ASMSA was awarded a $4,500 grant for the school’s Butterfly Garden project from the Toshiba America Foundation.
The grant will help support the continued development of the pollinator garden being constructed by students and faculty members in front of the Student Center. The garden includes plants native to Arkansas and the United States that serves as a pollinator site for butterflies as well as an outdoor education space.
The garden project started with seed money Smithsonian Teen Earth Optimism project in Spring 2021 as well as from the Helen Selig Promise Kept Endowment in Fall 2021. Dr. Lindsey Waddell, a geoscience instructor at ASMSA who has worked with students on the project from its initial stages, said the grant was “an amazing surprise.”
“What is most exciting is that this has always been a student-driven effort,” Waddell said. “The garden project is so new that most of the plants have not actually been through a growing season yet. The students in the environmental science and botany courses have been watching, waiting and documenting the phenology of these native plants over the course of this spring.
“The Toshiba grant is going to allow us to take the garden to the next level with a new layout and the addition of numerous specimen plants. Plans include raised perennial beds, paths and a bench in the vicinity of the herb spiral built by the Research in the Park class last fall.”
Waddell said plans also include a mix of native shrubs, with which we plan to intersperse numerous dwarf yaupon holly. The yaupon holly is an evergreen that will offer some interest to the garden during the winter months. She said the yaupon is an interesting species that can be found natively in the local area.
“Yaupon holly has been in the local news lately with the announcement of a plan by Yaupon Brothers to start sustainably harvesting it for tea jus the north of ASMSA in the Northwoods Trail area,” she said.
Dr. Allyn Dodd, a biology instructor who also serves as adviser to the BoZo Club (botany and zoology), said the grant will be a huge boost for both the pollinator garden and outdoor education on campus.
“It has given the students an opportunity to dream big and reimagine the plots in a way that will be maintainable in the long-term while allowing us to add more native plants to attract wildlife,” Dodd said.
“The students are cultivating a living classroom for all sorts of courses across disciplines. Dr. Waddell and I already use it as a basis for projects for our classes. I am hopeful more folks will join us and become involved in the work of the garden. The students who have been working on it have been very dedicated, and Dr. Waddell has been an incredible facilitator to help bring them bring their vision to life.”
Toshiba America Foundation’s grants fund projects designed by individual classroom teachers that help bring immediate results. The grant supports both equipment for hands-on experiments and inquiry-based approaches to the curriculum. The goal of the grants is to help make STEM classrooms a more exciting place for both teachers and students.
“We are appreciative of the Toshiba America Foundation’s support for our STEM subject areas,” said Dr. Sara Brown, director of institutional advancement and the ASMSA Foundation. “These funds will allow our science program to purchase specialized equipment for the students. Providing a hands-on experience engages our students at a higher level and offers alternative methods of learning the material.”