By: Erik Pedersen, Content Strategy Director
BALTIMORE – Notre Dame of Maryland University was recently awarded a $76,796 state grant to support the planting of 183 new trees on the University’s campus in northern Baltimore.
The funding was provided through The Chesapeake Bay Trust’s Urban Trees Grant Program, which was called for by the Maryland General Assembly as a component of the State’s 5,000,000-tree goal by 2031. The goal of the Urban Trees Grant Program is to green communities; enhance quality of life, human health, and community livability by improving air quality, and reducing urban heat island effect; and mitigating some of the effects of climate change.
Students, faculty, and staff will plant the new trees during Community Day 2024 on Thursday, October 17. The project demonstrates Notre Dame’s continuing commitment to sustainability as a Laudato Si’ University. NDMU is one of over 100 Catholic colleges and universities around the world to adopt the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, an initiative of the Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, to create a better future for the planet and humanity, as part of Pope Francis’s 7-Year Journey Towards Integral Ecology.
NDMU is located on a beautiful 58-acre wooded campus in the northern Baltimore residential neighborhood of Homeland. Improving tree quantity and quality in urban areas is a cost-effective way to improve the health of local waterways, strengthen the health of the Chesapeake Bay, and provide urban wildlife habitat.
Established in 1895, Notre Dame of Maryland University (NDMU) is a private, Catholic institution in Baltimore, Maryland, with the mission to educate leaders to transform the world. Notre Dame has been named one of the best "Regional Universities North" by U.S. News & World Report.
Julia Campagna, director of mission and ministry at NDMU, discusses both the history of All Saints' Day and how the holiday is recognized on campus in this USA TODAY feature article.
