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UCF Arboretum Attends Orlando Wetlands Festival To Bring Awareness To Florida’s Environment
By CORYNNE LOVEWELL Members of the UCF Arboretum tabled at the Orlando Wetlands Festival on Saturday afternoon to bring awareness to the community about the impacted wetlands on campus and discuss their mission for years to come. The Orlando Wetlands Festival was open to everyone including local families in order to help them become environmentally […]
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Fighting Fire with Fire: How Controlled Burns Keep Us Safe
BY JENNA MARINA LEE From December through June, visitors to UCF’s main campus may occasionally see large, orange flames licking at trees and incinerating plants near recreational grounds, parking garages or student housing. The scene appears much scarier than what’s actually occurring. These months of the year are UCF’s burn season, which is overseen by […]
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New Alumni Reflect on Journey That Brought Them to Fall ’19 Graduation
As he adjusted his black gown, a yellow tassel dangling out of the corner of his eye, Bepsy Omar Aguasvivas thought about his father’s words: “The hardest thing to do is be born. Everything else is simply a step ahead.” That advice carried Aguasvivas through his academic experience at UCF all the way to Saturday, […]
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Message From the Director
Fall is a time of harvest and giving thanks. In Florida, we are always a little out of sync with the rest of the country when it comes to harvest as many of our crops go in the ground in October and we continue to harvest throughout the winter! While we may be out of […]
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Student Spotlight – Mayerlin Fischbach
Greetings! I’m an undergraduate senior who plans on continuing my formal education for more years to come. I’ve been working at the UCF Arboretum since December of 2017- and can sincerely say I have cherished every moment I spend in our gardens, natural lands and bustling office. It is an absolute joy working with community […]
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10-Year Anniversary Garden Bash
Nature and Knightro—what more could you wish for at the Arboretum Garden Bash Kickoff? Early in the 2019 fall semester, the Arboretum celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the original Community Garden. For the past 10 years, the Arboretum has been using organic practices to grow veggies and herbs for UCF students to teach them about […]
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Reinvigorating UCF Landscapes with the Bee Campus USA team
Our new Bee Campus USA program co-coordinators transformed a rock-covered corner of a campus courtyard into a beautiful pollinator garden! The transformed area is in the courtyard of the business administration 1 building where there were several strips and cutout areas covered in black lava rock. Irrigation heads provided evidence that these areas originally had […]
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Protecting Campus and Community From Wildfire
Fire is a critical component of nearly every ecosystem in the southeastern United States. Central Florida is the lightning capital of the U.S., and historically our frequent thunderstorms ignited fires in the forest. As a result, many of the state’s natural ecosystems would burn every 2-5 years. During periods of extreme dry weather, especially during […]
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Learning by Leading™ @ UCF
Students, students everywhere! We are excited to announce that beginning this fall semester we are dramatically increasing student opportunities at the UCF Arboretum through implementing the Learning by Leading™ @ UCF Program. The Learning by Leading™ (LxL) Program was developed by the University of California, Davis Arboretum, and is organized around the premise that students […]
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Behind the scenes at the Arboretum Spooktacular 2019
By Rachel Smith This year’s Arboretum Spooktacular drew nearly 200 students on Friday night after months of preparation and a long day of setting up. Nearly 30 volunteers for the event shuffled into the Arboretum trailer Friday afternoon and started taking boxes of decorations outside. About 15 of those volunteers would become part of the […]
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Arboretum Opens New Garden With Harvest Celebration
By Rahma Hassan Students got a first look at the UCF Arboretum’s newest garden at the New Garden Kickoff event Tuesday. Over 70 students attended the event where they got to harvest plants and vegetables from the garden, tour the greenhouse and learn about what the Arboretum is doing to help with pollination on […]
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Summer Commencement Launches Careers of New COS Grads
Rain didn’t dampen the spirits of UCF’s newest College of Sciences graduates on Saturday. Jeremy Ivy, 23, is a psychology graduate, and plans on applying to a master’s program at Florida Institute of Technology for registered behavioral therapy. These therapists are registered to treat children with autism and work with others that may have […]
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UCF Biologists Hunt For Hidden Carbon
Car exhaust and factory pollution take a lot of blame for global warming. But a team of UCF biologists are on the hunt for a hidden storage of carbon that’s right beneath your feet. Plants spend their lifetime absorbing carbon dioxide, then deposit it into the soil when they die. If they’re trapped under water […]
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UCF alumna leads Arboretum’s environmental initiatives, controlled burns
BY SHEA DAWSON As Jennifer Elliott sat in the UCF Arboretum office, a small trailer behind the Harris Corporation Engineering Center, an Arboretum staff member entered with bad news: the Cuban tree frogs were back. Cuban tree frogs are an invasive species in Florida that often eat native tree frogs and lizards. Elliott sighed. Though she […]
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New Arboretum Master Plan Unveiled
The UCF Arboretum started as a 10-acre site in 1983 on what was then the edge of campus. Over the years several parcels were added to bring the Arboretum to its current size of 82 acres, but the original site remains the core area for the Arboretum program. It contains Arboretum facilities such as the […]
