Franklin College biology students will benefit from a donation of 29 acres of land worth $1.8 million.
The land, donated by Southpoint Farm, LLC., is on Forest Road in Franklin, across the street from Interstate Warehousing. The parcel is located east of campus, near Interstate 65, Franklin College President Kerry Prather said.
This is the second parcel that Southpoint Farm has donated to the college. In 2008, the company donated Hougham Woods Biological Field Station, a 32-acre forested parcel located on Bartram Parkway, next to Energizer and the former site of Cooper Tire in the Franklin Tech Park.
Harry ‘Mac’ McNaught donated the two parcels totaling 51 acres to the college to preserve forested areas around Franklin Tech Park.
“Mr. McNaught has been enormously generous with both donations to the college,” Prather said. “He’s committed to higher education and is a friend of Franklin College. We’re indebted to him.”
The new parcel will provide students with even more space to examine plant and animal life.
“It’s a natural habitat like the previous gift we got from Southpoint and it’s wooded with some stream area,” Prather said. “They’re wonderful places for our biology students to be able to go and actually have a hands-on experience with the environment, so it’s been from the standpoint of examining and understanding species. These areas have been an invaluable and immersive part of what we do. It’s a hands-on, practical part of education.”
Franklin College’s biology department faculty members will next scout the land to determine which vegetation and species are there, he said.
“This goes to the heart of how we have redesigned the curriculum at Franklin College,” Prather said. “Our commitment across the curriculum is to engage in immersive experiences for students. It’s not like the old days of education, sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture. There’s still lecture experiences and lab experiences, but the whole emphasis behind the development of the science center and the curriculum is underpinning that you learn science by doing science.”
