From the Latin: Docere The Latin root means “to teach,” and the Exhibit Museum’s student docents do just that. From fossilized dino dung to pterodactyls, this beloved group helps bring objects to life for visitors. by Katie Vloet
When Sara Kiel first thought about becoming a student docent at the LSA’s Exhibit Museum of
Museum docent Sara Kiel points out items of interest to students at the Exhibit Museum of Natural History.
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Natural History, she didn’t know anything about dinosaurs. But she was willing to learn. And learn, and learn some more. “Now my friends laugh at me when I correct them for calling pterodactyls ‘dinosaurs,’” says Kiel, a docent at the museum for the past three years, who explains that the term dinosaur refers only to terrestrial reptiles with a specific upright stance. It’s that kind of knowledge that 40 to 50 student docents at the Exhibit Museum each year love to impart to visiting school children and adults alike. The program has been around for the past half-century, setting it apart from many other college- and
university-based museums that look to retirees and other older adults to serve as docents. The student docents give tours to many of the 20,000 to 25,000 school children who visit the museum each year, they work in the gift shop and offices, they operate the planetarium, and they welcome visitors with hands-on tables of shark teeth, antlers, and fossils at the entrance to the museum. “I think they are the most important people in the museum, after our visitors,” says Sarah Thompson, the museum’s Docent Coordinator and one of the staff members who mentors the docents. “It would be impossible to do everything that we do, to interact with so many school children, without them.” The interaction with younger students, Thompson says, is “profoundly engaging” for both the school children and the student docents. Student docents are paid to work five to 15 hours a week, which gives them flexibility to work around their class schedules. Some students sign up because they are interested in science, while others want to become teachers. Brandon Peecook became a docent his first year at college. The biology major, now in his senior year, hopes to become a paleontologist one day. “I can tell you that I’ve learned as much from being a docent as from my classes,” he says. “It’s always better to see things and experience them, rather than just reading about it.” For Madeline O’Campo, the experience has given her a chance to learn and teach science — but in a way that doesn’t feel like work. “When I work here, I forget about studying, and just have
Courtesy of the Exhibit Museum of Natural History
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