversary each month our Be The Change Tour student coordinator plans an activity based on a topic each month,” said Josh Otterson, president of the center’s service council, “This month’s topic was sustainability.  Next month we are partnering with Valley United for a month long food drive.”

The center is determined to provide a wide variety of service projects for UVU students to participate in, projects that deal with things such as environmental or social changes, and the Be The Change Tour is allowing for more opportunities.

Otterson went on to say, “With the change of the name of our Center we are looking to expand our reach of what we do as service council.  We have adopted the six pathways of public service and civic engagement as our model going forward,” said Otterson, “So doing these nontraditional service projects helps to reach out to the wide variety of interests students at UVU are interested in and gives them an opportunity to serve in ways they may not have had the opportunity to in the past.”

Otterson and many others hope that the tree logging event will help UVU become more environmentally conscious and the future events will cause a powerful impact on campus by urging students to become socially aware.