Check out our new Celebrating Engage Green page on SpartanHub for more photos from work days at the Upper Chinquapin Greenway!
On Friday, April 12th, Biology instructor Julie Smoak led a small but mighty group of students in our last invasive species cleanup event of the academic year as they worked alongside the dedicated Spartanburg Area Conservancy team to continue efforts to revitalize the Upper Chinquapin Greenway.
Pictured: Julie’s Biology students identified native plantlife, like the Cinnamon Fern.
As land manager Lynn Rhodes led students up the trail to the work site, those of us who remembered stepping foot into the overgrown and forgotten Greenway at the beginning of Fall were amazed at its transformation–now more evident with the lush new growth of Spring, which has been able to flourish in the absence of invasive plants that had previously choked out sunlight and hogged ground space and nutrients.
Pictured: Lynn wore our new Engage Green t-shirt design.
It is thanks to our general education student volunteers who participated in the inaugural year of ENGAGE GREEN that the Greenway is now on its way to becoming the bright, safe, and welcoming public greenspace that it has long held the potential to be.
Now that the Spring semester has concluded (and along with it, our first successful year of Engage Green – Read the Fall semester recap here), we have had over 300 students and 17 instructors serve for 1000+ hours at the Upper Chinquapin Greenway, with many of those students choosing to participate more than once!
A majority of our participating instructors have shared that students reported being pleasantly surprised by the experience despite initially being hesitant to dive into what meant, for some, an entirely new world of outdoor activities (including the bugs, dirt, and sweat that goes with them).
We so grateful to our student volunteers, who took this new and strange experience in stride and with enthusiasm, as well as to our own instructors who took charge in modeling bravery, hard work, and a positive attitude.
Pictured: Students took on the first workday of the semester with enthusiasm.
Spartanburg Area Conservancy has been a phenomenal partner to help us facilitate this journey of experiential learning for our students here at Upstate (so much so that, earlier this month, they received the incredibly well-earned University Partner of the Year Award for their commitment to community engagement at Upstate).
Sam, Lynn, and Deb have been instrumental in teaching our students about the importance of conservancy and how they can make a big difference by being good stewards of the world around them. A common piece of feedback from the students was how great of an experience it was to work right alongside the SPACE team and to see their own dedication and commitment to the work.
Above all, working alongside a team that believes wholeheartedly in their mission to Keep Spartanburg Wild was one of the students’ favorite parts of the lessons they learned during their participation in Engage Green. It is undoubtedly an experience that they will carry with them through the rest of their time at USC Upstate.
Pictured: Spartan Spirit on display at the Upper Chinquapin Greenway!
Make sure to check out SPACE’s Instagram page to see posts detailing the work Spartans are doing at the trail. Here is one post with pictures from a special Saturday cleanup in early April:
As SPACE’s Upper Chinquapin Greenway Revitalization project evolves, we will be discussing and developing more opportunities to engage with them in SLCE courses in the future.
To learn more about this project, you can read an overview from our blog here, visit the Student SpartanHub information page about Engage Green, and/or view the videos below:
Article by Sam Reinhardt, ’23-24 AmeriCorps VISTA Member
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