“I’m endlessly grateful to have had the opportunity to take part in this workshop. Meeting with individuals working in varying fields offered valuable career guidance and detailed insight into the world of paleontology, museums, and beyond.” - Lia Dirks
The UMMP Invertebrate Division with funding support from NSF-GEO-EAR #2312212 hosted the inaugural Expanding Expertise and Providing Access through Natural History Digitization (ExPAND) Workshop. This workshop brought together undergraduate students from across the country with the shared interest of exploring museum careers. There were an astounding number of applicants with a 10% acceptance rate resulting in six participants:
  1. Ambrose Johnson, George Mason University, Geology Major/Paleontology Minor
  2. Kira Davis, University of Michigan, Evolutionary Anthropology Major, Paleontology Minor
  3. Lia Dirks, Beloit College, Environmental Geology Major & Museum Studies Minor
  4. Nathanael Shamon, California State University, Stanislaus, Biological Sciences Chemistry
  5. Robin Balladares, Angelo State University, Biology Major, Chemistry, English, and Studio Art Minors
  6. Sophia Haynes, University of Puget Sound, Earth & Environmental Science and Environmental Policy & Decision Making Majors, Applied Music (voice) Minor
“I gained a lot of crucial skills and information from this workshop and it definitely helped me decide I want to pursue a career at a museum in the future.” - Ambrose Johnson
Pictured is a sample drawer pulled from the primary collection. Each participant was given a similar drawer to work on in open lab where they could examine it in more detail and digital data were updated.

Throughout the week, students got hands-on experience working with specimens in a variety of preservational states and of scientific importance, and learned how to curate these specimens and use a relational database (Specify). They also gained skills in photography, and are now proficient in DSLR imaging of specimens, and post processing in Adobe Creative Suites. In addition to photography, students also learned semi-automated photogrammetric methods and utilized DigiCamControl, RealityCapture, MeshLab, and Blender–which resulted in many students creating a complete 3D model of one of their assigned specimens. Throughout the week participants gained creative problem solving skills and had to troubleshoot software and overcome potential challenges they had encountered.

Students worked independently to curate data for a specific group of animals and worked collaboratively with others to employ skills and methods and to meet the digitization goals of the workshop.

Each day the group toured a different museum space and met many museum professionals in a variety of fields. Participants also were provided with the opportunity to engage with informal networking opportunities through a series of career development brown bag style talks. In these, museum professionals would provide a short introduction to their career and what they do followed by lunch and a discussion with time to ask questions about their career path.

Participants learned to recreate specimens virtually. This is a reconstructed specimen that requires post processing to clean it up and scale it to the appropriate size.

Each participant was given the task of curating data for a specific Devonian echinoderm genus. This was used to facilitate learning and validating information in relational databases, exploring specimen photography, producing a 3D model via photogrammetry, and cleaning data to produce web pages for an upcoming field guide on the Devonian.

The ExPAND workshop produced 33 pages with two images per page and one 3D specimen for the field guide. The team of participants curated 9,378 fields in our database over the course of the week.

Participant Sophia Haynes happily summed up her experience saying, "Having the opportunity to explore extensive research collections, learn from museum professionals, and gain transferable skills was extremely valuable. I made extensive connections and discovered new career options, and I can’t wait to take my newfound skills with me in my future work with museums."

 

 

 

3D models will be available on the U-M Online Repository of Fossils and the occurrence data will be available via the Global Biodiversity Information Facility portal.