Girl Scout's Hill-Stead Museum Project Earns Her the Rare Gold Award

Margaret Czepiel, a senior at Conard High School in West Hartford, has received the Girl Scout Gold Award — the highest leadership award in Girl Scouting — for a project she created at the Hill-Stead Museum.

According to an announcement about the award, Margaret "created a nature center out of an old Pump House on the property at Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington. With the help of her brother's Boy Scout Troop and a few friends, they cleaned out the pump house which hadn't been used in at least 20 years. Then she worked with the naturalist at Hill-Stead, Diane Tucker, to create a permanent public exhibit, geared mostly towards children.

"Materials were donated by Sanford & Hawley Construction Co. as well as Miss Porter's School in order to create the exhibit spaces. Margaret then collected items from around the museum grounds to be used in the Nature Center. In addition, Margaret did research for a small exhibit about mastodon skeleton that was found on the Hill-Stead property in the early 1900s that is now at Yale Peabody museum. The exhibit opened in June of 2012."