Karen Rollet-Crocker ’66 has been a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville for more than 20 years. The Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association was founded in part by Rollet-Crocker, and she has been active in developing the Peel Mansion Museum and Garden and the Compton Gardens. Rollet-Crocker has been a notable contributor to her community, and early this year, she was given the opportunity to reach out beyond her community.
This past April, she and her husband, Dr. Thermon Crocker, volunteered in the war-torn village of Royesville, Liberia. They worked aboard the largest privately owned hospital ship in the world. The couple spent a month aboard a Mercy Ship, a global charitable organization that provides health care to people in 95 ports in 53 developing nations.
While her husband performed surgeries aboard the ship, Rollet-Crocker dedicated her time to rebuilding Royesville, which has been devastated by rebels during the war. She spent her mornings with the village children and worked on community-planning skills. “Some of the kids really had an aptitude for it,” Rollet-Crocker commented. “It was fun to watch them get the hang of it.”
In the afternoons, Rollet-Crocker worked closely with a community development team—refugees who came home to rebuild Royesville and nearby villages. “They are currently rebuilding the school,” Rollet-Crocker said, and since the school serves as an anchor for village life, she focused her planning efforts there. She has been instrumental in the planting of trees in front of the school, creating a shaded spot for town meetings and gatherings. “We wanted to draw on the culture of the community to develop our plan, and it is part of their culture to meet under trees,” she said.
Rollet-Crocker also attended village meetings that focused on raising awareness of environmental issues such as the preservation of trees and natural resources. She taught the students of the village’s environmental club how to document and conserve valuable plants and make maps. The environmental club has begun to implement her plan of planting trees and clearing space for a village play area.
Currently collecting books for the Royesville school, Rollet-Crocker hopes to return to Liberia next spring. Frances Beatty, head of the landscape architecture department at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, commented: “Karen Rollet-Crocker has a long record of community service here in northwest Arkansas. We’re proud to see her extending her planning and educational expertise to the global community.”