Everything Nac

The first Boys and Girls Club Art Show will be presented from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 19, at The Cole Art Center @ The Old Opera House in downtown Nacogdoches.

The show is part of an ongoing collaboration between art education students at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Nacogdoches membership of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Deep East Texas. On display will be artwork created as a result of art education student-lead art lessons presented at the Boys and Girls Club since March.

“SFA art education students have been providing art lessons continuously since the summer of 2020,” said Dr. Maggie Leysath, professor of art education at SFA. “The art lessons are part of an initiative by the art education department to help the BGC build an after-school art program by providing art lessons taught by SFA art education students.

Lessons were initially provided virtually because of the pandemic. But in March, art education students were able to resume face-to-face art lessons at the club facilities and develop a body of work that will be on display in the art show and is representative of the on-going collaboration, according to Leysath.

“BGC members as well as interested community members are invited to join us to share the artwork created by BGC members after school and during the Summer 2021 session,” Leysath said.

Light refreshments will be served just outside the upper gallery where the exhibition will be held. The Cole Art Center is located at 329 E. Main St.

For more information about the show, contact Leysath at leysathmn@sfasu.edu or 936-468-4262. For more information about summer programs with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Deep East Texas, visit bgcdet.org. For more information about the School of Art, visit art.sfasu.edu.

Have you ever felt as though you were being watched? If so and you were a mammal roaming the 2,560-acre Stephen F. Austin Experimental Forest during fall 2019, your suspicions likely were correct.

Dr. Christopher Schalk, Stephen F. Austin State University assistant professor of forest wildlife management, and Dr. Daniel Scognamillo, SFA adjunct professor of forest wildlife management, are two of more than 150 researchers from across the continental U.S. to participate in the first nationwide survey of mammals initiated by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

The survey, known as Snapshot USA, comprises 1,509 motion-activated camera traps throughout 110 sites in the U.S.

“Our goal was to provide a space for researchers from all 50 states to contribute a subset of their data to a broader initiative to maximize our coverage of the country and better understand drivers of mammal distributions to best inform conservation as rapidly as possible,” said Michael Cove, curator of mammalogy at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Schalk and Scognamillo deployed 19 camera traps throughout the SFA Experimental Forest during September and October 2019 and recorded numerous observations of more than 10 mammal species, including white-tailed deer, Southern flying squirrel, bobcat, coyote and nine-banded armadillo.

“These data are really valuable because they allow researchers to address questions and problems on the ecology and conservation of mammals at broader spatial scales,” Schalk said.

The results of Snapshot USA were featured in Ecology, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Ecological Society of America. The 2019 survey data also is publicly available at emammal.si.edu/snapshot-usa.

Story by Sarah Fuller, outreach coordinator for Stephen F. Austin State University’s Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture.