The Environmental Club recently received a grant for $2,200 from Progressive Insurance to fund materials needed for monitoring systems to build a garden in the senior courtyard.

Corey Rice is the faculty adviser for the Environmental Club and is proud to announce his plans. He said, “We ended up putting together this idea where they’d build an environmental monitoring system, where they could put it out there and it would digitally record what’s going on so that we better know of what kinds of plants we could grow to make it into a living lab.”

The environmental sensing systems will monitor the different conditions outside to help the club have a sense of what can be grown.

The senior courtyard will be renovated to turn their idea of a living lab into a reality. Alan Trester is the Vice President of the club and believes that this project will put the space into good use.

He said, “Environmental sensing systems would help us out in the science wing courtyard, that hasn’t really been used for anything. We wanted to put in a native garden that could be used as a living laboratory for biology classes and just a pretty place for people to hang out.”

The garden grown would enhance science programs and be used for educational purposes.  Rotem Avisar is the President of the Environmental Club and is working towards being able to help students learn from the project.

“Instead of learning about Mendel’s experiment with peas, the biology students could actually replicate them which would be really cool,” Avisar said. With the use of a garden, a hands-on experience can be used to help educate students, instead of simply reading out of a textbook.

The construction of a school garden would benefit the school in ways other than for educational experiences. The students involved will work towards making the school more environmentally friendly. “It would give us more of a sense of being green at our school,” Avisar said.

This project will be a first for Mayfield High School. “It would be an interesting thing to do in our school that not a lot of other schools are doing,” said Avisar.

Additionally, Avisar said, “We could potentionally grow herbs, vegetables and fruits that we could use in our lunch rooms and cafeteria which could really improve the Mayfield experience.” The growth of the garden would provide a greater variety of fresh produce for students.

The money was a one-time donation to the high school and is mostly going to be used for buying enough equipment. Rice said, “We went to Progressive and asked for it, and they really liked the idea so they gave it to us.”

“We went over there [Progressive Insurance] and talked to a couple of people over there and they asked us to send the list of all the materials we need to make this happen,” Avisar said. The generosity from Progressive Insurance will allow the club to be successful in purchasing electronic parts to build the sensing systems.

“In the long run, we’re going to use the money to really begin renovating the courtyard into something useable instead of something that’s just boring,” Trester said. This project will showcase the club’s ability to get students more involved in turning underutlized space into something that benefits the school.