Illinois State Named Tree Campus USA College

For the second year in a row, Illinois State University has been named a Tree Campus USA College by the Arbor Day Foundation. Last year, Illinois State was honored as one of the inaugural 29 Tree Campus USA colleges, making it the only Illinois university to earn the award.

"It is a great honor for our department and the University as a whole to be honored as a Tree Campus USA site for the second year in a row," said Darcy Loy, assistant director of Grounds. "It demonstrates that as University we are excelling in not only superior tree maintenance and fostering stewardship of urban forestry, but environmentally sound and sustainable practices as well. It is also further testament that we are upholding Jesse Fell's original vision of a campus planted with a diversified collection of trees species that provides our students in the field an outdoor, learning laboratory."

"These schools have made a major commitment to protecting, caring for and adding to their campus forest, and the results of this commitment will have a lasting, positive impact not only on campus, but in the overall community," said John Rosenow, chief executive and founder of the Arbor Day Foundation.

Tree Campus USA is modeled after the Arbor Day Foundation's Tree City USA program, which has had a powerful impact resulting in more trees and better tree care in more than 3,300 communities nationwide. The Tree Campus USA award requires schools to establish a campus tree advisory committee, provide evidence of a campus tree-care plan, verify annual expenditures on the campus tree-care plan, show involvement in an Arbor Day observance and institute a service-learning project aimed at engaging the student body.