From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 4, October 2015.
In September, Erika Gardner became the newest employee of the Botany Department as a Museum Specialist on the Core Collections Management team. Gardner arrives with an excellent knowledge and understanding of classic taxonomy and brings a great deal of experience in herbarium collections. A native of southern California, Gardner received her bachelor’s degree in Biology from Cal Poly-Pomona in 2009, and recently completed requirements for her master’s degree in Botany from Claremont Graduate University. She began her career as a Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Intern at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden working with Sula Vanderplank. Upon graduation, she went full-time at RSA and, over the last 7 years, has been involved in all aspects of collections management. Her data management and digitization skills contributed to the success of the Latin American Plants Initiative and Global Plants Initiative projects at RSA. She has done extensive geo-referencing of herbarium specimens, conducted field work in support of her master’s thesis on the floristics of the Scodie Mountains in Kern County, California, and is Arc-GIS certified by ESRI. Most recently, Gardner has been responsible for acquisitions processing in the RSA herbarium, supervising a large volunteer staff, graduate students, and undergraduate interns.
Comments