From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 1, January 2019.
The National Museum of Natural History presented the 2018 Peer Recognition Awards on December 11. Award recipients are individuals and teams who have given their time and talent to the museum above and beyond what their jobs call for, and to those who have done something that makes a difference in the outside community, for the museum, or for the larger Smithsonian community. The Peer Recognition Award Committee is composed of 14 Museum staff members representing a cross-section of the entire museum community.
Ten awards were presented at the ceremony. Department of Botany’s Ida Lopez and Ken Wurdack, and volunteers Julia Steirer and Lou Woody received the Green Thumb Team Award. The following is taken from 2018 Award Program:
When the unexpected happens and a solution is not in sight, unsung champions often rise and make things right. When the Museum found itself without a green house manager, these four individuals stepped up and decided to do what they could to care for, maintain and protect a valuable collection of nearly 6,000 living plants at the Botany Research Greenhouse. Museum volunteers Julia Steier and Lou Woody worked numerous hours watering, pruning, and trimming plants in addition to cleaning floors, equipment and anything else that needed attention. Ida Lopez’s devotion is evident by bringing the volunteers together, overseeing the plant care, ensuring all tasks were covered, and providing contracted resources as needed. The greenhouse is a living and breathing facility and its systems are essential to providing the environment for the collection to thrive. Without any professional training in facilities management, Ken Wurdack assumed the necessary duties. By troubleshooting systems and partnering with SI facilities experts, he helped keep the greenhouse facility in working order, monitored structural and mechanical systems, and obtained service and repairs when needed. The sacrifice of the team to save this valuable collection has allowed their fellow curators, and the national and international research communities, to continue their research on living plants. The plants housed in this facility are an important reservoir for genome-quality tissue, and the conservation of these rare and threatened species is vital to our research mission. Without their exceptional efforts, these collections would have perished.
Comments