College community gathers to celebrate the 3,250 trees on campus
Anna Duke
Staff Writer
Wooster was recently recognized as a “Tree Campus U.S.A.” from the Arbor Day Foundation, the world’s oldest and largest tree-planting organization. Members of the College community gathered on Saturday to plant a maple tree in honor of this accomplishment. Currently, Wooser has approximately 3,250 trees on campus.
Wooster was one of eight schools in the state of Ohio to receive recognition. Beau Mastrine, the director of campus grounds, heard about the Tree Campus U.S.A. application through a tree contractor.
In order to be considered, Mastrine submitted an application proving that Wooster met Tree Campus USA’s standards. The five requirements ranged from having a tree advisory committee to instituting a service learning project about trees.
“[The application] wasn’t something that you just put together in a month — it took several,” Mastrine said. “The final application for the award was a 40-page project.”
One of the five standards the application required the College to maintain is a program that dedicated annual expenditures to the trees. This stipulation was easy to meet. Back in the 1980s, a group of staff and alumni established a tree endowment to protect the College’s trees.
“Regardless of any budget cuts or downsizing, the College of Wooster will continue to have money to support the campus trees,” said Mastrine. The endowment has helped make everything the grounds crew does possible.
Mark Niemczky is one of the members of the crew who helped make this award possible. “I focus on the trees — keeping people from killing them, keeping insects from killing them, keeping diseases from killing them,” said Niemczky.
Mastrine and Niemczky’s hard work and dedication to the trees has paid off.
“I was really excited about Wooster getting Tree Campus U.S.A.,” said Matt Policastro ’13, the co-president of Greenhouse. “It is a beautiful wooded campus and the grounds crew really does such a fantastic job of taking care of [the trees].”