Elk in a box: Merit Academy receives $4,995 grant for biology-class project articulating big-game skeletons

A recent grant award will help Tim Lundt’s ninth-grade biology students at Merit Academy continue to pursue the study of comparative anatomy using actual big game animals.

The grant, from the National Science Foundation, will help the students purchase a mounted head and skeleton of a white-tailed deer, which the students will use as a teaching and research tool.

The National Science Foundation’s Division of Biological Sciences Awards Grants in support of research on comparative anatomy.

Tim Lundt, a biology teacher at Merit Academy in Woodland Park, is grateful for the NSF grant that will help his students purchase a mounted deer head and skeleton.

The students will use the skeleton to study the different bones and muscles of the deer and to learn how to dissect the animal.

"This will be a great teaching and research tool for my students," Lundt said. "They are always looking for opportunities to learn more about biology, and this is a great way to do it."