University of Tennessee at Knoxville
EN-10: Community Partnerships

The Tennessee Water Resources Research Center (TNWRRC) is a federally designated state research institute supported in part by the U.S. Geological Survey. It serves water resource experts in academia, government, and the private sector, and the diversity of its staff's background and expertise positions the Center to establish productive partnerships. TNWRRC is part of the Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment (ISSE) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

https://tnwrrc.tennessee.edu/

The center represents a collaborative initiative focused on bringing improved outcomes to farms, forests, and rural communities throughout Tennessee, the Southeast, and the eastern United States. The center supports ecological health and economic prosperity by promoting the advancement of science in grasslands conservation, including forage production, sustainable forest management, biofuels production, wildlife conservation, and economics. This multidisciplinary approach in turn has provided training for scores of graduate students, along with engaged learning opportunities to undergraduates. Community partners include numerous individual landowners, producers, and commercial companies, as well as the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, North Carolina’s Wildlife Resources Commission, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, the US Forest Service, Joint Fire Science Program, the USDA, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Wild Turkey Federation, Quail Unlimited, the University of Kentucky, the University of Arkansas, the University of the Virgin Islands, and Auburn University. UT partners include the Institute of Agriculture, UT Extension; AgResearch; the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources (CASNR); and CASNR Departments of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries; Plant Sciences; Animal Sciences; and Agricultural and Resource Economics. The University of Tennessee supports CNGM financially by providing a salaried position and through active research support at a number of the Research and Education Centers. The program directly serves underserved low income, rural, ag based communities and is currently in its 11th year of operation.

http://nativegrasses.utk.edu/

Each year, UTK contracts seven AmeriCorps members from the Environmental Corps to serve within the Office of Sustainability. CAC AmeriCorps requires all members to contribute to achieving regional performance objectives pertaining to environmental service and education. AmeriCorps members within the Office of Sustainability are primarily responsible for managing recycling and compost operations, the UT Free Store, the UT Grow Lab, the UT Sustainable Internship Program, outreach, and data analysis. They maintain active sustainability-focused initiatives while creating new ones.