06 THE KNOW
Dave Emley:
A lifetime of
dedication
M
any people at Keele will be familiar
with Dave Emley’s passion for
biodiversity and sustainability, but
despite retiring from the University in 2016,
did you know that Dave still holds guided
walks for staff and students around campus?
Kirstie Dolphin from the communications
team joined Dave on last month’s guided
walk to find out more about his 43 years
at Keele University, and his British Empire
Medal which was awarded in the recent New
Year’s Honours.
Dave joined Keele in 1973 as a Geology
Technician in the then Department of
Geology, now the School of Geography,
Geology and the Environment, and his
passion for biodiversity and higher education
developed during his career at the University.
In 2000, after two decades of working
at Keele, Dave volunteered to help turn
the Keele campus into an arboretum.
Dave, almost single-handedly, labelled
and catalogued 3,385 trees, with GPS
coordinates being provided by contractors
later. This database of tree information
has underpinned student practical classes,
academic research projects and outreach
activities across the institution since.
But Dave didn’t rest there. To support the
arboretum, he created a series of woodland
walks around the campus, and designed
and built a website for the collection that lists
and maps all the trees, as well as including
more general background on the flora and
fauna on campus.
During the walk Dave explained what inspired
him to create the arboretum.
“During a meeting back in 2000, an idea
came up about using our campus and
environment more, and we hit upon the idea
of creating an arboretum. We had so many
trees here already to make an arboretum, but
we wanted to make it more meaningful, so we
labelled the trees and created guided walks
to tell the public and students what kind of
trees they were walking past.