Connections Magazine, 2015

For 34 years the Museum of Peoples and Cultures occupied Allen Hall, taking in eager students and curious individuals. Undergoing a makeover that required permanent re-location, the Museum of Peoples and Cultures (MPC) has found a new face, along with a new neighbor; it is now next door to BYU Outdoors Unlimited, just north of campus.

For those “in the know,” like Codie Walton (‘14), alumna and former museum volunteer, the Museum of Peoples and Cultures continues to be “BYU’s best kept secret.” Now that it has a more prominent location, museum employees and alumni hope that more people discover what the museum has to offer—and that they spread the word, too.

Although the museum has a new look with the change of location, Director Paul Stavast and Curator of Education Kari Nelson plan on running the museum with their established philosophy. According to Stavast, the level of student involvement at the MPC is what makes it truly unique. “Students do just about everything at the museum,” he said. “I am the only full-time staff at the museum. And we have Kari, who is the part-time Curator of Education. Every other position at the museum is filled by students.” Stavast noted that few—if any—other museums in the country have students participate as much as they do at the MPC.

In addition to student involvement, professional leaders Stavast and Nelson encourage community engagement. The MPC holds dozens of events during the year, from mystery dinner date nights and girls’ nights out to children’s storytime and field trips. “We engage with the community to give students experience,” said Nelson. Many students have gained this experience at the MPC as employees and volunteers. We talked to a few of them, past and present, to learn about some of their duties while working at BYU’s anthropological museum.

Courtney Ewert, an archaeology graduate student, arrives at the museum long before it opens. She unlocks the doors, shuts off the alarms, and gathers the previous day’s “door count,” which should give the staff a good idea of how many people visited the MPC that day. Ewert originally signed on as office manager for the Office of Public Archaeology (OPA), which resides in the museum; now she manages the offices of the entire MPC.

“I’m sure to everyone else [this] is probably the most boring job you could have at a museum,” said Ewert. “But I love it.” Ewert is also working toward a museum certificate. As a part of her coursework she contributed to the new building’s opening exhibit: “Second Stories.” For Ewert, working at the MPC is about connecting with the past, even if there’s no historical record of it. Not only that, she believes her experience at the museum will prove invaluable to her career. “It’s taught me a lot of good skills that my program doesn’t give me,” said Ewert. “I could go out and get a job anywhere.”

Jessica Simpson—no, not that Jessica Simpson—is the museum’s registrar and collections manager. This means she keeps track of records for the objects in the collections housed in the museum, and also handles the collections herself. Simpson sees every object that comes into the MPC. For example, during the course of our interview, she gestured toward a roll of film sitting in her office. An emeritus professor had recently brought her the film, which documented a 1958 archaeological expedition to Aguacatal, Mexico. Though she deemed the film interesting, she thought it was better suited to Special Collections, so she decided to send it there.

In addition to her employment at the museum, Simpson is pursuing a master’s degree in anthropology and a museum studies certificate. This means that she has contributed in other ways to the MPC. One fond memory for Simpson is creating the “moccasin wall,” an integral part of the recent “Nuchu: Voices of the Ute People” exhibit. For Simpson, engineering an aesthetically pleasing, yet functional display to mount the moccasins to the wall was quite a challenge. “I actually have a scar from making it,” said Simpson.

But this kind of hands-on, do-it-yourself learning is what, to faculty and students alike, makes working at the MPC such a valuable experience. “That’s one thing I really like about working here,” said Simpson. “I have to learn to think for myself.” Anthropology student Heather White (‘14) got her firsthand museum experience as a collections technician. Her tasks included cataloguing collections, writing conditions reports, photographing objects, and creating cases for storage. These skills have come in handy for White as she works toward a master’s degree at George Washington University, which has one of the most reputable museum studies programs in the nation.

“I was actually able to do things that were pertinent to the career that I wanted,” said White. “I wouldn’t have had that experience anywhere else.”

White has also completed internships at two other museums. For her, the biggest difference between the MPC and the other museums is the level of trust placed in the students to plan, start, and execute projects. “I’ve been looking at different internships, and I’m overqualified for graduate positions because I did so many things there,” said White.

White isn’t the only one to have had her career boosted by their MPC experience. Tammy Cherry (‘08) got her first glimpse of the museum completing an extra credit assignment for an anthropology class. After the visit sparked her interest, she decided to volunteer at the museum, which she did for a year. Later, she took a position as a collections aide. Then Paul Stavast, the current director, arrived. He recognized Cherry’s potential to work with people, rather than objects. So he had her run education programs and manage volunteer work.

