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Lauren Bartel has already earned more than 1,500 community service hours and she’s only a junior at Gulliver Prep.
“I really enjoy being able to apply what I love to what matters to others, to help people,” she says.
Bartel is excited about her new research project at Fairchild.
“I’ve always been an avid lover of biology,” she says.
She started volunteering at Fairchild in eighth grade as a Conservation Student Scholar, educating visitors about conservation and nature.
“From there, I was able to get a position in the lab,” she says. “I was doing hands on conservation work to re-introduce native species to Florida. I worked to design a live exhibit.”
Now she is working in the Fairchild Micropropagation Laboratories on an offshoot of the Million Orchid Project, which aims to re-introduce native orchids to Florida. The researchers are working on figuring out how the orchids can be better grown in the lab using different growing mediums.
“Orchids are fascinating. They don’t grow in soil,” she says. “They often need a certain kind of fungus. We don’t have the fungi, so we create these mixtures.”
Bartel says they raise the orchids in the mixtures, some of which have certain nutrients and some that don’t. The project will help figure out the best mixture for the native orchids.
Along with her conservation volunteer work at Fairchild, she has helped conduct research at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine Science. She reached out to the school while in ninth grade to ask if she could volunteer. She ended up working on a genetic study of minnows, to see how they could tolerate heat.
“I was helping out by doing research work and creating samples,” she says.
That was her first experience with lab work.
“Now I’m able to apply what I know to make a real contribution,” she says.
She reaches out to help others in a variety of ways. Last year, when the pandemic shut down schools and learning went virtual, she heard through the grapevine that the younger kids were missing story time. She reached out to the lower school and ended up doing some videos reading stories for the kids.
“I remember really liking story time when I was younger,” she says. “How much less exciting would be your time in school if we weren’t getting a book reading?”
She grew the program and sent videos across the country to reach more than 1 million people. She also is part of the Little Lighthouse Foundation Story Hour effort to read the homeless children.
Bartel not only loves science and nature, but the arts. She loves writing and has been published in ten national and international journals and magazines. She’s won Scholastic Art and Writing awards. She’s also had a short story published in Writer’s Digest.
She’s won the President’s Volunteer Service Award Gold Medal, the Congressional Award Medal, and the Prudential Spirit of Community Award.
She’s an artist. Some of her painting, drawings and multimedia works have been published or gone on display. She’s served as an in-house artist for the Tropical Audubon Society. Bartel is also involved with the art program at Gulliver.
She loves experimenting with her art, using a variety of mediums. She recently turned in two self-portraits done in oil for a school assignment, and recently began playing with creating art digitally and loves it.
She’s in the International Baccalaureate program and takes IB Art.
Being in the IB program allows her to double up on her sciences – she’s taking IB Biology and IB Physics.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
