2008 Woodie Awards
A Colorado forest will bear the UCF name
Eric Woodard
Issue date: 5/15/08 Section: News
UCF will be named in association with a forest of 100,000 trees, thanks to the sales of used textbooks.
UCF was awarded the privilege in April after students submitted the most votes during a contest as part of the "Buy a Book, Build a Forest" campaign sponsored by College Book & Supply in conjunction with the Arbor Day Foundation.
On April 25, Alaina Bernard, assistant director of the UCF Arboretum, accepted a check for $100,000 from the Nebraska Book Company, the parent company of CB&S, on behalf of the Arbor Day Foundation, the organization planting the forest.
"I was accepting it on behalf of Mother Earth," Bernard said.
Martin Quigley, director of the UCF Arboretum, said $100,000 is a significant amount of money for a tree planting effort.
"Tree seedlings are cheap," Quigley said. "It costs pennies per pine seedling to actually produce the tree, which means you could spend a lot of money on other things that have to be done that are less tangible than the trees themselves."
Quigley said a thorough planting effort involves land preparation, machine rentals, fertilizing and weeding expenses in order to be restorative to the natural habitat.
Last fall, Michael Garmon, a UCF alumnus, started the Facebook group "UCF Needs a Forest Named After Them" when the voting contest began last October. Everybody in the group rallying anyone and everyone to vote for UCF on www.buildaforest.com made it possible, he said.
"When we started out we weren't even in the top 10," Garmon said. "A week later, after everybody voting … we caught up pretty quick and ended up with a couple hundred thousand votes, so we were pretty far ahead of everybody else."
During the contest, UCF, along with other schools across the country, voted to plant the new trees in one of three national forests: Flathead National Forest in Northwest Montana, Huron-Manistee National Forest in Northern Michigan or Pike and San Isabel National Forest in Central Colorado.
UCF was awarded the privilege in April after students submitted the most votes during a contest as part of the "Buy a Book, Build a Forest" campaign sponsored by College Book & Supply in conjunction with the Arbor Day Foundation.
On April 25, Alaina Bernard, assistant director of the UCF Arboretum, accepted a check for $100,000 from the Nebraska Book Company, the parent company of CB&S, on behalf of the Arbor Day Foundation, the organization planting the forest.
"I was accepting it on behalf of Mother Earth," Bernard said.
Martin Quigley, director of the UCF Arboretum, said $100,000 is a significant amount of money for a tree planting effort.
"Tree seedlings are cheap," Quigley said. "It costs pennies per pine seedling to actually produce the tree, which means you could spend a lot of money on other things that have to be done that are less tangible than the trees themselves."
Quigley said a thorough planting effort involves land preparation, machine rentals, fertilizing and weeding expenses in order to be restorative to the natural habitat.
Last fall, Michael Garmon, a UCF alumnus, started the Facebook group "UCF Needs a Forest Named After Them" when the voting contest began last October. Everybody in the group rallying anyone and everyone to vote for UCF on www.buildaforest.com made it possible, he said.
"When we started out we weren't even in the top 10," Garmon said. "A week later, after everybody voting … we caught up pretty quick and ended up with a couple hundred thousand votes, so we were pretty far ahead of everybody else."
During the contest, UCF, along with other schools across the country, voted to plant the new trees in one of three national forests: Flathead National Forest in Northwest Montana, Huron-Manistee National Forest in Northern Michigan or Pike and San Isabel National Forest in Central Colorado.