KATY [November 21, 2019] – The Katy Independent School District is proud to announce that Katy High School’s Tiger Prairie won the 2019 Science Teachers Association of Texas (STAT) Innovation Award. The award will allow the Tiger Prairie to be one of four projects featured at the Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching (CAST) presented by STAT. This past Saturday, KHS students and faculty showcased their hard work of the one-acre prairie to make it a suitable home for deep-rooted prairie plants that mitigate flooding and increase infiltration rates.
KHS teachers, Dr. Rhonda Burrough, an AP Environmental Science teacher, started the prairie project in 2018 with Kelly Knight, also an environmental science teacher, and Susan Barker, an instructional coach-science, and partnerships with nonprofits and businesses to provide hands-on learning for students.
“This new award program recognizes the best and brightest science initiatives in Texas, while also offering solutions to the resource challenges affecting science instruction in our state,” Burrough said. “The Katy Tiger Prairie Grass Initiative was selected from a distinguished group of nominees, making this recognition a truly significant accomplishment.”
The initiative will receive $4,000 from the STAT Innovation Award, which will help to fund infiltration rings that measure infiltration rates of soil at research sites and a time-lapse photography station bracket from which students and the community can take photos to document changes over time. Started this year, the 2019 Innovation Awards, are designed to recognize the best and brightest science initiatives in Texas, while also offering solutions to the resource challenges besetting science instruction in Texas.
Recently, the Tiger Prairie also won a $2,500 grant from the Katy Independent School District Education Foundation for the purchase of 350 plants, which were planted Oct. 8 by students on the prairie. In the coming months, a local Girl Scout will plant a butterfly garden at the prairie site as a project for her Gold Award.
Visit http://www.tigerprairie.org/ for more information.