{"id":33254,"date":"2017-04-26T13:56:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T17:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=33254"},"modified":"2017-04-26T14:14:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T18:14:03","slug":"smithsonian-museum-internship-seeds-students-ultimate-dream-space-exploration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2017\/smithsonian-museum-internship-seeds-students-ultimate-dream-space-exploration\/","title":{"rendered":"Smithsonian museum internship seeds student’s ultimate dream of space exploration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eastern Mennonite University student Amanda Williams has spent her spring semester supporting the \u201cmodest\u201d effort of the Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History to catalog its collection of 4.5 million botanical specimens. Not a bad gig for a junior \u201centhralled with the natural world\u201d who is double majoring in biology<\/a> and environmental sustainability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Amanda Williams has taken advantage of perks associated with interning at the Smithsonian, attending special events and exploring other museums.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Williams, a junior from Millsboro, Delaware, was a participant this semester with the Washington Community Scholars\u2019 Center<\/a>, a program that combines a semester in the nation\u2019s capital, living with other students in a house in the Brookland area and working four days a week in an internship.<\/p>\n

William\u2019s internship role is akin to a circulation librarian. Rather than books, however, she deals with plant specimens. She helps send, receive and catalog specimens for the Botany Collections Management Department<\/p>\n

On a typical day at the facility on 10th and Constitution Avenue near the Mall, Williams receives four or five boxes, each with 10 to 200 botanical samples \u2014usually leaf, stem and flower. She mails out a similar quantity of specimens to researchers worldwide, who use them to puzzle out, for example, genetic evolution, biodiversity loss, and climate change.<\/p>\n

She opens a box to find specimens pressed and mounted on archival paper or placed within sheets of newsprint. She records the basic transactional data. Then, if a specimen is to be filed in the museum\u2019s collection, rather than passed along to an individual researcher, she\u2019ll enter it into the database:\u00a0scientific name; identifying number unique to the museum; collector\u2019s name; and date and location from which it was gathered, including such specifics as altitude and GPS coordinate.<\/p>\n

She also catalogs this data for specimens already in the herbarium\u2019s holdings, some of which were gathered up to 150 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Pressed specimens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Williams enjoys the work: \u201cI find it very interesting to see plants from all over the world and learn about their taxonomic rank and geographic distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also assists with, and is a fan of, the Seeds of Success Program, a collection of native plant seeds sent from herbaria around the country. When these come to her, she ensures they\u2019re labeled and forwards them to a Smithsonian support center where they\u2019re deposited in a germplasm repository, an effort to thwart species extinction and restore sustainable ecosystems.<\/p>\n

Grounding herself in Earth\u2019s plant kingdom is a step toward Williams\u2019s \u201cultimate dream\u201dof conducting research on the International Space Station. \u201cMy mom says I talked about being an astronaut since I first learned to speak,\u201d she recalled. As a child, she stargazed through her own telescope, scrutinized photos of outer space in books and was hooked on\u00a0Star Trek<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Her interest in nature bloomed in her first biology class\u2014with teacher Darryl Hudson at Delmarva Christian High School in Georgetown, Delaware\u2014where the intricate yet efficient workings of plant and animal cells awed her. \u201cMy appreciation of both nature and God grew,\u201d Williams said. Later, when she learned how research in space is opening frontiers into understanding biological systems, her two interests coalesced into a career plan.<\/p>\n

A major benefit of her semester in D.C. is a free ticket to visit other Smithsonian museums and to attend their seminars. She joined a group of middle-schoolers participating in a\u00a0Youth Astronomers summit at the National Air and Space Museum to learn\u00a0how to remote-control a sophisticated orbiting telescope to obtain space images of their choice. Amanda took and edited photos of the Eagle Nebula and Andromeda Galaxy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWashington is a really cool place to be,\u201d she said.\u201d I went to the Inauguration and Women’s March, both historical events I won\u2019t forget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams has also taken in cultural fare, including a current exhibit \u201cpeople are going crazy over\u201d at the Hirshhorn Museum\u2014the hallucinatory \u201cInfinity Mirror Rooms\u201d of Yayoi Kusama. \u201cI use my badge to jump in line,\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Preparing shipments.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Williams lives with 13 other students in the Nelson Good House, where doing chores together creates \u201cbonding time\u201d and \u201cthere\u2019s always someone to hang out with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her unique contribution: sharing an enthusiasm for guppies. \u201cWhile here, my guppies\u2014a brilliant aquamarine-blue male and a red and blue female with a black-spotted tail\u2014have had 30-plus babies, and more are on the way. It\u2019s so cool to see people from my house interested in them because many have never had experience with breeding fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

At semester\u2019s end, she\u2019ll gift one of these tropical Poecilia reticulata<\/em> to any housemate she\u2019s sure will properly care for it. Then, she heads back to EMU, where she\u2019s been awarded, with Hannah Daley, EMU\u2019s first summer student research grant. The duo will explore the relationship between canopy cover and stream water temperature in two headwater streams near Bergton, Va.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: WCSC regularly places students at Smithsonian sites, including the Anacostia Community Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, \u00a0American History Museum, Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), Office of Exhibits Central, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eastern Mennonite University student Amanda Williams has spent her spring semester supporting the \u201cmodest\u201d effort of the Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History to catalog its collection of 4.5 million ... read more about Smithsonian museum internship seeds student’s ultimate dream of space exploration<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5590,17562,5643,5593,17571,14139,12632],"tags":[],"feature":[17427,17423,17426,17241],"class_list":["post-33254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-digest","category-environmental-sustainability","category-intercultural","category-internship","category-student-profiles","category-wcsc","feature-emu-home-page-feature","feature-featured-undergrad","feature-myemu-feature","feature-news-feature"],"yoast_head":"\nSmithsonian museum internship seeds student's ultimate dream of space exploration - 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