Center for Urban Ecology receives much needed grant
Friday, April 25, 2008, 11:48 EST
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More than 400 participants and 50 teams gathered at the Butler University Health and Recreation Complex April 18-19 to raise money for the American Cancer Society.
This was the fifth year for Relay For Life on campus, and the Monopoly theme filled the gyms with banners proclaiming, "Don't Let Cancer Gain a Monopoly." The average college student has to juggle a lot. What with academics, extracurricular activities and social functions -- it can be difficult to balance all those things and stay healthy at the same time.
The various health and fitness services at Butler University, which include the Health Center, the Counseling & Consultation Center and the Recreation Center and Peers Advocating Wellness for Students (PAWS); all have one thing in mind: to educate Butler students about ways to maintain a balanced and healthy lifestyle. Everyone knows someone who has been affected by cancer in some way during their lifetime, whether it is a friend or a family member. On April 25, the women of the sorority Delta Delta Delta hosted their annual Tri-Deltathon on Schwitzer lawn. The key to life is doing everything from passion, Brent Scarpo told a group of students in the Reilly Room on Sunday afternoon.
The casting producer who has worked on such films as “The Shawshank Redemption”, “That Thing You Do” and “Air Force One” spoke to Butler students as part of a kick-off to the annual Greek Week. Recently elected SGA president Ryan Waggoner for the 2008-09 school year now has his official executive board for the next school year.
Also at the last SGA meeting of the year, the assembly approved three grants and a new student organization Thanks to a $25 million grant, the Butler University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (COPHS) will be starting construction on a new building. According to Butler's vice president of operations, Michael Gardner, the grant came from the Lilly Endowment. The construction will start with a groundbreaking in May and is projected to be ready for classes by the fall of 2009. On April 18, the 20th annual Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) allowed college students from across the country to share their research findings on a wide variety of topics at Butler University.
This year’s conference theme was “20 Years of Bright Ideas.” The conference, which was held all day, was the largest yet with 484 presentations of posters and papers. Each presentation lasted about 15 minutes, and the research topics ranged from pharmacy and literature to Spanish and education. As the 2007-08 school year is winding down, unusual incidences have been occurring more around campus. Two residence halls and the Apartment Village experienced acts of burglary and trespassing over the past week.
An all-campus e-mail was sent out by the Butler University Police Department (BUPD) last Thursday informing the Butler community that “on Wednesday, April 16 at approximately 5:30 p.m., two men were arrested [for Residential Entry] at the Apartment Village after entering student apartments without permission.” Dear Butler Community,
We are pleased to let you know that Stephen Trent, who was reported missing last week, has been found safe. He is at home with family at this time.
Thank you for your concern about Stephen’s safety and well-being.
Sincerely,
Student Affairs
The center received a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust Fund. The niece of the late Nina Pulliam and trustee on the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust Board, Carol Peden Schilling thought Butler’s Center for Urban Ecology was a perfect fit for the grant.
“Throughout her life, Nina was particularly interested in wildlife, their habitats and educational programs that helped to assure both,” Schilling said in a press release. The grant was awarded after a group of Butler faculty members involved with the center, wrote a proposal.
One of the main focuses of the grant is to make sure plants and animals are protected, which goes right along with the goals of Butler’s Center for Urban Ecology. Director of Butler’s Friesner Herbarium and one of the faculty members involved with the center, Rebecca Dolan, said “Our goal is to learn more about plants and animals in an urban setting and preserving them.”
Friesner Herbarium is part of the department of biology and according to the Web site, is “a systematic collection of nearly 100,000 dried, pressed and preserved plant specimens.”
Butler's Center for Urban Ecology started in the year 2007, but ideas for the center were generated about four years ago by faculty members. It is now run by interested students and the faculty members responsible for getting the ideas into place. The center has been running on a limited budget and has been staffed by people who are keeping the center going alongside other jobs.
Without the grant, the center has been able to do quite a bit though. Associate professor of biological sciences, Dr. Carmen Salsbury said the center has become involved in water-quality monitoring with the Hoosier River Watch Project and has even organized a biannual river clean-up day. The center also pairs students and community partners together to conduct research and create hands-on learning experiences.
Butler’s Center for Urban Ecology holds a brown-bag lunch every week with new community organizations specializing or having interests in urban ecology to speak with students about jobs or research and volunteer opportunities too. The grant will allow Butler’s Center for Urban Ecology to do this and more.
The center will be able to place students with local non-for-profit groups around Indianapolis that participate in conservation efforts. The $100,000 grant will also allow Butler to offer a new biology course as well as improve and expand the new Shortridge Magnet High School’s environmental education programs. The grant will let the Center for Urban Ecology pick a project manager too, who will oversee the student activities and manage the research activities at the center.
Salsbury believes the Center for Urban Ecology stands for an important part of the quality of everyone’s life on earth. “It is a given that we as humans must live in the natural world, and the more we know about our impacts on the natural world and how it works the better stewards we will be and the better chance that we will have a world worth living in.”