Geography 137 Field Trip to the UT Arboretum

Students in the Geography 137 Honors section of the Introductory Physical Geography course spent Sunday, September 11, 2011 at the University of Tennessee Arboretum in Oak Ridge. Working with graduate students Joanne Ballard and Matt Boehm, and instructor Sally Horn, the students collected tree-ring and soil samples for research projects, and examined the NOAA meteorological station at the site. We are grateful to Director Kevin P. Hoyt for allowing us to use the excellent resources of the UT arboretum.

For more on the arboretum, see http://forestry.tennessee.edu/ORForest.html. And to see our students in action, check out the video!

Michelle Pfeffer's Legacy Lives on at TVUUC!

This morning (September 7), the Knoxville News Sentinel published this very nice piece by Allison Rupp about the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church (TVUUC) and their strong commitment to conservation, recycling, and restoration. In May, the church earned its Green Sanctuary accreditation, an effort begun six years earlier by our very own geography major Michelle Pfeffer, who tragically passed away in February 2006. Our Outstanding Senior Award is named after her.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/sep/06/allison-rupp-unitarian-church-goes-green-easy/

(Thank you, Carol, for the alert!)

Best Wishes to Joy DuVoisin

In August, Joy DuVoisin moved from a staff position in Geography to a staff position in Educational Psychology and Counseling. We thanked Joy for her work in Geography and celebrated her new position with a small party in the Geography Department.