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Hokie Spirit Garden Trail working group invites faculty, staff input

From: Office of the Vice President for Outreach and International Affairs

Dear Colleagues,

For the past three years, several within the university community have been diligently working on a very special project known as the Hokie Spirit Garden Trail, which is described in more detail below. The working group invites your input. I do hope you will take a few moments from your busy schedules to answer a few questions to help us direct the completion of the project!

With many thanks,

John E. Dooley
Vice President for Outreach and International Affairs

The Hokie Spirit Garden Trail has been approved by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors as a university-wide project linking current and future gardens on the campus through the establishment of bicycle and walking trails that allow for easy access to the outdoors by all members of the campus and extended community of Virginia Tech. The goal is to establish the campus as a setting for understanding the human-nature relationship through experience.

The Hokie Spirit Garden Trail is rooted in the belief that daily exposure to the natural world is essential for maximizing the well being of body, mind, and social interaction. The design of the gardens and its connecting trails fosters this well being by creating multiple themed outdoor learning venues that are integrated with the campus' built environment. The garden venues will enrich and enlarge the learning and discoveries that occur in traditional classrooms and laboratories by providing opportunities for discipline-based inquiry within a variety of natural settings.

The four-fold mission of the Hokie Spirit Garden Trail is to:

1) Provide well-designed and thoughtfully cultivated outdoor learning venues for the purpose of experience-based teaching and research.

2) Provide outdoor locales for outreach and engagement with professionals.

3) Strengthen university-community relations through the cultivation of outdoor public space.

4) Increase opportunities for individuals to engage with nature and healthful exercise.

Involvement with the Hokie Spirit Garden Trail may occur through case study projects, service-learning, VT Engage volunteerism, internships, and field based research. In every instance, the Hokie Spirit Garden Trail will advance our collective understanding of the critical importance of nature in an increasingly urbanized world.

To identify training and resource needs of potential Hokie Spirit Garden Trail users as well as to identify needs that can be met through proper garden trail design, the Education Subcommittee is conducting a survey of campus users to gauge knowledge and use of outdoor spaces in teaching, research, and outreach.

We ask for assistance with this project by taking 10 to 15 minutes to complete the survey, which will be available online until October 2, 2009. Your responses to the survey are confidential and will only be reported in aggregate format.

Please click the following link (or paste the address in your browser):

Faculty survey link:
https://survey.vt.edu/survey/entry.jsp?id=1251327268149

Staff survey link:
https://survey.vt.edu/survey/entry.jsp?id=1251327786528

If you have any questions or encounter any technical issues in completing the survey, please email sears@vt.edu for assistance.

Thank you in advance for your help.

John Dooley, Vice President for Outreach and International Affairs
Jerzy Nowak, Director, Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention
Diane Relf, Professor Emeritus, Department of Horticulture
Michele James-Deramo, Service Learning Center Eric Kaufman, Assistant Professor, Agriculture and Extension Education

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