Under Stavast’s tutelage, Cherry applied for an ORCA grant and conducted what is known in the business as a visitor study. Day by day, she would stop people who came to the museum and ask them a few survey questions. She compiled the results into a presentation, which she took to several prestigious museum conferences around the country. Through the connections she made at these events, Cherry secured a consulting job in Washington, D.C. According to Cherry, finding a job like that without a master’s degree is nearly impossible. “It’s a field that highly values master’s degrees,” she said. “I have to put it all back to my…real-world, professional-level experience at the museum.”

Even though the D.C. firm that hired her has closed, Cherry still works as a parttime consultant, which leaves room for her responsibilities as a mother. Several years later, she recalls her experiences at the MPC with fondness. “I loved watching people light up when they learned a really crazy fact about a Mesoamerican artifact, [and] realized that we’re all people, we’re all the same,” said Cherry. “Making those correlations on the museum floor was definitely a highlight.”

Not every student who puts their time and energy into the MPC is an employee. Dozens of volunteers have come and gone, doing everything from collections work to giving guided tours of exhibits as docents. Trevor Pollman (‘14), was one of these volunteer docents while he studied archaeology at BYU. On any given day, Pollman would meet with a group— ranging from families to school groups— and walk them through each exhibit in the museum.

On one occasion, Pollman distinctly remembered giving a tour to a group from a troubled-youth high school. After stopping at a few displays, he could tell that none of them wanted to be there. So Pollman decided to tell them about his experience excavating the Provo Tabernacle. “They were impressed that people actually did archaeology,” said Pollman. “[The students] wanted to learn more about the things in the museum because of my background working with [them].”

Pollman now manages a restaurant in his hometown of Ankeny, Iowa. Even though he’s not in a museum, he credits the museum for giving him valuable skills he uses in his professional career. “[It] really made me come out of my shell,” said Pollman. “I know how to deal with the public now. I know how to get my point across so the people stay interested, and stay invested in it. It’s helped me both in interviews and in my job now, because I work with the public on a daily basis.” Wherever these MPC veterans end up in life, the museum gives them a defining experience.

Codie Walton, who hailed the MPC as “BYU’s best kept secret,” had one defining moment at the museum. Walton studied public health and saw herself one day becoming “the kind of person that would cure Ebola.” Walton was an MPC docent for four years. For two of those years, she led a children’s program called Stories Around the World, where she would read to the children about international cultures and direct a craft activity. She didn’t realize it then, but this storytime would alter the trajectory of her life.

“We were reading stories about Dia de los Muertos,” said Walton. “I was working with these kids, and I saw them get so excited and energetic about learning about a different culture. I had a complete change of heart.” This change of heart inspired Walton to become a teacher. She currently teaches fourth grade in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, with Teach for America. “I feel super privileged to have gotten an opportunity to work with kids, and to really do something that I have a passion for. It makes my job a lot easier,” said Walton. She plans to continue teaching when her assignment with Teach for America is over.

Another former member of the MPC’s host of docents, Michele Woodard, is a mother of four who has returned to school to get a degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. When Woodard moved to Provo, she saw an ad in the newspaper asking for volunteer docents. “I thought it would be a great way to get to know people,” she said. For her, some of the museum’s best assets were the amount and variety of events put on throughout the year. “That’s why I continued to do it for so long,” said Woodard. “There was so much, and it was never boring.”

One skill that Woodard appreciated having gained from her volunteer was the ability to think on her feet. “Because we did have such a variety of groups, you couldn’t just have something rote and memorized. It didn’t work,” she said. For each group, she added, “you had to teach it in a certain way.”

Woodard saw groups of all types and sizes come through the MPC, but she most enjoyed working with school field trips. Woodard and her fellow docents would call these visits “cheater tours.” The docents would split the kids into several groups, walk them through each exhibit, and have them identify things that interested them. Then the children would repeat it back to each other. “They were teaching themselves, talking in their own language,” she said. “There was. . .a whole lot more respect—because it wasn’t another adult, or somebody bigger than them. [They taught] themselves.”

As shown by the experience of Katie Cortez, a senior studying history and anthropology, volunteering as a docent and working as an employee are not the only ways to get involved at the museum. Cortez did an internship at the MPC in summer 2014. Among other projects, she spent some time inventorying human remains. Cortez recalled finding a pot with a note saying, “This was part of a sacrifice. Don’t remove these ashes.” Apparently, the ashes were the remains of a baby. Cortez said that projects like this one “really piqued my interest.”

Cortez expressed her appreciation for the museum’s engaging activities. “A lot of people don’t really like history,” said Cortez. “So if they can reach out and discover different ways that people can find history interesting, I think that’s an important thing to do.” Hopefully, in its new home, the Museum and Peoples and Cultures—and the students who work there—will continue to do this for years to come.

To get involved at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures, visit mpc.byu.edu or stop by the museum at 2201 North Canyon Road in Provo.

To see the article as it appears in BYU’s Connections magazine, click here.