University of Colorado Colorado Springs
EN-10: Community Partnerships

The Trails and Open Space Coalition (TOSC) is a 501c3 nonprofit created in 1987. They are committed to a preserving open spaces and parks, as well as creating a network of trails, bikeways, and greenways for the Pikes Peak Region. They have a small staff and are governed by a board of directors. As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, TOSC receives NO government funds of any kind. Most of their support comes from individual contributions and people who care about their parks, open spaces, and trails. A smaller part of their revenue comes from grants and fundraising events.

Two of the TOSC Board of Directors are UCCS staff in the LAS Dean’s Office (Margie Oldham) and Campus Recreation (Skyler Rorabaugh) that sit on the board to represent the University. This formal connection provides the College of Letters, Arts and Science undergrad and graduate students pathways to internships along with engagement through research and experiential learning. It also supports the unique, on-campus trails system through volunteer efforts, shared knowledge of trail maintenance, citizen science opportunities, open space conservation, regional trail connectivity, wildlife habitat preservation, community-wide support and special events.

The financial support for TOSC is the in-kind hours worked by the two UCCS staff on their Board of Directors and committee involvement.
https://www.trailsandopenspaces.org/about/boards/

UCCS Office of Sustainability staff have been on the Fountain Creek Watershed Creek Week Steering Committee since its inaugural year of 2014. Along with in-kind support of hours worked to provide website maintenance, draft and revise grants, host clean-up events, attend additional clean-up events, manage communication with crew leaders, manage an adopted waterway through the City’s Adopt-a-Waterway program, staff also provide materials through marketing and education.

This watershed-wide initiative is the State’s largest creek clean-up. At most, we have seen over 3,000 volunteers, 14 tons of debris removed from our watershed, and 106 different clean-up locations. Our watershed spans 927 square miles of land and water over 3 counties and 8 cities that has an elevation range from over 14,000 to 4,600 feet in the distance of 50 miles. Creek Week ensures the engagement of representation from organizations within the City of Pueblo on the Creek Week Steering Committee, since it is the last city in our watershed before emptying into the Arkansas River and it has a demographic of 56.6% Hispanic and Indigenous populations. The care of our watershed north of Pueblo has drastic effects on water quality and stormwater impacts to the City and their residents.

The educational component of Creek Week not only discusses the most littered items and most potent to our waterways, but it also teaches our community about watersheds and how we can protect and restore them and why they are important. We have volunteers from all grade levels of Manitou Elementary School to corporations that host the clean-up as a staff engagement event.
https://www.fountaincreekweek.com/about-us/

The governing body of Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, the Board of Directors, is composed of elected officials appointed by the member governments and non-voting members from each of the five military installations and key agencies. Our committees serve the community by providing technical or community input to the Board of Directors and are made up of member appointees and important partners. The Air Quality Technical Committee provides advice on current and emerging issues, goals, plans, and programs affecting the air quality of the Pikes Peak region

This partnership between PPACG AQTC and UCCS has been formalized recently (see agenda link for 11.18.20), but has been an informal partnership since 2019. A staff member of the UCCS Office of Sustainability was recently voted onto the committee to represent the ‘environmental’ community, along with the University after application and interview with current committee members. UCCS has been working with PPACG AQTC in regards to it’s Ozone Garden, ozone monitoring machine installation, multi-modal transportation efforts, and EPA Advance application.
http://www.ppacg.org/#1478708872558-b36249bc-b8a6
http://www.ppacg.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/11.20-Agenda.pdf