Bloomington High School North, Nikean, 2010, Page 99

Description:	Senior Zoe Withered measures the liquid levelof water using a syringe during EnvironmentalScience. I love the class because everything youlearn is relative to our world, Withered said.Photo by Jad LabbanDuring Biology II, junior Hannah Helton observesa slide of an onion root tip. My favorite part ofthe class is participating in the cool experiments,still have the one where we took amino acids andturned them into a tube of silicon, Helton said.Photo by Jad LabbanThe Nature Center is slowlyfalling into the holds of invasive species due to the lackof caretakers for the facility.This year, Scott Stephenson worked on grant proposals to sendoff, requesting money to pay for nativespecies to plant in place of the invasivespecies, but the project as a whole didnot make much progress.However, during Stephensons research work in the fall, his Environmental Science course and club studentsmade great headway towards eradicating many of the killer plants.They did so by handpicking suchorganisms like the Asian Bush Honeysuckle or Garlic Mustard.Different types of invasive specieshave reproduced rapidly with little to nopredators and have taken over the livingspace of Indianas native species.The grant is to pay for native speciesto plant in place of the invasive, whichwill hopefully increase the biodiversityof the Nature Center and have it moreclosely reflect naturally native Indianawoods, Stephenson said.Over the course of the school year, hecontinually searched for grants that metthe criteria for the needs of the NatureCenter. This work mainly consisted offilling out forms.Stephenson worries that he will nothave enough students to aid in the process of further improvement.If I go too big, it might fail. You haveto pick and choose what will accomplishwhat you want, he said.Stephenson, along with other students, is interested in making improvements to the Nature Center because itis used in both the Biology and Environmental Science classes for experiments.Its our outdoor lab. Not many highschools have such a facility, Stephenson said.He is seeking to improve the facility notonly for the benefit of his own classes,but for others, too.We aim to get it in peak shape sothat other classes can use it as well. Forexample, English classes used to use itto be inspired to write poetry, Stephenson said.Stephenson will wait until the summerto pick the project back up for next fall.IBy Caitlin Strobel
Source:	http://cdm17129.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/hs-bloomnorth/id/6321
Collection:	Bloomington High School North

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