A MESSAGE
from the Director of the Auburn University Museum of Natural History
Jason Bond
The last 12 months have been an incredibly exciting
time for the Auburn University Museum of
Natural History (AUMNH). It was just a year ago
last May that museum staff, curators, and students
undertook the herculean task of moving the
collections from the Physiology Building, across
campus, to the newly constructed Biodiversity
Learning Center adjoining M. White-Smith
Hall. Since that time the research collections have
grown at a tremendous rate. The fish collection now
includes more than 850,000 specimens and, with
the addition of insects due to joining forces with
the Entomology Department in the College of
Agriculture, the invertebrate collections now total
more than 1 million insect, arachnid, myriapod,
crustacean, and mollusk specimens. Our curators
over the past year have traveled to some of the most
remote places on the planet in South and Central
America and Africa in support of biodiversity
research and acquisition of new specimens for
AUMNH.
The move to the new Biodiversity Learning
Center has positioned AUMNH to better support
the research, teaching, and outreach missions of
COSAM and Auburn University. Collectionsbased publications and grant support continue to
grow, totaling more than $3 million over the last
few years. We now teach organismal-based courses
like ornithology, herpetology, and vertebrate
biology in the museum next to the collections, and
we have hosted hundreds of children from area
schools for tours and educational programs over
the past year. Our outreach coordinator, Kay Stone,
recently participated in an arts and education
outreach program with Alabama’s First Lady,
Dianne Bentley, and was just this summer named
the Alabama Conservation Educator of the Year.
This past January, the Alabama Natural Heritage
Program joined the museum and the Department
of Biological Sciences, affording AUMNH an
opportunity to participate more directly in assisting
the citizens of Alabama in the stewardship of our
precious natural resources and biodiversity.
The Auburn University Museum of Natural
History continues to face a number of challenges
58
Journey/2014
as we move forward. Later in 2014, we will begin
the monumental task of “digitizing” all of our
collections to make them available online to the
worldwide research community with the support
of generous funding from the Bay and Paul
Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
The growth of our collections and research success
is a mixed blessing because we will likely outgrow
our new space within the next few years. While
the research aspect of the museum grows almost
exponentially, the museum’s enhanced visibility
in the community highlights the growing need
to expand our education and outreach capacity.
The museum has virtually no public exhibit space,
yet various groups continue to clamor for access
and natural history-based educational programs.
Our hope is to expand our