In fulfilling her Honors course requirement for the Scottsdale Community College (SCC) Honors Program, Web Development student, Jhenica Magana, took the opportunity to take the alternative approach and build a Service Learning-based Honors Project for the Maricopa Native Seed Library, one of the first programs she connected with when she begun college.

The Maricopa Native Seed Library provides native plant seed packets to the community for free through visiting the Center for Native and Urban Wildlife (CNUW) building. Magana took an interest in the program when she would volunteer as part of the Sonoran Desert Club in processing and packaging different seeds. 

“As someone who is not well-versed about the native plants, the Maricopa Native Seed Library has introduced me to a lot of the unique benefits and plant care processes of our native plants. Recognizing their importance in supporting our native wildlife, I decided to help them extend their reach to students and employees who may not be on campus a lot and miss the opportunity to pick certain seed packets for their garden.”

Recognizing room for innovation, Magana works with her CIS156 Python Programming Level 1 course Professor, Dr. Sheila Brandt, and CNUW Education Programs Developer, Natalie Case, in building a program as her Honors Project for CNUW and the Seed Library can use to provide the community with a way to access and learn about the different native seeds online, as well as provide the program with a way to better track their seed stock for documenting and stock preparations.

Magana was able to complete her project she named the “Digital Seed Library” as a prototype presented to CNUW during the end of the Spring 2024 semester. Her completed project simulated the patron’s ability to possibly reserve a limit of 3 seed packets they could choose based on the plant types that would fit their garden’s needs and pick them up at a designated date at CNUW. It also featured a database that allows the Seed Library to keep track of their seed stock, patron information, and recognize the seed packets that are most popular among them.

The project was well received by CNUW and was presented with the opportunity to launch the Digital Seed Library as a web application to test out. Preparing to release it to the community, Magana is now working on optimizing the Digital Seed Library for the web through a new Honors Project that focuses on improving the database that will store all plant, stock, and patron information.

Interested in also building projects to benefit the community? Get In Touch with the SCC Service Learning Program to learn more.