Grants support arachnology research, a new mobile Museum, data insights about Museum audiences, NAGPRA consultations, and more

DENVER — The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is pleased to have been awarded multiple federal grants in 2018 that support the Museum’s mission to further science, cultivate relationships and ignite the community’s passion for nature and science. Federal grants, which are awarded through a highly competitive review process, are one measure of the Museum’s vibrant research, programs and relevance.  

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF)

Camel Spider Study

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded the Museum a collaborative research grant to study North American camel spiders, under the direction of Dr. Paula Cushing, curator of invertebrate zoology, and her co-principal investigator Dr. Matthew Graham of Eastern Connecticut State University. The four-year award (NSF-1754587) totaling $1,034,240 is shared by the Museum and the University.

Dr. Cushing has been studying camel spiders for 17 years. The animal is a poorly understood desert arachnid related to spiders and scorpions. They have neither fangs nor venom, and are totally harmless to humans. Camel spiders play an important role in arid ecosystems, where they eat insects and other small prey, and are eaten by birds, reptiles and mammals. The NSF grant will increase collecting activities in the deserts of North America, carry out state-of-the-art molecular sequencing on species of camel spiders, and, most important, train the next generation of scientists, including teens, undergraduates, graduate students and a postdoctoral scholar.

Fossil Fern Collections Digitization

The Museum is part of collaborative research grant (NSF-1802504) to support a consortium involving 39 U.S. institutions, led by the University of California, to digitize collections of herbarium and fossil ferns and related plants (collectively called the pteridophytes) that evolved and colonized land some 420 million years ago. Through a $30,621 sub-award from the University of Florida, the Museum, under the direction of Dr. Ian Miller, curator of paleobotany, will digitize approximately 7,000 fossil pteridophyte specimens that will be available online to researchers, students and the general public.

INSTITUTE OF MUSEUM AND LIBRARY SERVICES (IMLS)

Mobile Museum

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded $249,500 for the project Mobile Museum: Fabrication, Launch, and Evaluation (MA-10-18-0128-18). The award comes from the IMLS Museums for America program, which focuses on a museum’s highest strategic priorities with a focus on learning experiences.

The project, led by Tina J. Martinez, director of partnerships and programs, is currently creating two mobile museum experiences that answer our community’s call to meet them where they are, in places that matter to them. Two different-sized vehicles will provide kids, families and members of the community with interactive learning experiences related to nature and science.

Facilitated 20-minute programs in the larger vehicle will serve school groups, summer camps and other youth groups right outside their classroom. Free-choice experiences in both vehicles will serve the public at venues across Colorado, ranging from festivals to libraries to senior centers to sporting events. The experiences will begin with the highly visible and exciting presence of the vehicles in unexpected places and will include activities both in and outside of the vehicles, using objects from the Museum collections, creative technology and fun informal education.

Leveraging Data Insights

The IMLS awarded $142,836 for a project committed to leveraging data analytics to gain insights about Museum guests (MA-40-18-0509-18). The funding comes from the IMLS Museums Empowered program, which focuses on providing professional development and capacity building grants for museums to increase their impact.

The project, led by Eric Boen, director of technology, will use existing data sets and new data sources to support the Museum’s mission, increase relevance, and better serve our community. The priority will be to drill down on questions related to the preferences and interests of our different audience segments, and how to use the information to maintain or increase the Museum’s relevance. The grant will help build the capacity of the Museum’s data team and employ technologies to uncover trends and enhance the quality, quantity and types of guest behavior data the Museum is able to gather. This will help the Museum make more informed business decisions and reveal ways to create customized experiences that surprise and delight our guests and connect them in personally meaningful ways to the Museum's mission to ignite our community's passion for nature and science.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE (NPS)

The National Park Service has awarded a two-year grant of $84,522 for the WS Ranch Project NAGPRA Consultation (P18AP00341). Under the direction of Dr. Stephen E. Nash, senior curator of archaeology, and Dr. Chip Colwell, senior curator of anthropology, the Museum will document ancestral remains and cultural items in the WS Ranch collections and consult with 20 tribes to determine appropriate cultural affiliation. WS Ranch was one of the last large-scale archaeological field schools in the American Southwest, operated in southwestern New Mexico by the University of Texas at Austin. Recently, the ranch owners donated the field school collection to the Museum, where archaeologists are working to make it available for study and display.

The work on ancestral remains and cultural items, which is taking place under guidelines set forth by the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), advance the Museum’s aspiration to curate the best understood and most ethically held anthropology collection in North America. The Museum’s grant was one of 16 NAGPRA grants from the National Park Service, totaling more than $1.6 million that will fund transportation and reburial of 243 ancestors and 2,268 cultural items across the country.

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT

Through a $25,000 continuing agreement with Bureau of Land Management in Utah (L14AC00302), Dr. Joe Sertich, curator of dinosaurs, is furthering paleontological fieldwork in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, one of the best preserved and most continuous records of terrestrial life in the late Cretaceous, 95 to 75 million years ago.