Author name: UMMNH

Anthropology, 1970

Year of Memory: Late 1960s

Memories of a docent.
I was a docent for several years in the late 60’s at the ‘Exhibit Museum’ as it was known then. I took on the work as it fit with my interests in teaching children, and the fields of anthropology, geology, the natural sciences in general – and I needed to supplement the grants and other resources that use to paid for tuition, housing, and expenses of being an undergraduate student.

A noble sentiment that I might express about my experience would be the gratification I received from helping the children better understand the environment and peoples of Michigan and expanding their wonder and knowledge about the dinosaurs and other amazing life that preceded us on earth.

What I treasure more were the opportunities to closely observe the artifacts and objects of the native peoples included in the collections and see at close hand the fossils and imprints of animals I read about in my courses and studies at the university. Sunday afternoons sitting at the docent’s desk answering the few questions asked by visitors or quietly observing at the light filtering into the exhibit hall as it lit motes of dust floating have stayed with me as some of the best experiences of college life.

BS Psychology 1992, MD 1996

Year of Memory: 1988-1992
When I was about 9 years old, my parents took me to the Exhibit Museum for the first time. I brought home a trilobite cast of a specimen of Phacops rana that day, and I think I still have it in my desk at home.

Almost a decade later I took a job at the Exhibit Museum as a docent, and a planetarium operator for most of my undergraduate years.

So many wonderful experiences come to mind from that job. I still remember taking the museum methods class taught by John Klausmeyer and with Kelly Sullivan as my classmate – the most enjoyable class I took during my undergraduate career.

Thanks to Matt Linke (Planetarium Manager), I was involved in dismantling the aging planetarium machine with its 20-sided projector, to make way for a new planetarium. I worked on the cast of Dorudon atrox that hangs in the great hall of the museum.

Over 20 years later I still consider my time at the Exhibit Museum among my most treasured memories. I look forward to taking my own children to the Exhibit Museum when I finally get back to Ann Arbor, and pass on some wonderful memories to a new generation.

Even when I was a docent there, we had talked about the possibility of a new building as a pipe dream. I am so glad it is finally becoming a reality. Good luck to the current staff of the Exhibit Museum as they make this transition!

1987 BS in Biology and a BS in Anthropology/Zoology

Year of Memory: 1980s

I first became aware that the Exhibit museum existed when some classmates told me they were applying for positions as docents and thought that I may be interested as well. I wasn’t exactly sure what a docent was, but I needed to earn some money, it was conveniently located (as are most things on central campus), it involved dinosaurs, and, as it turns out, they weren’t too picky about who they hired (at least when it came to me…not commenting on any of the others). I found out that the Exhibit museum was the building with the ‘lions’ out front (btw…they’re pumas, not lions) that were supposed to roar when folks possessing a certain quality walked by (they don’t roar…trust me…they would have when I walked up). I opened the doors, passed through the rotunda, and began one of my best Michigan experiences.

My first recollection of the museum was taking a placement test at the first training session. To my dismay, I discovered that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did about dinosaurs, Michigan wild life, mineralogy, etc. (not surprisingly…but surprising to me at the time…this would be a recurring theme in my collegiate career…). Regardless, the staff assured me that they would teach me what I needed to know before I started giving tours (that’s what docents do in case you didn’t know by now) and that I should be able to hold my own with your average second grader on any given day. A few weeks later and a saber tooth tiger name tag later, I was ready to go.

While it was fun learning about all of the different exhibits in the museum, the tours were the most enjoyable part for me (and leaving comments about the groups after each one…those would be a fun archaeological find if they were still around!). After a while, I started to see the same types of kids in each group…the ‘I’m happy just to be out of school’ kids, the ‘this is so BORING’ group (aka ‘this place smells!’), the ‘when do we eat?’ crowd, and of course the ‘know it all’s who knew everything there was to know about dinosaurs and were only too eager to correct you when you made a mistake…um…or so I’m told…never happened to me, of course. And my favorite part of the tours was using some of the hands-on materials that were locked away on the second floor under the watchful eye of Helen (a museum institution in and of herself!).

I liked to pull a few things out of the drawer and pass them around…a mammoth tooth…a trilobite…a raptor tooth…talking a little science about each one while the kids got to hold some history in their hands. The grand finale was passing around the coprolites. I would always encourage them to touch them, look closely at them, even smell them and have them try to guess what those oddly shaped clumps could possibly be. Usually nobody guessed, but I always enjoyed the big reveal that coprolites are fossilized dung (followed by “Ew!”, “You made us touch it!”, “I knew it smelled like that”, and various other exclamations. Who ever said science isn’t fun?).

I continued on as a docent for several years, worked there over the summer helping with various behind the scene things (I am pretty sure the labels on the minerals on the 4th floor are the ones I printed out lo those many years ago!), made some good friends, and had some fun times. I have no idea how many tours I gave or how many kids passed through the museum while I was there, let alone the numbers throughout the years. But I like to think there’s at least one kid out there who got bitten by the science bug and looks back and asks “Remember when that guy made us touch dinosaur poop?”.