Education

Picture students in a lab, each with a different experiment involving native plants. Some are making perfumes from desert acacia; others are examining the protein makeup and content of prickly pear seeds; others are studying the insecticide properties of cottonwood leaves; others are making paper from red yucca fibers; and so on. Most of us were not exposed to the vast economic possibilities yet unexplored in the plant kingdom in our own region. If we value our G. W. Carvers we have to provide a learning environment to promote their development. Another objective of UWP is to begin opening up the unknown world of useful wild plants to students of all ages, K-12, higher institutions, and lay people who have intense but unrealized interests in native and naturalize plants. UWP has developed teaching modules for K-12 that will introduce our next generation to these possibilities.

An integral part of Useful Wild Plants, inc. is working with Texas communities to spread biological literacy and an appreciation for the significance of economic botany. We have hosted economic botany field courses and lectures across the state, including in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. Some of our outreach programs include:

• Weed Feed courses- Useful Wild Plants, inc. offers both long-form (six week) and condensed (day long) classes. These courses are introductory to foraging for and preparing edible wild plants and are open to the public for the price of tuition (variable). 

• Young Scientist courses- upon request, we visit elementary through high school classes, offering one-day seminars on botany and sustainability. In the past, these programs have taken place at Austin's Lyndon B. Johnson High School and Alamo Recreation Center. 

• Field trip hosting- we partner with faculty at the University of Texas at Austin to bring students of all majors out to the Useful Wild Plants headquarters and host a short field visit and lecture on the economic botany of wild plants.