Unclassified Senate awards funds to staff for professional development

Employees to take part in training, research

Some will learn how to handle hazardous museum items. Others will study spoken language.

Eight unclassified staff members have received funding from Unclassified Senate to attend conferences and perform research across the country. The senate provided the funding to supplement professional development opportunities for staff members.

Angela Watts, collection manager at the Spencer Museum of Art, was among the recipients. She’ll attend a conference in Illinois about safely identifying and handling potentially hazardous items in museum collections. One might not think of museum items as dangerous, but it can be quite common for items to have been treated with arsenic or pesticides for preservation purposes.

Watts said she’ll learn how to identify potentially hazardous materials and how to handle those that could be problematic. She’ll share the information with her colleagues and student employees. KU’s museum collections contain some high-profile pieces that must be handled with care.

“One very interesting example from our collection is the Inuit material that was collected by Lewis Lindsay Dyche when he traveled to Greenland. Much of this material is on exhibit right now in the Spencer’s Climate Change exhibit, safely sealed in cases, of course,” Watts said. Dyche was a taxidermist for KU and when he collected animal specimens in Greenland, he also collected hundreds of objects from the local Inuit people. Much of that material was made from animal fur or skin, and because of his training in taxidermy, it was natural that Dyche would treat the fur clothing he collected with arsenic.”

The senate provided four $500 awards and five $200 awards. Recipients of the $500 awards are:

• James Busse, graphic coordinator, Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis. He will attend the Photoshop World Conference in Boston.

• Kimberly Bruns, project coordinator, School of Social Welfare. She will attend the 46th annual Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Conference in New Orleans.

• Karen Hester, director of career services, School of Law. Hester will attend the National Association for Law Placement Diversity Summit in Chicago.

• Angela Watts, collection manager, Spencer Museum of Art. She will undertake the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies course “Know the Hazardous Materials in Your Collections” in Mt. Carroll, Ill.

Recipients of the $200 awards are:

• Kathy Mason and Robin Merritt, academic advisers, University Advising Center. They will attend the Region VII National Academic Advising Association Conference in New Orleans.

• Jenny McKee, health educator, Student Health Services, and Ken Sarber, public health educator, Student Health Services, will attend the Meeting of the Minds Prevention Education Conference in Kansas City, Mo.

• Peter Richtsmeier, post-doctoral researcher, Bureau of Child Research. He will undertake research in the Spoken Language Lab.