Covenant Day School
Matthews, NC
Sustainability Engineering Greenhouse
The Sustainability Engineering Greenhouse at CDS is designed to provide dynamic STEM opportunities for high school students at CDS (Charlotte, NC), MOHI School (Grand-Goâve, Haiti), and Philips Academy (Charlotte, NC). The synergistic and collaborate efforts of teachers, students, and administrators within these three organizations creates an innovative opportunity to support the STEM education of a diverse range of high school students (Figure 1).
The partnership between CDS, MOHI, and Philips Academy has encouraged the STEM education of students with special needs (Asperger’s, Down syndrome, etc.) at Philips Academy and students in extreme poverty at the MOHI School. The greenhouse program has created exciting developments in student skill-sets related to STEM inquiry and critical thinking, basic scientific research practices (experimental design, data acquisition, statistical analysis, etc.), executive functions, environmental awareness, innovative humanitarian aid, and much more. The greenhouse program at CDS aims to impact both the lives of students and scientific innovation.
The Green Thumb Challenge Grant will specifically allow students at CDS, Philips Academy, and MOHI School to run a university-level analysis (directed by Lead Teacher Tim Blumenstein’s biology graduate work at Clemson University) of Mentha piperita growth within an 800 gallon greenhouse aquaponic system. Numerous scientific research groups have found antibiotic and antioxidant compounds within M. piperita. For example, M. piperita compounds have been shown to block bacterial quorum sensing (QS) among certain gram-negative bacteria (Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Aeromonas hydrophila) in addition to other antibiotic biochemical pathways [2, 3, 4].The Sustainability Engineering Greenhouse at CDS aims to optimize M. piperita production in order to improve the efficiency of future M. piperita biopharmaceutical research. The CDS effort to optimize M. piperita production could play an important role in the research and development of antibiotic and antioxidant compounds in M. piperita. Figure 2 below provides a detailed flow-chart of this greenhouse project’s overall process.
The industry standard soil testing kit needed for this greenhouse project is the LaMotte STH-14 (Figure 3) [5]. If acquired, the LaMotte STH-14 should sustain two to three years of AEGP experimental activities. Future restocking of the LaMotte chemicals should easily fall within the school budgetary capacity. Table 1 provides a detailed list of the specific contents within the LaMotte soil testing kit. Each component within the LaMotte STH-14 is critical for obtaining the data needed to conduct legitimate agricultural research.
