BIOL 205 | Natural History Museum Docent

This course is designed to provide a general overview of natural history museum practices that support the main functions of these institutions: research and education. Natural history museums are invaluable archives of Earth's biodiversity and were the primary locus for biological research in the 18th and 19th centuries. The vast collections of specimens in natural history museums provide a temporal and geographic record of life unmatched by written or illustrated accounts. They document variation - the foundation of evolution - in time and space and allow biologists to make comparisons that are difficult or impossible to observe in the field. Students learn about the resources housed in the Puget Sound Museum of Natural History and be trained as Docents, learning and developing stories, providing tours, staffing open hours and Nights at the Museum and teaching museum curricula in K-12 schools.