MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Several teams within Middle Tennessee State University’s Facilities Servicesand Campus Planning departments put their creative juices to the test by participating in the recent “Helping Hands Holiday Tree Event.”

Five teams participated in designing and decorating a Christmas tree for the children at the Children’s Hospital at Tr-Star Centennial and the Ronald McDonald House and Charities of Nashville. 

The organizations provide treatment and care for children from newborn to teens, with their primary population being ages 3 to 12 years old. Event organizers said the purpose of the friendly competition was “to spread hope and joy during the holiday season when these children are unable to be home with the families.”

Participating teams were asked to create Christmas trees around themes inspired by children’s movies such as “Frozen,” “Moana,” “Minions” and others or around broader themes such as dinosaurs, “Star Wars,” superheroes, princesses, sports, etc.  

MTSU’s teams contributed the following (trees listed below are shown in the image above, from left to right):

• “Crafty Thursday Tree” featuring a baseball theme created by members of Facilities Services, Work Orders, Engineering Services and Energy Services, with MT Baseball donating the hat topper for the tree. 

•  Civil Engineering and Environmental Services tree, featuring a more traditional Santa’s elves’ theme, created by Cynthia Allen, Amanda Rogers and Katherine Antone.

• “Moana” tree created by Campus Planning and Kristin England from Engineering Services.

• Beach tree created by Construction Renovation and Maria Knox from the Provost’s Office.

• “My Little Pony” created by Amanda Witt from the Construction Renovation, and her daughter, Evelyn Jane.

Prizes to be awarded included the People’s Designer’s Choice (top three), Charities’ Choice (top three), and the Warriors’ Choice. Winners would be allowed to have two members of their team deliver the trees to the hospital.

“I would like to thank each of the teams that participated with us this year,” said Witt, project manager in Construction Renovation. “This is truly a blessing for not only us as the creators of the trees, but also the children and families that get to have one during the holidays.”

Sponsor for the event was J+J Flooring along with several other supporting co-sponsors.

“This is an outreach that one of our carpet vendors (J&J Flooring) do within their company. Their local sales representative, Caryn Kirkland, mentioned it to us several years ago and we have been doing this ever since. It is like a Construction Renovation Christmas tradition now, along with our Little Raiders (campaign sponsorship).”

— Jimmy Hart (Jimmy.Hart@mtsu.edu)