Future Students | Current Students | Alumni | Friends | A-Z Index

Road trip for a good cause

MU students volunteered to get their hands dirty in Arizona with the Student Conservation Association

Scenic photo courtesy of Meagan Johnson.

Scotch thistle, horehound and diffuse knapweed aren't high on the priority list for most collegiate spring breakers. However, a group of University of Missouri students volunteered the last full week of March to get their hands dirty in Arizona with the Student Conservation Association and those plants.

Jerolyn Byrne, Megan Johnson, and Ben Moore added about 3,000 miles to the odometer of a white Honda Accord while road tripping to the Grand Canyon for the 2009 SCA Alternative Spring Break.

The SCA is a volunteer organization with the mission of placing young adults in parks and other outdoor areas in service positions. This is the 22nd year for the program, which operates throughout the United States and internationally.

During the two-week program in Arizona, two teams removed nearly 13,000 invasive, non-native plants from the south rim of the Grand Canyon during 1800 volunteer hours. More than 1000 native plants were also salvaged from parking lot, road and trail areas and placed in a temporary nursery for transplantation in the future. The students from MU joined roughly thirty others for the second week of the program.

No longer strangers after 48 hours in a white Accord with one missing hubcap

When committing to the spring break trip, the four were virtually strangers, they agreed. However, nearly forty-eight hours together in the white Accord with one missing hubcap and a week of living together in the SCA 'tent city' changed that status quickly.

"We all met in the reading room randomly," Johnson said, "we were just looking up routes on the computer." The decision to travel together was made easier because only one of them, Byrne, had a car at the time, she added.

The students elected to participate in the alternative spring break program for equally individual reasons. Johnson was a volunteer with the program while in high school and was looking for different ways to be involved, while Byrne was attracted to the many opportunities for partnerships with government agencies and organizations.

Doing something positive

Moore had not planned to participate in a spring break program, he said. "I was originally looking through programs for a summer internship," he said, but seeing the alternative spring break options raised a new question: "Why not go somewhere cool and do something positive, rather than just being a tourist?"

In addition to removing invasive species and transplanting native plants, the students gained hands-on experience marking park boundary lines and navigating through a sandstorm. During free time they also hiked in the Grand Canyon and toured a nearby museum warehouse.

They also visited Great Sand Dunes National Park, Navaho National Monument and other attractions on the drive between Missouri and Arizona. The students plan to pursue summer internships in resource management and research, and agree that the alternative spring break program will be an asset for their respective futures.

Byrne is a senior studying forestry, from Coffeyville, Kan. Johnson is a sophomore from Greenfield, Mo., also studying forestry. Moore is a senior studying environmental science, and from Columbia, Mo.

A fourth student from the School of Natural Resources also participated in the program independently. Nora Schuh is a sophomore in forestry from Edwardsville, Ill.

Learn more

Student Conservation Association

Posted May 2009
Story Source: Christine Tew
Top feature mast photo shows student volunteers enjoying hiking through the Grand Canyon during free time. MU students Ben Moore (back row, center) and Jerolyn Byrne (back row, far right) participated in one of the longest hikes available, reaching the canyon floor before climbing back to the rim. Feature mast photo courtesy of SCA and Meagan Johnson.