Indiana is well known for its corn and soybean fields, but many students miss out on learning about those plants and the science behind our food system. Morgan Murff didn’t have any experience with botany until late in her high school career, where she was fortunate to find a mentor in her high school teacher Ann Marie Milligan, who is a Purdue alumna from the horticulture department.
“It was my senior year of high school, and it was the first time I had heard anything about plant science,” Murff, now a junior majoring in plant science and minoring in fermentation science, recalled. “I think the thing that really got me was the day we did spinach epidermal peels under the microscope. I saw stomata for the first time, and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
Milligan now works for the Indiana Department of Education, and she’s passed the torch of spreading the plant science gospel to former students like Murff. Murff has been helping design lesson plans that incorporate horticulture and botany into science classes at Lawrence North and Lawrence Central High Schools in Indianapolis. She’s working with high school teachers to teach them labs that she loves, including spinach epidermal peels and others she’s learned as a botany student and teaching assistant at Purdue.
Murff said she started this outreach because: “I want to make sure that the opportunity is provided for all students to explore botany, plant science and agriculture, and also to give them some confidence. One of the reasons I love outreach is because I get to see that same excitement that I had, even in people who don't necessarily want to be botanists. It's just exciting and cool to look at what plants look like on the inside, and I think that it brings a lot of joy to people's hearts.”
Source: purdue.edu
Photo Credit: istock-pkujiahe
Categories: Indiana, Education