MURFREESBORO, Tenn. —
As part of the Adventure Science
Center’s “Wicked Plants” exhibition continuing through May 29 in Nashville, MTSU
students and faculty in the Tennessee
Center for Botanical Medicine Research presented a series of events
featuring medicinal plants.
Assistant professor Iris
Gao and two of the MTSU center’s graduate students, Shannon Smith and Matthew
Fuller, participated twice in the exhibition on separate occasions earlier
this year.
Tennessee Center for Botanical Medicine Research officials
viewed it as an opportunity to interact with people, especially children, and
serve our community, Gao said.
“Through the exhibition, we hope to raise awareness for
scientific research, particularly on herbal medicine research, and also to make
science education more interesting and meaningful,” Gao said. “It’s exciting to
share the knowledge derived from our research with the community. All these
make us feel fulfilled about what we are doing.”
In the first visit, the MTSU trio hosted three interactive,
hands-on stations, highlighting their research in front of more than 500
visitors.
The stations included:
• Tea tasting,
where visitors could taste the ginseng or chrysanthemum tea.
• A bookmark station,
where visitors could make their own bookmark with the leaf vein of medicinal
plants.
• A plant terrarium
station, where visitors could make their own terrarium with eight common
medicinal plants.
Gao, Smith and Fuller delivered a live science presentation
to the general public in the Cosmic Rays Theater on their second visit.
During the lecture, they talked about the history of
medicinal gardens, medicinal plant compounds and ongoing medicinal plant
research topics.
For Smith, it was a “way of interacting with the public to
introduce them to valuable concepts and help them question things.”
Fuller said it was a “wonderful opportunity to help generate
interest in the science and research that we do at MTSU and the botanical
medicine research centers. Seeing and helping to inspire the next generation of
scientists was a reward in and of itself.”
Tiffany Ellis
Farmer, director of education and community engagement at Adventure Science
Center, told Gao that the “partnership (with MTSU) will truly make our
exhibition a much richer experience.”
Gao said people “are interested to know how medicinal
plants can be helpful for their life and health, and we feel excited and
privileged to spread the knowledge in the community.
For more information about the botanical medicine research
center, call 615-494-8681 or visit http://www.mtsu.edu/tcbmr/.
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