Hull Award Winners

2022

Over the past 8 years, Tashanda has led her students at Environmental Charter Middle School - Inglewood through interactions with the campus environment and introduced them to challenging issues in the world around them.  Her classes composted, planted, picked weeds and harvested her beautiful Inglewood gardens with more than 20 fruit trees. Beyond the campus, Tashanda teaches students about environmental justice and toxic racism. She helps them understand the political and historical forces that have led to these inequitable dynamics, and encourages them to strengthen their voices in order to advocate on behalf of their communities.  She believes her students’ voices can be cultivated and heard. As students progress through middle school, they experience opportunities to advocate beyond the campus walls. She is an inspirational and relentless educator, a true advocate! 

2022

In his role as Coordinator of the Oyster Bay/Cold Spring Harbor Protection Committee, Rob Crafa is the driving force behind the successful efforts to involve community youth in the Community Oyster Garden program he created, which focuses on efforts to protect and improve water quality in the Long Island Sound. Rob has also served as Executive Director of Friends of the Bay and as the Founding Executive Director of The Waterfront Center in Oyster Bay, NY. He was a co-chair of the Oyster Festival and initiated Friends of the Bay’s water quality monitoring program and the popular Bay Day event. He has also served as a Coastal Resource Specialist for the New York State Department of State and is currently the Waterfront Director for SUNY Maritime College. Over the past five years, Rob’s Community Oyster Garden program is estimated to have seen involvement from more than 200 students under the age of 16 across eleven communities on the North Shore of...

2022

Jan Aiels served as an educator for 24 years at the Indian Creek Nature Center (ICNC), Iowa’s only nonprofit, independently operated nature center, which opened in 1974. When Jan retired in 2016, the educational programs and field trips she developed served 14,000 children each year.  Amid the utter turmoil brought by the Eastern Iowa flooding in the summer of 2008 -– when 10 square miles of Cedar Rapids was under water, 10,000 residents displaced (including 1,800 elementary students), and Indian Creek itself ravaged the surrounding floodplain -– it seemed impossible that the Nature Center’s scheduled summer camps for kids could take place. But Jan Aiels would not cancel. She insisted that our community’s children desperately needed to be with other kids, experiencing an aspect of nature that wasn’t destructive. So that June, Jan had a big tent erected and the camps went forward! This story is just one of many told by...

2022

From bees to cows, Matt Byrd has successfully adapted teaching methods and. instructional materials to energize and instill in his agriculture science students the importance of fostering a healthy and sustainable habitat for pollinators and livestock. Through instruction of his students to learn and demonstrate the principles of language skills, life skills and workforce entry skills, Mr. Byrd has encouraged the youth of Hawkins Texas to nurture and foster insect, animal and plant life within the scope of our natural resources.

2022

Shaun Ananko is the Director of Agriculture and Education at Grow It Green Morristown. To most people in the community from the youngest to the oldest, he is known as Farmer Shaun. He has dedicated the past 11 years to connecting 1000s of youth in our community to nature through a one acre farm dedicated to experiential education. Getting their hands dirty outside on the farm or learning in the classroom with hands-on crafts, sparks a child’s sense of discovery. The farm opens up conversations about the role of each of us caring for the environment in order to care for ourselves. From topics on butterflies, pollinators, the living soil, growing  seasons, weather, etc. – they all come to life on the farm in exciting ways. On top of that, you may come away with a yummy snack that surprises even you when you taste how good it is after you pull it from the ground. Farmer Shaun knows the key to making farming real for the youth of our community,...

2022

Through teaching children from Gibbs Elementary and Dunbar Middle school at the Dunbar Community Garden that is situated next to both schools. Children learn about vegetables, fruit, honeybees and chickens by engaging in a hands on learning in the garden. The garden is located in what would be defined as fresh food desert. Children learn about healthy food options in a downtown neighborhood where learning about this is void.

2022

India has been teaching botany and horticulture to teens ages 14-18 at Ballard High School since 2007. She is Chair of the science program, and every year she finds a way to bring her passion for the subject to her students with new, creative energy. During the Pandemic every two weeks she encouraged her students to come by an outdoor table at school where she provided them with a plant that they took home to nurture. She cheered and inspired their participation, study, and continued involvement throughout the year at home. She had each student report on their progress with the plant, checking in with them to see if they needed any further information, or if they wanted to share anything interesting or amusing regarding their attention to the plant. This current academic year, in addition to her full load of science classes, India also runs the Hugh School Greenhouse, which she has managed for the past 15 years. The Greenhouse program serves over 130...

2022

Jane Hirschi's life work is the introduction of garden-based education to K-5 students in Cambridge and Boston. Hirschi started CitySprouts twenty years ago when she was a parent at the Haggerty Elementary school in Cambridge. Today, there is a CitySprouts garden at each of Cambridge’s 12 Public K-5 schools. The gardens, supported by CitySprouts’ garden coordinators and community volunteers, provide a living laboratory for teachers and students, enriching their learning in STEAM education. As well as providing programming throughout the academic year, CitySprouts runs a Summer internship program for motivated middle school students. The students grow flowers, fruits, vegetables, and herbs for eight weeks. The program concludes with a Garden Expo, where the students cook for and serve their fellow gardeners, families, and neighbors. In the past five years the program has crossed the river to Boston, where eight schools now have CitySprouts...

2022

Virginia has dedicated much of her career to facilitating the connection between the earth, agriculture, education and community well-being. While serving as Director of Community Based Programs at Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, Cold Spring, New York, she was integral in the development of the Keep Farming program. Among other things, this program helped communities define how farming and agriculture could be fundamental in supporting a strong economy. Training, apprentice programs and a farm incubator program for young, entrepreneurs interested in sustainable farming followed. Following her over fourteen years at Glynwood, Virginia joined the Downing Park Urban Farm, Newburgh, New York, as Outreach Coordinator. Here she continued her life’s work of connecting the dots between earth and well-being. Working in an area of great poverty, where 56% of students were on school feeding programs, she set her goals on providing fresh food to the...

2022

Sandy Bivens began her career in environmental education in 1976 as a Metro Parks Recreation intern. The following year, she joined the staff of the Warner Park Nature Center (WPNC) where she took a particular interest in educational programming and bird research. In 1988, Sandy was promoted to director of the Nature Center. Under her leadership, WPNC’s environmental education (EE) = programs expanded to school field trips, grade-level content, teacher in-service trainings, and Junior Naturalist and High School Naturalist programs. With Sandy at the helm, WPNC became the established leader in Nashville’s and Tennessee’s EE community. In 2005, the city of Nashville added nature centers at three other Metro Parks, and soon after, Sandy was recruited to be the Nature Center Superintendent for the entire Parks Department. Sandy retired in 2013 but continues to volunteer with WPNC, and the educational programs she developed continue to enrich the...