Collections tours & Visitors

We frequently give tours of the herbarium to school groups, college classes or other interested groups.  The collections are also frequently used by professionals from throughout Alaska, as well as national and international visitors.

2016

Anderson School, Denali Borough School District, Anderson, Alaska.  Several middle school kids from rural Alaska and Anderson school staff visited for a tour of the herbarium and the range. Even if most students may not become scientist, the trip to UAF will stick for a while with them, and for some it was the first trip to a museum and to a university.

Delegation from the Universidad de Magallanes, Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad Chile (IEB) (President Dr. Juan Oyarzo, Provost Dr. José Maripani, VP of Research and Graduate Studies Dr. Andrés Mansilla, Director of Puerto Williams’ campus, Dr. Francisca Massardo, and Director of the SBC Program, Dr. Ricardo Rozzi) visited the Museum and the herbarium. UMAG plans a large expansion in education and research and they would like to partner with UAF in several areas.  We discussed many potential areas of overlap and collaboration
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Dr. Jeff Saarela (Canadian Museum of Nature) annotated 1200 Arctic Poaceae specimens, with a strong focus on Bromus, Calamagrostis, Elymus, Festuca, Hierochloe, Leymus, and Puccinellia.

2015

Family Day Plants
We had a lot of fun during the plant-featured family day. Making mini herbarium sheets was a hit with the kids, but the amazing race- inspired treasure hunt also got some traction with the slightly old
er kids and of course accompanying adults.

Professional development worshop for K-12 teachers.
The Herbarium also continues to expand its role in explaining scientific discoveries th
rough public education. By engaging Yukon-Koyukuk School District teachers with hands on science activities based in collections during a professional development workshop at the Museum we highlighted the importance of museum and university collections to build content knowledge and create excitement for possible career paths for rural students. The project was part of the Alaska Literacy Project (aSLP) led by Ute Kaden, UAF Education Department.

2014

Halloween Open House. The herbarium gets to participate yearly in this open house event, this year we set up shop upstairs with live plants from the greenhouse, plant watercoloring and just joining the fun.

Dr. Alan Fryday (Michigan State University) recently visited the herbarium to look at 368 lichen collections, travel supported by NSF TCN North American Lichens and Bryophytes: Sensitive Indicators of Environmental Quality and Change. He identified 609 species, including three new to North America, Trimmatothele perquisita, a genus new to North America, and 10 taxa new to Alaska. He also identified at least one possible new species. Prior to his visit, Karen Dillman of the U.S. Forest Service in Petersburg, Alaska visited the museum to prepare and presort many backlogged lichen specimens, which helped make the visit so productive for Alan.

2006

Dr. Reidar Elven (University of Oslo) visited to work with Dave Murray on revising Potentilla taxonomy and annotated several hundred specimens at ALA.

RAHI – Check out more outreach activities through our ongoing involvement in the Rural Alaska Honors Institute (RAHI) on this page.

Some snapshots from diverse outreach ops…

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