scholarly journals Pretesting Public Garden Exhibits Enhances Their Educational Value for People with Diverse Abilities

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 719-722
Author(s):  
Jean M. Larson ◽  
Emily Hoover

Formative evaluation (pretesting) can lead to better working exhibits in public gardens. While many botanical gardens and arboreta will attest to the importance of using formative evaluation, it has not been used to develop exhibits for consumers with diverse disabilities. At the Clotilde Irvine Sensory Garden of the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum (Chanhassen, Minn.) we are interested in developing exhibits that meet the needs of audiences with disabilities. To that end in 2000, four comprehensive interpretive exhibits were pretested before the final exhibits were installed within the Clotilde Irvine Sensory Garden to determine the exhibits ability to teach concepts to all regardless of disability. The evaluation indicated these exhibits were physically accessible, but needed attention in specific areas to enhance their inclusiveness.

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Stephens ◽  
Aaron Steil ◽  
Melody Gray ◽  
Abby Hird ◽  
Sonya Lepper ◽  
...  

The University of Delaware Botanic Garden (UDBG), located in Newark, is in transition, moving from its initial founding as a public garden by dedicated faculty and a volunteer group to an organized and efficient entity with widely recognized achievements and reputation. To make this leap, UDBG is faced with the particular need for an endowment to fund its operations, staff, and collections to continue future success. An endowment will provide a steady source of monetary support to operate and maintain UDBG. This study was conducted to discover the best endowment strategies based on the experience of four other public gardens associated with universities. These interviews were compiled and compared. The resulting recommendations for UDBG are based on the following five areas: organizational structure, planning, current strategies, the endowment, and the donor. The insights into how all five of these areas affect endowments may also be beneficial to other university public horticulture entities seeking to build an endowment.


2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 552-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Haynes ◽  
Cary J. Trexler

University-affiliated gardens enhance the teaching, research, and outreach missions of the university. Attracting and retaining volunteers is challenging but important for the success of most public gardens. The objective of this case study was to determine the perceptions and needs of volunteers at a university-affiliated public garden. In a focus group format, participants' responses were analyzed to determine the benefits of volunteering to both the participants and the university. Benefits were categorized into three groups: material, solidarity, and purposive. Material benefits are tangible rewards that are equated with monetary or resource gain. Solidarity benefits are social rewards from being in a group. Purposive benefits are rewards from achieving a goal or mission. This study documents the shift of volunteer motives from deriving purposive to solidarity benefits as the garden grew and expanded. Concomitantly, the goals of the university-affiliated garden shifted from purposive to material benefits. Our results confirm that garden volunteers are like other groups of volunteers in that they expect specific benefits for their participation, and their needs may fluctuate over time. Thus, a public garden may need to adjust reward systems to maximize the positive impact of volunteers. The university would benefit from an efficient support system to help volunteers meet their desire for helping the organization. To retain volunteers the university needs better training programs, a more flexible volunteer work schedule, and more recognition ceremonies. This study has implications for any institution that uses volunteer support to accomplish its mission.


2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 522-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Hockenberry Meyer ◽  
Stan Hokanson ◽  
Susan Galatowitsch ◽  
James Luby

Research at botanic gardens, from medieval times to the present day, has evolved to encompass a wide range of topics. The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, part of the University of Minnesota, is an example of a diverse, successful research program within a public university garden setting. Collaboration, mission, organization, and publications are keys to a successful research program. Future research for public gardens, including putting collections to work for conservation, understanding global change, ecological genomics, restoration ecology, seed banking, and citizen science are collaborative ideas for all botanic gardens to consider. Research can strengthen the botanic garden's role by providing public value while improving ties to the university.


Author(s):  
Donald A. Rakow ◽  
Meghan Z. Gough ◽  
Sharon A. Lee

This chapter discusses how cities can be made more livable through public gardens. It differentiates livability from sustainability in that sustainability adopts a long view of actions and policies and the ways in which development, according to a report by the World Commission on Environment and Development, “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” while livability focuses on current conditions and interventions, incorporating the environmental, economic, and equity priorities on a narrower spatial scale relevant to individual people, neighborhoods, and communities in geographically smaller areas. Efforts to enhance livability are primarily community based and driven by issues of local concern that reflect changing conditions. The chapter discusses the public garden movement in the United States and how it began with the early recognition of botanical gardens as keys to economic development. The involvement of botanical gardens in the livability of cities came largely in response to the challenges associated with nineteenth-century urbanization. Our concept of livability has now expanded to include concerns for sustainable development, smart growth and urban design, and community-identified priorities such as access to fresh and affordable food and urban green space as part of the public realm. Finally, the chapter also discusses cross-sector partnerships with public gardens and how this leads to collective action and collective impact.


1981 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-151
Author(s):  
Lillian Glass ◽  
Sharon R. Garber ◽  
T. Michael Speidel ◽  
Gerald M. Siegel ◽  
Edward Miller

An omission in the Table of Contents, December JSHR, has occurred. Lillian Glass, Ph.D., at the University of Southern California School of Medicine and School of Dentistry, was a co-author of the article "The Effects of Presentation on Noise and Dental Appliances on Speech" along with Sharon R. Garber, T. Michael Speidel, Gerald M. Siegel, and Edward Miller of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.


1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (03) ◽  
pp. 289-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. H. Sielaff ◽  
D. P. Connelly ◽  
K. E. Willard

Abstract:The development of an innovative clinical decision-support project such as the University of Minnesota’s Clinical Workstation initiative mandates the use of modern client-server network architectures. Preexisting conventional laboratory information systems (LIS) cannot be quickly replaced with client-server equivalents because of the cost and relative unavailability of such systems. Thus, embedding strategies that effectively integrate legacy information systems are needed. Our strategy led to the adoption of a multi-layered connection architecture that provides a data feed from our existing LIS to a new network-based relational database management system. By careful design, we maximize the use of open standards in our layered connection structure to provide data, requisition, or event messaging in several formats. Each layer is optimized to provide needed services to existing hospital clients and is well positioned to support future hospital network clients.


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