Now there are two chances to make an impact as a Bella’s Bud; helping with the preparation of materials the day before or hands-on opportunities the day of the program. Day of volunteer tasks include greeting, facilitating story time and helping with guided activities in the Tree House.  New this fall are Friday Bella preparation opportunities for those of you who like a more behind the scenes location.These are great chances to plant the seeds of curiosity in a child.  You don’t need a deep awareness of plants or education to be an engaging Bud but you do need an interes

Teacher Tuesday Hosts assist in greeting, setting up and tearing down our popular teacher professional development program Teacher Tuesdays on the third Tuesday of the month from September through April.

SEED Starters help out with our Field Study Trips for school groups. Facilitate a science station during one of our scheduled Bella (Pre-K-1st), Messy Science (2nd-8th) or LEEDing the Way (middle and high school) Field Study Trips from October through May. 

We have received a grant to support the digitization of the Vanderbilt University herbarium collection at BRIT and we need help preparing the collection for our Digitization techs. This includes reviewing the specimens to insure they have labels as well as making any needed repairs.

Using various websites you will determine the location of a previously collected plant. Knowledge of excel is ideal and high level of comfort in using a computer.

Reviewing higher education websites, gathering data on various botanical courses offered within the United States. This information will be used to identify gaps in botanical education.

Researchers are constantly working on various projects that require their time in the field. At times, these botanists will need help conducting botanical and ecological surveys. These are available on a seasonal basis and require comfort in outdoor settings.

Transforming slides of research data into a digital format and entering information from the slide into a database will help our research department. This will require the use of a slide scanner at BRIT and comfort with computer based tasks.

As you know our BRIT campus is a science experiment in action so we need help in documenting the changes that occur with this landscape. Be prepared for the weather and nature if you choose this opportunity.

Currently, we have several videos of presentations captured that need to be edited and added to the BRIT YouTube channel. In the future, we will need help creating videos about several on-going research projects.  

Sort article reprints by hand for authors once the journal has been published and reprints are ordered. Occurs twice yearly, usually in July and December.

Index current or past issues of the journal by author, reviewer, title, subject, etc. and prepare the index for the year-end print volume. Volunteers would also connect keywords with the Atrium module described above.

Enter literature records from BRIT's own journals into BRIT's Atrium Database. Researchers use this database to find references on particular genera, families, and other subjects. Volunteer would also edit bibliographic records and add links to records from BHL (Biodiversity Heritage Library). Your computer skills will be helpful if you choose this task.

If you have InDesign skills, there are usually a number of layout tasks with which we need extra help. This can be handled on-site or from the comfort of your home if you have the correct software.

Process review book requests and input data into the database as well as publish the list of available titles on the BRIT website so potential reviewers may know what is available. Volunteers may also take books and do reviews themselves.

Read, proof, and edit submitted book or journal manuscripts for spelling and grammatical errors. Your computer skills will help our press team format for style and fact-check/verify if necessary.