What’s New in the Mu?

Distinguished!

In December Laura Monahan was promoted to Distinguished Status, one of the youngest UW employees to ever achieve this prestigeous honor!

Who is defined as Distinguished? According to the Office of the Secretary of the Academic Staff, “An academic staff member at the Distinguished level performs at a level of proficiency typically requiring extensive experience and advanced knowledge and skills. The expertise of an academic staff member at this level is commonly recognized by their peers and through a reputation which extends beyond their work unit. A Distinguished academic staff member is expected to develop new approaches, methods or techniques to resolve or prevent problems with little or no expert guidance and to cope independently with new, unexpected or complex situations. At this level, an academic staff member can be expected to guide or train other staff or to oversee their work. …A candidate nominated for the Distinguished status is expected to demonstrate exceptional performance, be recognized beyond the work unit as outstanding, and have a reputation of excellence in the profession.”

We UWZM folks thinks the Secretary wrote this definition by following Laura around for just one day!

Rachel Muir

A new addition to our staff is Rachel Muir, who recently moved to Madison to reconnect with her Wisconsin roots from a long career in Washington DC and a “temporary retirement” in the southern Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. Rachel joins the Zoological Museum with a background in Federal service in a variety of environmental fields and for agencies that included the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Service, and the Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy. One of her lifetime passions has been an interest in threatened and endangered species. Her interest started as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, where she worked as a technician surveying one of the most diverse freshwater ecosystems in North America, the Upper Tennessee Basin. There she discovered the extraordinary diversity and abundance of freshwater mollusks to be found there and was hooked. Her career path took her many places and across many disciplines, but always came back to the conservation of “the little things”, especially endangered invertebrates and plants. As an honorary fellow and adjunct curator, she hopes to further develop the UWZM mollusk collections to be a research-grade scientific and educational resource for Wisconsin and the upper Midwest.

The Museum Store Goes Green

The Zoological Museum store has gone over to the “light side” with the addition of Botanical Posters. We have 7 posters created by Kandis Elliot during her tenure as the UW-Senior Botany Artist. The posters offer fascinating images and information on flowers, fruits, colors, plant structures, pollinators, even fungi. Reference photos were taken by Botany Photographer Claudia Lipke; information was provided by Dr. M. M. Fayyaz, Director of the Botany Garden and Greenhouses, as well as by Botany Department professors and staff. Like our selection of Zoology-themed posters, these educational outreach materials are excellent sources of basic science intended for students of all ages as well as educators, gardeners, and aficionados of plants and their biology.

Glass Artisans Recreate Century-old Sculptures

Tracy Drier, UW-Madison Department of Chemistry Master Scientific Glassblower, administers the Scientific Glassblowing workshop in the Department of Chemistry and is the principal collaborator on a project aimed at re-creating the art and technique of glass biological models.  Project participants include members from University of Wisconsin-Madison departments of Chemistry, Integrated Biology, and Art, and feature contributions from Lauren Aria, Ela Bakowska, Andrew Bearnot, Veronica Berns, Tracy Drier, Tim Drier, Astrid van Giffen, Ilia Guzei, Beth Hylen, Aaron Kirchoff, Jesse Kohl, Helen Lee, Laura Monahan, Erich Moraine, and Loren Stump.

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