The 2019 Curator Hall of Fame recipient Dr. Pamela Willoughby with her supporters and award nominators.
The University of Alberta Museums (UAlberta Museums) celebrated 20 years of recognizing the efforts and hard work of Curators, Collection Staff, and volunteers who work in the museum collections on campus on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at their annual Museum Celebration awards event.
The annual Museum Celebration awards event is meant to recognize and celebrate those who demonstrate advocacy, excellence and commitment for UAlberta Museums collections on campus. This could include: the completion of significant museum collection projects (such as a museum collection inventory, or digitization of specimens, etc.), positive impact on the learning environment for UAlberta students, excellence in community outreach (such as exhibition design, community tours, etc.), and long-time leadership of their museum collection and on UAlberta Museums committees.
Over the last 20 years, the UAlberta Museums has recognized 14 curators, 6 assistant curators and technical staff, and over 30 volunteers. This year, Dr. Pamela Willoughby was added to the Curator Hall of Fame while Charlotte Rode, Kenmir Boyd, and Keith Schadeck were given the Volunteer of the Year awards
2019 Curator Hall of Fame
Dr. Pamela Willoughby, Curator of the Bryan/Gruhn Archaeology Collection in the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, was nominated by Shirley Harpham and letters of support were written by Pamela Mayne Correia and Robert Losey. Dr. Willoughby has been curator for the last 25 years, and in those years her commitment to the museum collection she curates, and to the greater campus museum community has made her an outstanding and worthy candidate for this recognition. Her achievements have been numerous and they continue to have resounding effects within the UAlberta Museums community. Dr. Willoughby has been a past member of the UAlberta Museums Policy and Planning Committee, and an active member of the UAlberta Museums Curator's Committee, including serving as the committee Chair from 1997 to 2000. She has volunteered and shared her knowledge during other UAlberta Museums events including Science Sunday and tours of the museum collections in the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Willoughby also played an instrumental role in securing and providing storage and resources for several significant sub-collections within the Bryan/Gruhn Archaeology Collection.
2019 Volunteer(s) of the Year
Charlotte Rode has been a volunteer in the Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology since Fall 2015 and just within the last year has contributed 215 volunteer hours. In her volunteer role, she has demonstrated continued enthusiasm and curiosity for the work that she does - which includes working to prepare and stabilize fragile segments of individual bones and fossil specimens.
Kenmir Boyd has been assisting to organize and database the E.H. Strickland Entomological Museum collection since early 2018, and in the last year has provided 170 hours of volunteer work. Ken's special volunteer project has been to make the thousands of specimens in the recently donated Robin Leech spider collection accessible to researchers and students.
Keith Schadeck has been volunteering in the Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology since Fall 2015. In his time volunteering for this museum collection, he has accumulated over 850 hours, with over 400 hours being done in the last year. While volunteering over the years, Keith has shown a talent for preparation of delicate fossil material.
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From dinosaur bones to Chinese art, the University of Alberta Museums is one of the largest multi-disciplinary museum collections in Canada. Established in 1910, it is a distributed model of 29 museum collections including clothing and textiles, art, archeology, Ukrainian folklore, ethnomusicology, and the earth and biological sciences.