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On December 9, 1970, the groundbreaking for the Richard Stockton State College campus in Galloway, New Jersey, was marked with the planting of a small cedar sapling, which had been rescued from the nearby soon-to-be construction site of A, B, C and D-Wings. Formerly used for recreation, agriculture, milling and hunting, the site selected for the new college was on 1,585 acres of pinelands forest in South Jersey.

Trees have long featured prominently in Stockton’s iconography. They were present in abstract form in the original college logo, and were reprised recently with an arch, “which offers a sense of motion, connecting Stockton’s past with the University’s bold focus on the future.” They also appear in the same stylized form in the front porticos of both the Campus Center in Galloway and the John F. Scarpa Academic Center in Atlantic City. Perhaps the best-known association of the University with trees, however, is one of its earliest mottos, which encourages students to “plant yourself where you will grow.”

The tree planted at the groundbreaking flourished along with the College - now University - and was the site of a new “Winter Tree-dition” celebration of speeches, music and dance to commemorate Stockton’s 50th anniversary in December 2021. A plaque installed at that location notes that: “this mature cedar denotes Stockton’s enduring concern for the environment; its growth alongside that of the campus is a reminder of Stockton’s vibrancy.”