By the pond at Nixa High School, one can smell the scent of fresh air, hear the gentle rippling of water and see freshly planted trees and newly built birdhouses. On April 21 and 22, a group of students, mainly consisting of science club members, planted trees and built and installed birdhouses.

   The project was led by a group of students who attended the Green Leadership Academy for Diverse Ecosystems (GLADE), a week-long summer camp located in southwest Missouri that gives students hands-on experience focused on restoration ecology and prairies.

   “It’s a week in the summer,” Justine Lines, GLADE director, said. “[Students] have to apply and be accepted. But we go and we do a week of conservation intensive [work] with the best of the best scientists and natural resource managers.”

   Before becoming the director of GLADE, Lines worked as a science teacher at Springfield Public Schools. While at Glendale, Lines ran a school garden that included raised beds and native and outdoor flower classrooms.

   “My goal in life is to keep getting students outside,” Lines said. “Teenagers are so stressed out, and every single school needs to have a place where students can kind of go and wander, and everybody always said to me at Glendale, ‘Oh, there’s going to be vandalism,’ and [yet] nobody ever did anything. It’s because … it’s a place for them to hang out. Why would they ruin that?”

   Rachel McGowan is the sponsor for the Science Explorers Club and helped the students complete their project.

   “These students just came to me with the idea, and I just was happy to do whatever this is,” McGowan said. “I love environmental science and those types of things, so this is right down my alley.”

   After students attend GLADE, they get the chance to apply for a $500 grant for some sort of environmental project of their choice. The main rule is that the students lead the project. Senior Kyleigh Gierer, who attended GLADE in the summer of 2024, worked with two other seniors and decided to combine their grants to get one big grant with the goal of livening up the pond next to NHS.

   “We decided we wanted to do something with this pond because it’s really bare without the trees and the bushes that we planted,” Gierer said. “We wanted to spruce it up, especially because sometimes it gets really trashy and ugly.”

   Once the team got their grant requests approved, they had to get permission from Dr. Kelly and maintenance. There were two main concerns before the project began.

   “[Potential issues included] the neighbors next to the pond not wanting more trees and stuff because they were worried about insects and snakes,” Gierer said. “More recently, we had to put green flags down, and so we could check for pipes, and wires and stuff to make sure that we could plant here.”

   The team decided to use the area by the pond for two reasons: it was bare and it was accessible.

   “There’s a lot of turtles,” Gierer said. “There’s a lot of frogs, goldfish, different birds like there’s been a bald eagle that’s flown over here. We wanted to make sure that this was a habitat that they could enjoy.”

   Since those two concerns have been cleared up and the team has begun their project, they have a slight worry that students may mess with the newly planted trees.

   “Please do not mess with them,” Gierer said. “Please do not throw things at them because we do not want them to be disturbed or scare birds off.”

   Gierer said she hopes more students from Nixa go to GLADE to get the grant money to add to the area around the pond.

   “I hope we can plant more trees, we can put up more houses,” Gierer said. “We can do bee houses. Maybe turtle houses. I feel like that would be a great next step, and also making sure the trees and stuff are getting the proper water and nutrients that they need throughout the summer.”

   Students who are interested in getting involved in the pond project can reach out to Gierer through email or social media, they can join Science Explorers, or they can go to GLADE.

   “Join science club,” Gierer said. “We do a lot of different experiments. They helped us with this whole thing. Joining GLADE would be great. Even if you don’t want to be in science club just reach out like ‘Hey is there anything I can do to help?’”

For information on GLADE applications go to https://www.greaterozarksaudubon.org/glade