Mutualism in museums: A model for engaging undergraduates in biodiversity science

Abstract

Museums have an untapped potential to engage students in hands-on learning. Here, we describe the development of a tiered museum-based program at the University of California, Berkeley as a model for engaging undergraduates in biodiversity science. This decade-long effort to increase student participation in collections demonstrates the mutual benefits of undergraduate involvement. Museums benefit from critical help in collections care and an increased intellectual vitality, while students simultaneously gain essential research skills and an unparalleled exposure to biodiversity. Five first steps to creating a program are: dedicate a coordinator, offer credit, diversify participation, create a tiered structure, and build community.

The history and impact of digitization and digital data mobilization on biodiversity research

“…The elevated profile of natural history museums as holders of biodiversity specimens and the digital data that represent them, in addition to interpretive kiosks and displays, has not been lost on undergraduate students, who themselves become outreach agents [118]. As museums reach out even more aggressively, exposing undergraduates to collections-based research and the incorporation of digital data in biodiversity science, the potential for downstream impacts, including recruitment of a more diverse constituency and a broader range of skill sets, will grow [119,120].…”

The Type Locality Project: collecting genomic-quality, topotypic vouchers and training the next generation of specimen-based researchers

“…Given the importance of museums as repositories of critical information about temporal and spatial patterns of biodiversity (Bradley et al, 2014;Suarez & Tsutsui, 2004), there is a growing need for trained professionals in natural history collections (Bradley et al, 2014). Natural history museums can help fill this growing need by providing training to undergraduates through hands-on research experiences, such as this project, and other immersive opportunities that can be formative in the careers of the next generation of researchers (Cook et al, 2014;Hiller et al, 2017;Powers et al, 2014;Russell et al, 2007). Furthermore, we consider science to be a community-driven enterprise and see the collection of DNA-quality topotypic materials and vouchers to be an opportunity for individuals and organizations to contribute to common resources that will facilitate current and future research efforts, and that these efforts can also serve as a platform to train undergraduate researchers.…”

“…Our inclusion of undergraduates offered them the opportunity for meaningful participation in a project addressing real-world issues related to biodiversity conservation and provided a connection and networking point to professional biologists (Hiller et al, 2017). Undergraduates were active participants in most aspects of the project and we found that undergraduates in the herpetology course at JMU benefitted from course-based research in several ways.…”

“…To accomplish this, we propose establishing collaborative networks on a local scale and in particular, leveraging the strengths of local undergraduate institutions. This approach has the added benefit of providing a platform to train students in museum science, field and laboratory techniques, and systematics research, and thereby provide them with tools that can be applied to future employment and research opportunities (Hiller et al, 2017). As a proof of concept, we assembled a team of biologists from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), U. S. Geological Survey (USGS), James Madison University, and Eastern Mennonite University/ Wilson College, developed a full sampling protocol, and applied it to obtain genomic-quality, topotypic vouchers from amphibian type localities in Virginia.…”

On the role of (and threat to) natural history museums in mammal conservation: an African small mammal perspective

“…In North America, digitization efforts have been used to provide access to communities for whom collections have often been out of reach, providing opportunities to expand diversity in biodiversity conservation (Drew 2011). Multiple examples of directly integrating NHMs into undergraduate education have been developed which could serve as models for other countries (Cook et al 2014, Hiller et al 2017, Monfils et al 2017 as well as studies on the effectiveness of various education programs such as school tours (Cox-Petersen et al 2003).…”