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Urban Forestry
The Urban Forestry Department at UCF was formed in 2004 with the mission of improving the campus aesthetics, mitigating hurricane storm damage, increasing tree diversity, improving ecosystem services and engaging with students through the Arboretum Program. Since 2004 the urban forestry team has grown to six individuals, five of which are certified arborists through […]
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UCF First Designated Bee Campus USA
Last year, UCF became the first university in Florida to be designated as a Bee Campus USA. Bee Campuses aim to increase communication about the importance of pollinators and what we can to enhance their habitats in our continuously urbanizing landscape. The Bee Campus program, which is operated through the internationally-renowned insect conservation organization, the […]
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Arboretum Community Farm and Garden Summer 2019
Eggplant, tomato, corn, sweet potato, peppers, melon…hungry yet?! These are just a few examples of the delicious produce grown in the Arboretum Community Farm and Garden for the summer season. Our Spring Newsletter highlighted the construction of the new garden, and now the garden is complete! Volunteers put in many hours at the end of […]
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Arboretum Director’s Message
Gardens are places where people grow plants, but gardens grow people too. University gardens in particular are committed to the growth and development of people through education, research and community involvement. In addition to helping plants and environments thrive, we help people thrive by creating beautiful, sometimes wondrous spaces, by providing opportunities for people to […]
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Arboretum Founder’s Legacy Lives On With Boardwalk Naming
Hank Whitter, Ph.D., was once asked, “What’s going to happen to the Arboretum when you’re no longer here?” Whittier, who helped lead the movement in the early 80s for a protected green space on UCF’s campus, was not concerned. There’s always someone next in line whose passion matches your own, he explained. “Just look […]
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COS Faculty and Students Recognized for Outstanding Achievements at Founders’ Day Convocation
The dedication and high quality of instruction provided daily by College of Sciences (COS) faculty was recognized recently at the 2019 Founders’ Day Convocation. COS students were also praised for their outstanding academic work. Multiple faculty received awards for their contributions to teaching and research at UCF. They are: College Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate […]
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Burning Questions
Are you curious about UCF’s use of prescribed fire to reduce wildfire risk and promote biodiversity in our campus natural lands? Well you came to the right place! Historically, the area that is now home to UCF was a combination of pine flatwoods, scrub, sandhill, and wetlands. These incredibly diverse ecosystems not only tolerate fire, […]
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UCF Stormwater
Central Florida is known for its summer thunderstorms that sometimes dump large amounts of rain in short bursts. People are used to seeing water flowing along gutters and rushing into roadway drains, but not everyone understands the hidden infrastructure for stormwater runoff and how it is designed to protect our precious water resources. Stormwater runoff […]
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UCF Organic Community Garden
Love of the outdoors, UCF students, and fresh, organic produce are just a few of many things that sparked the idea of creating an amazing space known as the UCF Arboretum Organic Community Garden. Since February 2009, the Arboretum has been growing organic produce on main campus and supplying that food to the Knights Helping […]
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Environmental Horticulture
One of our recent campus construction projects features our boldest attempt yet to incorporate native flowering plants into our campus landscape designs. The landscape at the new District Energy Plant IV was designed by Karina Veaudry, Principal Landscape Architect of NFC Landscape Architects, Inc., working under project architecture firm RLF. NFC is guided by a […]
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Director’s Message
Every good gardener knows that you can’t grow a strong plant on weak roots. At the UCF Arboretum, we are continually reminded that our success is rooted in our past. Our founding director, the late Dr. Hank Whittier, spent over 20 years laying the foundation for our program. We are excited to announce that we […]
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17 College of Sciences Alumni Win 30 Under 30
Seventeen College of Sciences graduates were among the winners of UCF Alumni’s 30 Under 30 Awards. “Our 2019 30 under 30 recipients are extraordinary examples of what it means to represent UCF with pride,” says Jazmine Rodriguez ’10 ’12 , chair of UCF’s Young Alumni Council. “The impact this group has made in the world […]
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Summer Internship Opportunities
As the temperature gets warmer, we’re all thinking about summer plans. An internship or study abroad program can be a great opportunity for students to gain real-life experience in their field of study and travel to a new place. Here are a few with upcoming deadlines: EEOP Internships Application Due: February 25, 2019 Internship Period: […]
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Botany Class Takes Students Outside Classroom
We walk by them every day, but most of us would be hard-pressed to identify, much less scientifically classify, the trees and flowers we see. Elizabeth Harris calls it “plant blindness.” “Our goal was to get students outside and actually open their eyes to what’s in their environment,” said Harris, Ph.D., a Biology associate […]
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Virtual Arboretum Visits Coming Soon
The vegetation is a familiar sight to Central Florida visitors: Sabal Palm, spiky Saw Palmettos, towering, Longleaf Pines and delicate, brightly colored flowers. But visitors to this version of the Florida lands bordering UCF’s campus will notice a couple things missing, including humidity and pesky bug bites. That’s because these 247 acres exist on […]