University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Edinburg Campus, home to nearly 2,000 trees, recently celebrated a community-wide effort that led to its designation as a Tree Campus USA university. During three semesters, 32 university students from multiple disciplines were trained by faculty and local and state foresters to identify and tag each tree, as well as use tools and methods to take several measures of tree health and dimensional data. A graduate student led the tree inventory as part of his thesis. Student participants were credited with a biology or environmental science course, each designed to foster student engagement, education and research through a service learning project. The complete tree inventory is not only the basis of the campus tree management plan, but an educational vehicle meant to transform the way students look at and think about their surroundings.

As a result of Tree Campus activities, it was determined that UTRGV owns and maintains a healthy urban forest with an estimated value of more than $5,735,000. Beyond being a vital component of campus infrastructure and landscaping, a healthy urban forest provides substantial benefits, including providing green spaces and shade for the campus community, energy savings and reduction of carbon dioxide in the air, and support to reduce storm water runoff and soil erosion. The campaign also led to a designation that signals the recognition by campus management of the many benefits of trees, as well as their needs in terms of maintenance: The Arbor Day Foundation has named the UTRGV Edinburg Campus as a Tree Campus USA university for a third year. A recognition ceremony that coincided with Campus Sustainability Day was held to honor individuals who contributed to the effort to achieve the designation, and to highlight the university’s commitment to effective urban forest management and its engagement of the campus community in environmental stewardship.

The State Employee Charitable Campaign (SECC), the only statutorily-authorized workplace campaign for state agency and higher education employees throughout Texas, enables employees of the state of Texas to make a contribution to local, state, national and international charities through the convenience of payroll deduction or a one-time donation through a check. A good percentage of the charitable contributions go to local non-profits and assist in providing sustainable economic development, which positively affects the health, education, and quality of life of our underserved community.

In 2013, legacy institution UTPA donated nearly $47,000 of the $242,959 contributed by the region's state employees during the campaign, and UTRGV continues the tradition of giving; UTRGV participated in its first State Employee Charitable Campaign in 2015 with a goal of $55,000. A university-wide President’s Message explains the campaign that provides employees throughout Texas an opportunity to make a difference in the quality of life for others through their selected charities.

UTRGV’s outreach campaigns work towards the sustainable goal of making communities sustainable by holding sustainability-related outreach campaigns directed at students and employees that yield positive results in advancing sustainability.