YSU begins drive for $100,000 to protect, enhance greenery on campus

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State University has 1,763 trees spread across its 145-acre campus.

“It’s a good, sustained urban forest,” said Jim Jenkins, who did a campus tree inventory for the university.

Overall, the condition of 1,600 of the trees can be rated as fair to good, Jenkins recently told the external relations committee of the university’s board of trustees.

Jenkins is an urban forester employed by Davey Resource Group, a forestry and natural resources consulting company, which is helping the university launch a Campus Beautification Initiative designed to protect and preserve YSU’s greenery.

The goal is to raise $100,000 to create an endowment fund for that purpose, said Catherine Cala, director of YSU’s Office of University Development, the fund-rising arm of the university.

The drive is the result of particularly nasty summer storms in 2007 and 2008 that destroyed 70 campus trees, she said.

It was David C. Sweet, YSU president, who got the effort started by donating some trees to replace those that were destroyed, Cala said.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.