Rotary has busy Monday program
The Rotary program on Monday was a little special in the sense the club not only heard from a guest speaker from the Mississippi Aquarium, but they also heard from the Oktibbeha Young Leaders. The civic organization also recognized one teacher and two students from Starkville Christian School.
Each year, a group of local students are interviewed and selected by Starkville Rotary Club to be a part of Oktibbeha Young Leaders. This year’s selection of students got to work last week and met with city and county officials as well as first responders to see how they lead in the community.
Watkins Dumas (Starkville High School), Emily O’neal (Starkville Academy), and Katie Duran (Starkville High School) spoke about what it meant to them to be able to speak with leaders such as Mayor Lynn Spruill, Supervisor Bricklee Miller, Starkville Police Chief Mark Ballard, and Starkville Fire Chief Charles Yarbrough. The students began their day at City Hall, then ventured over to Starkville Police Department. After enjoying lunch at Little Dooey, the Young Leaders visited the Starkville Fire Department, then headed over to the Oktibbeha County Emergency Management office to learn from Kristen Campanella.
“For leadership, they always have to be on top of what’s going on since they do deal with tough situations and they’re the first to send out orders,” Duran said of the E911 operators.
After the three from Oktibbeha
Young Leaders showed pictures to the Rotarians of their day, three from Starkville Christian School were honored for their drive throughout the year.
Rebecca Stegal, a Spanish teacher at SCS, was given the Educator of the Year award.
From there Stegal introduced Lisa Smith and Denton Jenkins as Students of the Year.
“We are grateful to be able to share with you some many qualities that make Starkville
Christian a beautiful factor in our lives and in our community,” Lisa Smith said. “We’ve both attended Starkville Christian School since our pre-k year in 2008 and we’ll be graduating in May of this academic year. Having been students at SCS for nearly 14 years, we both pride ourselves on being the product of a Starkville Christian School education.”
Finally, Kendra Simpson, vice president of Sales and Marketing for the Mississippi Aquarium in Gulfport, joined the Rotarians via Zoom to speak about the first year of the aquarium. The aquarium officially opened last August, and it has been an incredible year for them.
“We did open in August of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, which was a little problem but we got through that. Our opening was delayed a little bit for hurricanes and tropical storms, so we had a few obstacles to get through,” Simpson said. “These obstacles only made us stronger. We had a record breaking first year, and so many things have happened within the first, now, 13 months that it’s hard to narrow down a few.”
Simpson then spoke about the different educational opportunities the aquarium has. There are summer camp opportunities, at-home programs for virtual learning, and a mobile aquarium with animal ambassadors such as turtles, tortoises, and snakes.
Starkville, in fact, was visited by the mobile aquarium as one of the summer programs for the Starkville Public Library this past summer.
The aquarium has over 200 species and vets from all over to help. They are also known for a groundbreaking surgery that sets the precedent for veterinarians around the world. Stella the shark had to have spinal surgery and the vets were quick to help.
“When Stella got here, she wasn’t swimming quite right. Once the vet team xrayed Stella, they saw she had a severe spinal injury. Basically her spine was not connected in one place,” Simpson said. “Our vet team along with vets from other aquariums and even local human orthopedic specialists here performed the first ever surgical spinal repair on a shark.”
The Mississippi Aquarium also serves a purpose with a research and conservation component. None of the animals are taught tricks and they are encouraged to practice natural behaviors. The only tricks animals know are to help vets with administering medicine.
In the last year, the aquarium saw over 325,000 visitors and created 165 part- and full-time jobs. They also brought in $10 million in revenue. If you would like to support the Mississippi Aquarium, tickets range from $20 to $30. You can also purchase a car tag to support their conservation efforts. It is well worth the trip to Gulfport.