In addition to the tedious work of pulling weeds, students built butterfly boxes, designed plant configurations and assessed the nutritional needs of the insects during 2001-2002.

Nearly every faculty member found a way to connect the butterfly garden into a service-learning project, said Shirley Weber, an instructor and service-learning team coordinator.

"Since we have all the grades in one school building, we can bring students of various ages together for projects like this where some of the learning is done outside the classroom in a real-world setting," she said. "The students learned a great deal from each other. They really had fun."

As part of the project, high school students in an environmental science class educated kindergartners about butterfly biology and ecology. The older students also researched the type of vegetation preferred by butterflies.

The younger students partnered with older students to put new plants into the garden over the last several weeks of school. The garden should be home to the monarch butterfly by mid-summer.

The monarch butterfly is sometimes called the "milkweed butterfly" because its larvae eat the plant. Milkweed is the only thing the larvae can eat.

The garden was expanded under the direction of James Kirkwood, a Ball State University industry and technology professor.

The new section's theme centers on diversity issues, which allow students to learn about the differences in plants, people and ideas.

Kirkwood worked with students to design, plant and maintain a section of the garden with flowers of the 50 states.

Students from various classes also are building a 12-foot map of Indiana in pebbles four inches deep. The diversity garden will have a garden bench, stepping stones for paths, bat and bird houses, bird feeders and butterfly box.

Work will continue on the garden, located directly behind Burris, during summer school.

The school was awarded a grant from the Indiana Department of Education Center for School Improvement and Performance Indiana Serve-America Service Learning Project to implement the project during 2001-2002.