Scholarship Winners

KINDLE LOOMIS

winner of the

2011

GARDEN CLUB FEDERATION OF MAINE HORTICULTURE SCHOLARSHIP

and a

NATIONAL GARDEN CLUBS SCHOLARSHIP

Kindle Loomis will be a 4th year BSc student in September 2011 at the Rubinstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont in Burlington, VT.  She is majoring in Natural Resource Planning with a focus on the important emergent field of Human and Environmental Health, and she is minoring in Community International Development.  These interests have led her to take courses such as agricultural ethics, human health and gardening practices, and most recently, a service-learning class, which culminated in travel to Honduras in May 2011.  During her time in Honduras, she worked to continue developing a school garden project begun three years ago by former students and to educate local children on a broad array of integrated topics, including nutrition, water systems, sustainable gardening practices and watershed management. 

After returning from her service-learning trip, Kindle headed off to Alaska for a one-month research position with the Department of Fisheries, but later during the summer of 2011 she will be working with a Burlington organization, New Farms for New Americans.   New Farms teaches refugees, who have resettled in the Burlington community, gardening skills as a means of income generation.  Volunteers work side by side with refugee women on the farm; and, after harvests, volunteers assist women in selling the produce at farmers’ markets.  The project ensures women can support themselves, while also cultivating community amongst themselves, and a connection with the greater community. 

In her application Kindle noted that it is “uplifting and inspirational ideals and projects” such as these which “truly motivate me in continuing my course of study.”  For her future career path she sees herself potentially working in any one of a number of areas from teaching garden education to elementary school students, to becoming a national park manager in Denali National Park, to working for a non-profit in Haitian relief work.  She is enthusiastic about the wide range of job opportunities for which her major will qualify her and committed to the common philosophical thread which connects them--”working with others for the betterment of human society and the environment in which we live.”

The daughter of Kate Unkel, Kindle calls East Blue Hill, Maine home and has in the past honed her gardening skills working for Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman at Four Season Farm in Harborside.

2010 Recipient Luka Negoita

COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC STUDENT WINS MAJOR NATIONAL AND STATE AWARDS

Luka Negoita from Bar Harbor, a 4th year College of the Atlantic student, has been named as the 2010-2011 winner of the Garden Club Federation of Maine Horticulture Scholarship, as well as a National Garden Clubs Scholarship and the Nell Goff Scholarship from the St. Croix District of the GCFM. 

Luka was chosen out of a number of very strong applications from across the state because his interests and credentials matched the scholarship requirements so well.  He has been preparing for a career in botany for some time.  While a high school student he undertook independent study in plant taxonomy and wrote a field guide and key to plants on the high school campus.  This Fall Luka Negoita will be entering his fourth year of an undergraduate program in human ecology and botany at the COA.  He has taken courses such as plant taxonomy, field ecology and data analysis, climate science, ornithology, evolution, conservation biology, ecology, plant systematics, and museum studies practica as well as painting and drawing and creative writing. 

Beyond his courses, however, Luka has pursued his passion for plants by working in the College Herbarium and the Dorr Museum of Natural History, joining the Josselyn Botanical Society (and attending meetings courtesy of student scholarships), and founding a botany club at COA.  He has participated in the Vermont Wilderness School, taught as an instructor in the Tropical Reforestation & Ecosystems Education program in Kona, HI, and last summer he interned with the Missouri Ozark Forest Ecosystem Project managed by the Missouri Department of Conservation and worked on a 12 person team charged with sampling vegetation across the Ozark Mountains.  This past June he participated in a class trip to Costa Rica where he learned about ecology and land management in that country. 

It is not surprising that in the spring of 2009 he was awarded the Craig Greene Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Botany at COA.

From an initial interest in how humans use plants for food or medicine, Luka has developed a passion for natural history and a fascinating senior project which began this summer when he worked as a research assistant for Dr. Nishanta Rajakaruna.  He conducted a study of the natural history of Little Duck Island, a botanically unexplored 80-acre island 8 miles south of Mount Desert Island.  He has taken an inventory of the flora of the island to better understand Maine island habitats and their role in rare plant conservation.  Given the fact that this is one of the few medium-sized islands on the mid-coast of Maine that apparently does not have a history of human habitation--and that it is important as the nesting grounds for a large colony of seabirds--his study has the potential to provide important information for conservation and management efforts on this and other islands in the area. 

Luka’s longer term goal is to go on to graduate work in botany and to undertake “research that will protect the quality of the environment and teach others about the values of plant conservation.” 

Luka Negoita doing field reasearch on Little Duck Island

AN UPDATE FROM LUKA NEGOITA, OUR 2010-2011 GCFM HORTICULTURE SCHOLARSHIP and NGC SCHOLARSHIP WINNER

One of the many benefits of scholarships offered by the GCFM and the NGC is that they enable bright and highly motivated students to focus on their area of interest without having to invest so much time and anxiety in finding other ways to finance their education.  When Luka Negoita applied for his scholarship he was preparing to do a survey of plants on Little Duck Island, a botanically unexplored 80-acre island 8 miles south of Mount Desert Island.  Given the fact that this is one of the few medium-sized islands on the mid-coast of Maine that apparently does not have a history of human habitation--and that it is important as the nesting grounds for a large colony of seabirds--the scholarship committee realized that Luka’s study had the potential to provide important information for conservation and management efforts on this and other islands in the area.  Here is his most recent update on his progress with that project:

Dear Mary,

      I have said to many that this summer is worth a book--both in

terms of how much happened, as well as the quality of the experience. I

was very lucky to have the opportunity to spend most of it living on

Little Duck or Great Duck Island. I helped out with seabird research

while on Great Duck in exchange for my stay. On Little Duck, fellow

student Matthew Dickinson helped me conduct a survey of vegetation on

the island. We collected over 200 plant specimens—concluding in a

tentative list of approximately 150 species belonging to at least 42

families. We also measured the percent cover of every species of

vascular plant in 67 2m x 10m plots across the island. We collected soil

samples from each plot that later were tested for mineral content. On

top of that we took many notes on general natural history observations

such as the birds of the island. It was a very productive summer.

Thankfully the costs for equipment and food were covered by grants from

the Garden Club of America and Maine Space Grant Consortium.

     I've been back at school since the beginning of September. It has

been going really well, but of course very busy. I'm taking a class in

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) where I've been applying the data

from this summer to generate interesting maps of Little Duck Island in

hopes of better understanding its ecology. I am currently working on a

summary poster about all the data collected on LDI. I should be done

with it by the end of next Friday and will send it alone to you in case GCFM members are interested. I still have a lot to do with the data though. I

anticipate this project going into next summer, but don't know yet.

Senior year has been good so far and I look forward to the rest of it.

                                                                                             Luka