Fair weather boosts volunteer beautification effort
UMKC faculty and staff traded in their offices and classrooms for the great outdoors – painting, picking weeds and generally giving the Volker and Hospital Hill campuses a makeover.
The latest Faculty-Staff Service Day was held Sept. 25, in anticipation of visitors during the Founders Week celebration beginning Sept. 28.
The day started at Volker with an 8 a.m. check-in for the first 2-hour shift. Hospital Hill projects began at 1 p.m. The start was cool and overcast on the Volker quad; but volunteers sporting sunscreen and t-shirts were expecting plenty of heat before the day was through.
Campus Facilities Management teams kept volunteers supplied with paint and paintbrushes, shovels, sandpaper, rakes, trash bags and gloves. Because the clean-up is campus-wide and sanctioned, participants count their volunteer shift as regular time worked.
A Parking Operations team, Matt Bunch and Michelle Cone, really got into their painting project. Chandra Blackwell, Brian Bustos and Kristen Abell, Strategic Marketing and Communications, pulled weeds and picked up trash around the Student Union. A year’s worth of construction barriers and site work had halted much routine maintenance, so there was plenty to do.
“It was great, working with everybody to make the campus look its best,” Abell said.
If your cats show a sudden interest in the 4th floor of the Student Union, that would be the work of Karen King, School of Education, and Mary Cleveland and Eddie Wells, Campus Facilities Management. Along with other “drought-quality” plants, they set out lots and lots of catnip in the roof garden.
Murray Blackwelder, President of the UMKC Foundation, welcomed the volunteers and spoke of his appreciation for the turnout.
“The people who work at UMKC believe in what they are doing and where the university is going. I can’t thank them enough.”
Photo Credit: Janet Rogers, Division of Strategic Marketing and Communications.