Scholarship Committee ---Hull Award Nominees Needed

The Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award---Established 1992 to recognize

outstanding contributions to the early environmental education of children

The Scholarship Committee is looking for a few good women and/or men to propose as a candidate(s) for the Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award.

The Hull Award “recognizes an individual who, through working with children under 16 years of age in horticulture and the environment, has inspired their appreciation of the beauty and fragility of our planet.”

The GCA offers the award, as part of its Scholarship program. Candidates are proposed by a GCA club or a GCA member. The GCA Scholarship Committee screens the candidates and selects the award recipient(s). The amount of the award is $1,000.

Recent award recipients include:

• a School Outreach and Overnight Coordinator with Delaware Nature Society who established nature camps for children

• a teacher at an elementary school in Newark, NJ, whose students under her direction have claimed abandoned tree wells and barrels to create urban gardens

• a biological illustrator, graphic designer, science educator and author of children’s books, who developed the Black Kettle Nature Trail and Educational Program, which, in the last three years, has brought more than 1,000 students to the site for educational field days.

The Scholarship Committee and our Board strongly believe that there are many individuals in our community who have provided equally outstanding environmental education for our children, who would be more than worthy of this award and who should be so recognized.

The Scholarship Committee wants your participation by helping to identify potential candidates. If you are aware of such an educator, please contact the committee chair, Vickie DiSesa (v.disesa@sbcglobal.net) with the name of the individual and brief description of his/her work in furthering the environmental education of youth.

The Scholarship Committee will be expanding its membership for this purpose, in particular to assist in identifying and developing a short list of candidates, in proposing a candidate(s) and preparing the Hull Award application. If you wish to join the Committee for this very exciting (and limited) undertaking, please let the committee chair know. We look forward to your involvement.