Trailblazing comes naturally to Claire Kiernan ’24. As a Rhodes Student Government (RSG) senator and vice president, she organized community voter drives, acquired funding for new outdoor furniture, reformed Senate function, and helped lead the ongoing charge for a new student center. Now, as the first female student body president in nearly a decade, Kiernan’s newest initiative involves blazing a literal trail: a path along and within the campus fence line, complete with signs marking little-known places of interest. The 1.7-mile-long trail, aimed to promote the exploration of the college’s less-popular areas, is now complete.
“It helped me clear my head,” Kiernan said of a fateful and impromptu walk she took around the campus during last year’s tense exam season. After starting in the first-year parking lot and drifting behind the field hockey and softball fields, the then-junior recognized the restorative beauty of the campus’s undeveloped northwest corner for the first time. Inspired by the fruit trees, home-run balls, and sheds full of beekeeping equipment, Kiernan resolved to circumnavigate the campus. Her trek around the soccer fields, Fisher Garden, and East Village led her to a simple conclusion: that other students would benefit from a marked version of the walk.
The trail, a culmination of Kiernan’s months-long collaboration with Physical Plant, the President’s Office, and even the Rhodes Football Team, begins at the entrance to Fisher Garden, marked by a cedar post with a QR code that links to the trail map. Eight other posts spread along the trail will mark its path, replacing costly paving materials like concrete or gravel. Such a low-cost and low-upkeep design will, Kiernan hopes, “preserve the idea that you’re in nature” while allowing for future furnishings like benches and swings.
Kiernan’s trail stands to help Rhodes capitalize not only on its undeveloped space, but also its impressive variety of trees. A decades-long project to diversify the college’s flora seemingly culminated in 2011, when the campus became one of only four Class IV Arboretums in the state of Tennessee. According to a pamphlet for the Rhodes College Arboretum, the campus boasts “over 120 tree species and more than 1,500 individual trees,” meeting the state’s strict standards for classification. Nearly 20 of those species, though, are planted on the remote outskirts of campus, outside of the arboretum’s six main areas and rarely accessed by tour groups. A new trail will enable and encourage pilgrimages to the star magnolias, pondcypresses, and black cherries dotting the school’s far edges.
Kiernan credits Brian Foshee, Rhodes’s longtime physical plant director, as an invaluable contributor to the project and real champion of its progress. The trail’s grand opening aligned with Foshee’s March 1st retirement.
Kiernan envisions a campus made more cohesive by this project—a more-engaged student body touring the rare trees on campus, picnicking on the grass, or simply walking to clear their head, just as she did last year. “My whole goal as a leader on campus has been to foster connections,” Kiernan said. “I really just hope the trail allows students to connect with each other, with themselves, with nature, and with Rhodes in a deeper way.”
By Ben Reynolds '24
