Internships About and Abound

In the Seattle-Tacoma area, internship opportunities abound and there is something for all Museology students to seize upon.  If you are willing to travel however, there are even more institutions that would be thrilled to take on an intern, and many of these institutions are untapped opportunities.  A twist of fate in the paleontology collections led me to Catherine Brown, director of the Stonerose Interpretive Center in Republic, Washington, where I have started an internship.  While I am certainly not the first student to engage in a "long distance relationship" with an institution, I have decided to blog about the experience and its benefits and challenges, for the benefit of other students.  Urban museums tend to receive more resources and attention due to their proximity to universities and measurable economies, but the entire Pacific Northwest is full or rural museums that deserve attention.

A case of shale fossils, Stonerose Interpretive Center.

The Stonerose Interpretive Center is a museum that owns and operates a rich Eocene fossil site (49 MYA) in Republic, in Ferry County, six hours Northeast of Seattle.  (http://www.stonerosefossil.org/)  Visitors can see the museum and actually dig for their own fossils.  I made the drive last weekend for my initial grand tour and meeting with the board, and had several long conversations about projects and priorities with the director.  The drive itself was fun- I got to see more of the Cascades, Steven's Pass, and some of Eastern Washington.  And on the East side I walked on a frozen lake for the first time, shin deep in snow.  Coming back I drove through forested mountain canyons, through the Columbia River basalt flow, and saw the Grand Coulee and scablands.  The trip itself was worth it.

To manage this internship, we decided that this will be a long-term, long-distance relationship.  For the next year, I will be visiting the site for a weekend about every six weeks.  I will also stay a few extra days over Spring break and the summer periods.  In between these on-site periods, I will work on projects that will be can be worked on while off-site, with some on-site testing and execution.  Not having had an intern before, the doors were thrown open for me and I was told "do whatever you want!".  The four areas of focus we decided we could make significant progress on with this model are strategic planning, fundraising, a visitor study, and education programming.

Interestingly, Stonerose shares a building with the Ferry County Historical Society.  The director there, Dr. Perry, states that there are historical societies with much to be done in pretty much every county in Washington.

Coming out the other end of this endeavor, I hope to developed a list of tips, benefits, and pitfalls of long-term, long-distance internships with museums outside the Puget Sound area.  

Some old mining stuff, Ferry County Historical Society Museum.