Ginny’s Garden Dedication
Remarks by Ryan W. McEwan, PhD.
Professor and Schuellein Chair in Biology
September 29, 2023
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Hello Everyone,
Its an honor and pleasure to be asked to offer a few remarks at the formal opening of this excellent facility. I will divide my comments into three general areas: Gratitude, Centering and Aspiration.
First, I want to express my general gratitude for everyone involved in making this dream become a physical reality. It has been a long journey, by my count, it’s been around 7 years from the initiation of discussions up to today, when we have this lovely, operational, greenhouse. During this time there have been a lot of challenges that we had to overcome including a spike in pressure for greenhouse manufacturing due to medical marijuana becoming legal in Ohio…which actually drove costs up significantly, and, of course, the emergence of COVID-19 which was an existential threat to society in general and was a serious challenge to function here at UD including completing this project. I am grateful to so many people who helped us pull this project through to completion despite these challenges. I want to specifically call out Jen Foster, who I have found to be an inspirational person to work with and who helped us in many ways. Also, our Dean Danielle Poe who prioritized “punching” this project through to completion when she was, surely, flooded with work starting her new position as we came out of COVID. Thanks also to Chelse Prather who has done a great job the last couple of years keeping communication flowing and advocating for the project. And, most importantly, thanks to Rick and the Borth Family for staying patient and eager as we worked through many issues. In a conversation with Rick a while back he mentioned something along the lines that when he was working a “major project” would be completed in a matter of weeks, and so this was a long haul, and I am really grateful for the support overall, and the patience you had in allowing this to come through to completion.
I want to now center our thoughts a bit on what I feel is overarching mission of Ginny’s Garden Greenhouse. Going back to our earliest conversations on this topic, how I have understood Rick’s vision for this facility was that the investment in the building, was really an investment in a bigger vision. Support for the creation of “Ginny’s Garden” was an investment in students. And, specifically, an investment in the transformational power of faculty-mentored experiential learning. In Biology, the research active faculty are inspired by the act of creating miniature communities of scholarship within their research lab. In this model, students who are just getting started in science, for example, as first or second year students, are often mentored not only by the Professor, but also by juniors or seniors in the lab. Additionally, all of these students are mentored by graduate students including TA-funded Masters and PhD students. When Eric Borth was in my lab, he was part of a broader community that included undergraduate students such as Sean Mahoney, Mitch Kukla, Taylor Sparbanie, and, of course, Meg Maloney, along with other undergraduate students. These students were mentored by graduate students including Julia Chapman, Rachel McNeish, and a post-doc named Kevin Custer. All of those individuals created a mentoring structure that was mutually supportive. Critically, this community had at its core, the pursuit of science. Chasing down answers to questions that literally have never been even asked before. Meg and Eric, as undergraduates in my lab, were leading experiments and we had no idea what the outcome would be because, literally, nobody had ever done these experiments before! A supportive mentoring mesh in which the defining mission is literally expanding the realm of human understanding… even in small ways… creates the potential for real, magical, transformation for students at UD. Facilitating that transformation is the most important thing we do, it’s our raison d’etre. It has always been my view that Ginny’s Garden Greenhouse is an investment in this vision, in this magic. The existence of this greenhouse will open new vistas of scientific research. It expands the realm of what is possible in faculty-mentored experiential learning.
With this vision clearly centered, and the building standing before us ready for action, we can now turn to our aspirations. One thing I learned from Rick is to always be thinking about what comes next. What are we going to grow in Ginny’s Garden Greenhouse? I think about some exciting plants we can grow, sure, but, centering on our mission, we are also going to grow student inspiration. We are going to grow student careers. We are going to grow student excitement, student confidence, student hearts. A couple of years ago we had already begun discussions with Rick about how to proceed down this pathway, and I am ready to move forward. As Schuellein Chair in Biology I have a modest budget to work with and today I am happy to announce that in 2024 I will be funding two internship opportunities that I will call the Ginny’s Greenhouse Interns. I will develop a call for applications and will ultimately fund a stipend and cover housing for summer of 2024 for two students to engage in faculty-mentored experiential learning in Biology working on projects that have the greenhouse as an important component. I will share further details on this in the future; for now, I can say, generally, that my intention is to support the activation of this greenhouse and, with our centering concept of experiential learning fully in mind, take the next step towards our broader aspirations for programming for students in this space. Ultimately, this is only a beginning. I will close by saying again- I am very grateful to everyone who made this possible, and, I am very excited to be a part of the unfolding of our broader vision for this space. Thank you!
The McEwan Laboratory 