With the reopening of the Dunn-Seiler Museum, tomorrow’s Homecoming festivities will be more than just fun and games. They might also be an enriching experience.
For Discovery Day tomorrow,. Joan Mylroie, coordinator of Discovery Homecoming Day, said the geosciences department will conduct tours of not only the renovated museum but the climate lab and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) lab.
John Cartwright, a lab support coordinator, explained that GIS is “a computer system that you can use for analysis of geographic data.”
“Some retired professors will be here to greet some of the visitors for Homecoming,” Mylroie said. “There will also be people that work on the museum and know everything about it here to give a guided tour.”
The museum contains a wide variety of minerals and rocks, and even fossils from every period of the Phanerozoic Era.
Chris Dewey, associate professor and curator of the museum, said, “one of the big things it has is a triceratops skull, which is unique for the Southeast.”
A Cretaceous crocodile skull and a Cretaceous sea turtle shell are also on display.
“There are new, lighted display cases at a height where everyone, even children, can see them,” Mylroie remarked.
“The entire museum is up-to-date and sparkling new,” she added.
The museum has been prepared for the grand re-opening tomorrow. According to Mylroie, the exhibits have been updated in preparation.
When Hilbun Hall was renovated in 1999, the museum was shut down and stored away. Dewey said that everything was moved out and put in storage.
The renovations were completed in the summer of 2000, allowing the geosciences department to resituate.
“We then took it back out and tried to reassemble things,” Dewey said.
The reopening of the museum took three years, and, according to Mylroie and Dewey, it took a considerable amount of work.
Mylroie said student help was needed to get it back in order.
“There was a graduate student helping on it and a couple of undergraduate students helping here and there,” Dewey added.
Mylroie said the ribbon cutting signifying the official opening of Dunn-Seiler will be at 10 a.m. tomorrow. The tours will last until noon and will be open to the public for viewing. The museum is located on the first floor of Hilbun Hall.
The GIS lab and the climate lab tours will also last from 10 a.m. They will be a separate entity on the third floor.