Doing Good

 

The Stewart Family Serviceship Award promotes public service to communities near and far.

 

By Missy Samp

 

Sabrina White loves bugs — so much so that she earned her undergraduate degree in entomology. Now, the fourth-year Ph.D. student from Orlando, Fla., is studying bumblebees as part of her graduate program in the University of Wyoming Department of Zoology and Physiology.

To raise awareness and excitement about the importance of bees and other pollinators to our ecosystems, this outreach assistant with UW’s Science Initiative Roadshow created the Bee the Scientist program. Unlike other traditional educational programs that often target K–12 students, White’s program focuses on older adults. 

The Bee the Scientist program combines information sharing with interactive hands-on activities. After learning about pollinators, participants build bee houses to provide nesting habitats for pollinators; create seed bombs by mixing balls of compost, clay and Wyoming wildflower seeds; and construct Arduino-based weather stations that measure temperature and humidity. 

During 2024, the program’s inaugural year, White and other Science Initiative Roadshow team members traveled to 10 senior centers in eight Wyoming counties and engaged with 149 participants. Wanting to keep the buzz around the program going, White applied for and received the 2025 Stewart Family Serviceship Award. 

This serviceship award is funded by the Stewart family in honor of their late parents, Clyde and Jerrine Stewart of Sheridan, who valued family, community and work. “We feel that our parents led their lives in service to the public,” says Kendall Hartman, daughter of the Stewarts.

Created in 2021, the award supports undergraduate and graduate students working on applied community research or service projects that address real-world challenges.

White used her award to purchase supplies for 75 participants at seven senior centers and a Master Gardener club. 
“The serviceship award is especially wonderful because it’s so broad and far-reaching,” White says. “Its effects reach communities all over, and I think that’s what makes it so special. I’m extremely grateful for this funding. It allowed us to share important information and to build connections with communities across Wyoming.”

 

Recent UW graduate Jessica Petri received this award as an undergraduate. “The serviceship award asks nothing of you other than to try to do something good for others,” Petri says. “There is no requirement that it takes a certain amount of time, that you are in any specific field, have achieved any particular level of education, or are anyone super special. All you have to be is someone who wants to do good.”

A year earlier and half a world away from the Cowboy State, Petri used her award to teach English to refugees — ages 8–21 — from Myanmar living in Thailand. She chose her project after hearing a Burmese student at UW speak about the civil war in Myanmar and his community’s suffering in 2021.

Three years later, the Green River native embarked on a journey spanning more than 8,000 miles to instruct 143 students for the summer. “I see teaching as a moral calling, especially in the context of providing disadvantaged groups educational opportunity,” she says. “I believe education has the power to transform the world because every educated person can transform their own life.”
While teaching her students, Petri learned about the realities of war, exploitative aid and poverty.

“No class, no matter how well taught, could have etched these realities into my mind as well as spending the summer surrounded by them did,” Petri says.

Despite facing these harsh realities, her students were incredibly grateful — for school, for friends and for their lives.
Before going to Thailand, Petri was preparing for a career in education and international human rights. Her experience there confirmed she is on the right path. 

Petri graduated in May 2025 with bachelor’s degrees in secondary social studies education and political science. Currently, she is serving as an English teaching assistant in Laos as part of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.