Scholarships

Write for Scholarship

Deadline for essays: March 1st
Award Announcements: March 15

For 2007, we are again offering an essay-for-scholarship contest. We invite your essays in two areas: Wildness and Arcadia. Essays can be fiction, non-fiction, or poetry. The amount of the scholarship will depend partly on the number of essays we receive. Earlier submitted essays will receive additional points in the judging process. Essays will be judged by our staff and an international team of people who have dedicated their lives to imaging, creating, and advocating for their own concepts of Wildness and Arcadia. The concepts of Wildness and Arcadia are elaborated below. You can read last years essays here

Wildness Scholarship Essay Contest

The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation's Agrestal Fund is offering a limited number of scholarships in the Big Green Summer, to be awarded through an essay contest. Pay for your Big Green Summer by writing about the interface between wildness and domesticity. The Agrestal Fund fosters an expanded vision that sees wildness as a self-regulating, spontaneous state of existence. Wildness in this context goes far beyond the more common considerations of wilderness. “Wild” concepts are those that foster this vision in our lives, including renewable energy, local organic food systems, and a strong local economy. Imaging a wild world requires us to think about redesigning everything around us,and requires us to think of ways of creating a rich life by doing less, not doing more.

What would a more wild world look like? We invite you to write about your ideas of wildness, non-fiction or fiction. Your essay will be published on our web site and other places, and will be read by an international panel whose profession is re-wilding the world in arts and culture, technology, agriculture, architecture, and other fields. You could be awarded a scholarship in Big Green Summer. Check out last years essay submissions here

Arcadia Scholarship Essay Contest

The Arcadia Fund is offering scholarships for essays exploring the concept of Arcadia. Here are some thoughts on Arcadia from Roger Gipple, Acadia Fund founder:

"An out-of the way place with the longed-for landscape of innocence – a breadbasket where people still live by the simple ways. Close to wildness, it is a place where culture makes its mark but no permanent boundaries exist – a self-reliant, spontaneous, self-regulating, infinite and inclusive community where beautiful songs are sung, order and chaos are symmetrical, and the sovereignty of otherness is intuitively acknowledged"

Essay Judging Team

Meet our team of readers/judges:

Beatrix Pfleiderer, PhD:
Beatrix is a medical anthropologist and transpersonal psychotherapist who specializes in deep ecology, eco psychology, and group consciousness work. She has traveled extensively throughout the world studying healing and ritual. Beatrix was the developer and former owner of La Akea Gardens permaculture and deep ecology teaching center in Hawaii.

Doug Bullock:

Douglas and Maria Bullock Along with his brothers, Sam, Joe, and their extensive families the Bullock clan has designed and developed what has been described as the best example of Permaculture in North America. The family homestead on Orcas Island hosts an annual 3-week design course each summer, and accepts 10 - 15 qualified interns each year. Douglas has extensive experience in all aspects of permaculture design and installation, as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of plants from around the world. Douglas is one of the most popular instructors internationally, and his courses are dynamic, thorough, hands-on, and always include many local guest teachers. In addition to his home bases in Orcas and Hawaii, and Doug regularly teaches in Central America and Poland. Doug also does design and consulting.

Dr. Mark Olson:
Dr. Mark Olson is an educator, neuroscientist, massage therapist, computer programmer, and permaculturalist who has been studying eco-design principles since 1989. Dr. Olson has an M.A. in Education, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and is a certified Permaculture instructor. Though his interests are diverse, Dr. Olson sees the same thread of effective design principles operating through all of them. He addresses this topic through a subject he calls 'neuroecology', in which any discussion of sustainability must ultimately be grounded in a sustainable neural system, ourselves. Mark lives in the Puna District, Big Island, Hawaii.

Cherie Sampson:
Cherie is a video, installation, and performance artist with a keen interest in environmental art. She has completed major works and residencies in the US and Europe. In addition to creating art, for the last five years she has also been teaching in the art department at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. Cherie has a long list of awards and grants including a Fullbright that allowed her to spend a year in Finland collaborating with artists there and doing research in vernacular art, architecture, and mythology and folk culture. A recent video project won an award at a Des Moines Art Center show in late 2005. Her other interests include natural building, mythology and ritual, dance, movement and voice, martial arts, women’s studies, writing, and pagan religions. Cherie divides her time between her Partner Dan’s organic apple farm in Missouri and Fairfield, Iowa.

“Through my experience of the raw forces of nature and its seasons of generation, decay and renewal, I seek to re-member in my art a primal link between human life, culture and nature, being aware of all aspects of an environment from sensory and elemental to historical and even mythical. My body and hands are often evident in the articulation of forms and spaces in my work….”

Martha Norbeck:

Martha Norbeck does regenerative, beyond sustainable building design. She is on the Internships project team and has developed a conceptual design for the Big Green Summer program campus. Other projects she has been involved in recently include a day lit school in North Liberty, Iowa, and a police/public safety building in Muscatine, Iowa. She also does research and education in the developing field of Biomimicry. In addition to her building design work, she is a regular speaker at events like the Iowa Renewable Energy Association annual conference and Expo. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to visit Sweden for a year studying ecovillages. You can read about her work in Sweden at:

Derek Roller:

Derek Roller is an activist and local foods entrepreneur. He founded the Red Avocado vegan/local foods restaurant in Iowa City, operates an urban market garden at his Iowa City home, and is part of the Ecollective farm in Mechanicsville, Iowa. Derek has been a main organizer of the Field to Family event in Iowa City, a slow food celebration that has brought chefs like Deborah Madison and Odetta Piper to Iowa City. Derek is also an organizer of community gardens in Iowa city, and is developing a solar powered traveling catering business to bring good food to festivals and street fairs.

Danielle Wirth, PhD:
Since Danielle Wirth met Eco feminist philosopher Karen J. Warren and learned about Ecological Feminism she knew that this perspective fit her world view.

On the one hand she has a deep concern for the lives and welfare of women. On the other hand, she's committed to healing and helping restore the Earth. Before Danielle came to Iowa State she worked as a county naturalist/environmental educator for several county and state park systems, and was a federal park ranger for over a decade. While at Iowa State she pursued a doctorate that focused on situated contextual narrative - stories that spring from the landscape - and taught within the Environmental Studies program.

Danielle Wirth now teaches Earth-oriented classes between Des Moines Area Community College (Urban and Boone campus sites) and Iowa State University.

Her academic interest and research areas include: organic food standards and local food security; pesticide impact on human health and environmental quality; restoration of native plant communities; environmental ethics and environmental economics.

She shares a secluded hand - built cabin with her husband Don and college-aged Son Max (hardly ever see the kid anymore) and 3 cats, 2 dogs, 3 horses and many native wildlife species that live on the restored savanna surrounding the cabin. As time permits, Danielle enjoys: hiking , kayaking, herbal medicine research and preparation, writing (especially op ed commentary for the local newspapers)

She is a founding member of The National Association of Interpretation, The Iowa Women in Natural Resources and the Women, Food and Ag. Network. Danielle has won many awards for her work and her teaching, and in 2005, her biology class at Des Moines Area Community College won a national Take Pride In America award for their work in prairie restoration.