New Faces

From Plant Press Vol. 16 no. 1

Melinda Peters

Melinda Peters has joined the staff of Core Collections Management as a Museum Technician in the Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History. Peters comes to us after five years at the Combined Herbaria at Harvard University where she served as a senior Curatorial Assistant with responsibilities within all areas of herbarium operations. She assumes responsibility within CCM for the acquisition, documentation, processing and reporting of all new collections, as well as management of the exchange program, and will share client service duties with other CCM staff. Peters received her B.S. in Biology from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia in 2003, where she was honored with the Margaret A. Gordon Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Biology and the Young Botanist Award. For the period 2001-2003 she was the George Warren Chappelear Jr. Scholar, and received a Certificate of Recognition-Young Botanist Award from the Botanical Society of America in 2003. Peters obtained her Master’s in Botany from North Carolina State in 2005 with a thesis entitled, “Genetic analyses of the Federally endangered Echinacea laevigata using amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) – inferences in population genetic structure and mating systems.” She received a study grant from the Virginia Nature Conservancy, taught introductory botany and biology laboratories, and assisted extension agents across North Carolina with plant identifications. She is currently finishing a Master’s in Museum Studies from Harvard University (May 2013), during which she has completed internships at the Arnold Arboretum, metaLAB at Harvard, and Smithsonian Gardens (education and outreach). Peters is well known in the collections community as Assistant Editor for the Society of Herbarium Curators newsletter, and a member of both the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and the American Association of Museums.

Meghann Toner

Meghann Toner has joined the staff of Core Collections Management as a Museum Technician. Most recently, Toner served under Melissa Islam as a herbarium specialist at the Denver Botanic Garden where her duties included managing loans and acquisitions, overseeing development of the DBG collection database, digital imaging, geo-referencing of collections, producing public outreach materials, leading herbarium tours, and recruiting, training and supervising students and volunteers. Toner received her B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Colorado in 2007, and her Master’s in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester (UK) in 2010. The latter included research in the Natural History Museum (London), Ulster Museum, and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, as well as conducting post-graduate research in public outreach at the Chester Zoo (Upton, UK). Her M.Sc. thesis, “Curators: The stewards of museum collection knowledge,” was presented earlier this year at the Denver Botanic Garden. Previous work experiences include Research Assistant in the Museum and Academic Collections Department of the University of Colorado and Biogeographic Data Analyst for OBIS-USA (Ocean Biogeographic Information System). She is the recipient of a Faber Research Grant from the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC), and a Fitzgerald Travel Grant to attend the 2012 SPNHC Annual Meeting at Yale to present a paper on digitizing fungus collections.