Marian University gets $1M grant for ecology lab

INDIANAPOLIS — Marian University in Indianapolis says it’s received a $1 million grant to endow a fund for the college’s environmental science laboratory.

The gift from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust was announced Thursday. The outdoor lab will be renamed the Nina Mason Pulliam EcoLab.

The EcoLab is a 55-acre historic landscape and protected wetland area that includes a nature center, an outdoor classroom and a camera for observing beavers. Students on the campus do behavioral, hormone, and genetic research on beavers and birds and ecological research. Other classes also use the lab.

Marian says the Pulliam Trust has awarded nearly $2 million to the university in the last decade, including $250,000 for the initial restoration of the EcoLab.