Professor Jason Burton’s Outdoor Recreation class hosted the first annual University of the Parks Expo at Southern Utah University on Wednesday, Feb. 26.
The event was a way for students, faculty and community members to come together and celebrate SUU as the University of the Parks, a designation SUU has held since 2016 in recognition of its proximity to renowned regional national parks and monuments and its outstanding outdoor curriculums and programming.
Held in the Sharwan Smith Student Center’s Ballroom, the expo featured many ways for guests to mix and mingle celebrating the outdoors, including a slackline, s’mores bars to eat, and a fun challenge where students could win tickets to raffle for camping equipment by counting how many informational booths they visited at the event.
All attendees were invited to vote for their favorites in a photo contest. Students throughout campus had submitted their photos the week before to be printed and judged by their peers, following the theme of “human-nature connection.”
Burton’s class planned the expo with the goal of bringing more awareness to SUU’s current outdoors-related resources and the outdoor activities available locally. Representatives from a few of Southern Utah’s national parks and monuments were in attendance, and professors and park rangers gave presentations about local natural resources.
Also in attendance were SUU clubs, including the Sustainability Club and Outdoor Recreation Club, as well as state-wide organizations such as Protect Wild Utah who were looking for future advocates and employees. SUU’s Intergovernmental Internship Cooperative (IIC) also had a booth, helping students find internship and career opportunities in public lands.
Cassidy Magda, an SUU student who attended the expo, said that she came because she is always looking for volunteer opportunities to take part in. “I love how our university is so involved in the community with so many different programs,” she said.
Burton shares that the idea for the event was led by students in his ORPT 4740 Organization and Administration for Outdoor Recreation class. They were inspired by meeting with University of the Parks committee members.
Because changes in leadership and challenging circumstances had caused SUU to end some of its University of the Parks programming, such as Semester in the Parks a few years ago, these students saw a need to bring back awareness of the University of the Parks brand, building more connections on campus and increasing the opportunities that students have to develop themselves outdoors.
“I hope my students feel a sense of satisfaction in the work they did,” said Burton, “because it has been a ton of work to get us to this point. And secondly, I hope it gives them confidence going forward to know that even when there are a lot of unknowns and they’ve never done something before they have the capability of figuring stuff out. I hope it helps with career ambitions but even more than that just the confidence in themselves.”
According to the students, who take great pride in the events they have created, this approach has been successful.
“It was a little overwhelming just because there were so many little questions you don’t even think about until you go to start doing it,” said K.K. Hawes, one of the students in Burton’s class. “And then there was a lot of coordinating with all the different groups.”
“It’s definitely been a lot of chaos and scrambling, but in the end it all came together,” said Brinley Thiriot, another student involved in planning the event. “I think this event turned out so good, and it’s been so much fun to be a part of it.”
Author and Photographer: Emily Walters
Editor: Chevy Blackburn
outdoors@suunews.net
